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are nicely summarised thus: a) the science is so rapidly evolving that IPCC (2007) and CCSP (2009) reports are already out of date, b) the globe is cooling!, c) the consensus on hurricane/global warming connections has moved from uncertain to ambiguous, d) Greenland is not losing mass, no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….
Liz Bockelman
“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) “
The earth have some internal heating with occasional rises to the surface, but most of our heat comes from the sun.
“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.”
The heat generated by mankind is very small compared to the sun. Greenhouse gases do not generate heat but trap the heat coming from the sun. In other words, the gases dress our atmosphere much like a coat.
“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.”
Humans exhale CO2, and there is other naturally occurring processes that generate CO2. The current problem is due to the large generation of CO2 and other gases from recent advances in technology. We are putting more CO2 into the system than what is being taken out of the system through natural processes; as a result, we are creating a thicker coat of CO2 in our atmosphere. The extra CO2 is also being absorbed by water, and CO2 lowers the PH level in the water, which causes water to turn acidic. Acidic water is not a good thing for plant life.
“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. “
There is both good and bad effects. In places like Africa, it’s mostly bad news because it becomes too hot and dry to grow anything (It’s already beginning there). In areas such as North America, a longer growing seasons also means a larger bug and weed season. Larger fields are also required to collect water to compensate for the extra heat, and a sizable desertification is expected in many areas. In a basic nutshell, the effects depend on the location. Overall, the bad outweighs the good in most areas.
“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.”
The name was changed because more things are being effected than temperature. For example, the world’s oceans have been absorbing some of the CO2; as a result, the oceans PH level is dropping and causing acidification. Storm frequency, strength, and other weather related activity is also due to change. Some places that are not near water may become tropical beach front property while places near water may become a part of the ocean floor. In a basic nutshell, the climate itself is changing.
“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.”
The growing seasons should be explained above. As far as global temperatures go, people get effected both ways. It does not make a difference if your crop dies from snow or drought, dead is dead.
“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.””
You seem to have a misunderstanding here. Global warming is not caused from geological features of the earths heat sources such as magma chambers and radioactive decay.
People like Stephen Hawking did not become very famous for boasting nonsense.
“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 seriously doubt you will be paying for anything regardless of what you believe unless you’re an oil tycoon. But lets assume you did. Lets even go as far as to say that all the world’s leading mathematicians and scientists are wrong about the temperatures, and the oil industry has it right. Is ocean acidification something you can overlook? No fancy equations here, just a simple measurement with a chemistry set. Might want to think about that long and hard.
For Liz, it’s always worth trying Google:
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=656
Doug B, and good luck and more power to your (the) endeavor. Sounds like a breeze.
Liz Bockelman Says:
1 July 2009 at 6:03 PM
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.
Ammonia is also needed by plants yet exposure to it at levels greater than ~50ppm is increasingly unpleasant and at such levels it certainly is appropriate to label it as a pollutant. No one is proposing eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere, to do so would be fatal and the world would be a very cold place indeed! What is proposed is to limit its increase and perhaps even stabilize its concentration at a slightly lower concentration.
Just to elaborate on that one question, it’s always a good exercise to compare the answers you get (from Google versus Google Scholar, and from some guy or gal on a blog versus some other guy or gal on some other blog (grin). Like the guy above, from Cornell:
“… The Earth’s atmosphere has some capacity to hold in heat but not much of one. A relatively simple calculation would show that the Earth’s surface temperature would drop by a factor of two about every two months if the Sun were shut off. The current mean temperature of the Earth’s surface is about 300 Kelvin (K). This means in two months the temperature would drop to 150K, and 75K in four months. To compare, the freezing point of water is 273K.”
So compare Rod’s “wild guess” of “a few million years, maybe less” versus that guy’s calculation of two months.
Gotta watch these self-described skeptics (grin). Check the math; you can follow up at the Cornell site and ask about the calculation, or perhaps someone here will have it.
RodB #549
I think you will find the history of the term “climate change” can be explained in a number of ways. Firstly, and most obviously, the term Climate Change dates from, IIRC, the late 1980s — way ebfore anyone thought to suggest that spinning the framing of the question might be important. That “CC” in UNFCC is about 20 years old. Andf as we have seen, “climate change” is probably a better description of the process than global warming anyway, since warming temperatures aren’t all that is likely to happen over time.
The Republicans, sometime about the early 2000s also decided that calling global warming “climate change” might serve their interests better.
Frank Luntz, Republican pollster and Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract
with America” spinmeister laid it all out. Luntz worried about
seriously in a memo during Bush’s first term that the Republicans were exposed because of their stand on the environment: Luntz claimed that “Voters believe[d] that there [was] no consensus about global warming within the scientific community … [and that] .. should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, he argued “you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate”
Carrying on in this vein he added: “It’s time for us to start talking about “climate change” instead of global warming and “conservation” instead of preservation.
“Climate change” was less frightening in his view than “global warming” As one focus group participant noted, climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge”
and then added
“A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more
emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.”
Hmmm
You’re right about nobody proposing to eliminate or even lower atmospheric CO2 in the foreseeable future, so arguments along the lines of not dissing CO2 seriously miss the mark. How much more can we tolerate in the atmosphere and still live adequately is the real question.
#553 Rod B:
I tell people, “we’re undertaxed”, and they look at me like I’m crazy or something. I could try to make up for it singlehandedly by doing an even poorer job with my tax return, but it seems like a drop in the bucket…
OK, RodB, do not keep us in tense expectation. What is your answer to your question:
“From GISS, the mean annual anamoly for 1998 was +0.70 degrees C; the mean annual anomoly for 2008 was +0.55 degrees C. Over this latest “past” decade, is this rising or falling?”
#531 Liz Bockelman
#549 Rod B
The CO2 is not a pollutant meme is pretty old and the explanation is simple. All you have to do is look at the definition and examine the contexts:
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/co2-is-not-a-pollutant
CO2 from natural sources is not pollution. CO2 from manmade sources, such as industrial waste aka burnt fossil fuels, is a pollutant.
The question remains as to whether or not CO2 from exhaling is a pollutant but I would say that is dependent on whether or not you have bad breath.
Liz, it is clearn you have not examined many of the relevant contexts regarding the subject. You might want to spend a little time reading on the OSS site. I’ve done my best to simplify the contexts and the site is well linked to RC and government sources. I keep adding/refining as time allows.
Also, I’m with Rod on the 150% thing. Can you show us the link where you read that? If you just think about that for a second you can see that at that rate earth would be, well…, frozen.
Try to remember one important thing: facts out of context are either less relevant, or irrelevant.
Re#555
Hank, also the experiment is carried out every night, where I am at about 40ºN during the 10 hours of darkness the temperature is forecast to drop tonight from 80ºF – 76ºF on a very humid night, tomorrow it will be less humid and the temperature will drop ~10ºF. We can also conduct the experiment at the poles where the darkness lasts for six months, N of 80ºN the temperature drops about 50ºF. Of course if the sun is ‘off’ there will be no influx of warmer air from elsewhere so it will be worse. The air temperature drops noticeably during a solar eclipse.
“On top of that, the albedo of sea ice is as low as .5 and new smooth snow is .9. It looks unlikely that there is a large net difference in the radiative energy balance due to melting of Arctic Ice.”
So, when fishermen are working on the Arctic, do they say that on a clear day the ocean looks almost as gray as the ice? Is that how it looks in photographs?
It doesn’t seen so to me.
Some problems in science are very complicated and their answers unobvious.
In other cases, and this is one, sometimes just looking at it gets you two thirds of the way to the answer, and that’s the obvious fact that ice is substantially more reflective than ocean water even in the Arctic. (A good chunk of Sun’s energy at Earth’s orbit is emitted in human perceivable optical band)
Liz: “100% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the sun, right?”
Not quite all, but almost all.
“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)”
In equilibrium, it would be a little hotter than the temperature of the cosmic background radiation (3K) on account of radioactive decay. Everything of course would be completely frozen and no life would exist. Room temperature (71F) is about 295 degrees Kelvin by comparison.
Liz: “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?”
It is false / misleading. Human generated heat (e.g. the actual heat from burning coal or uranium) is not what’s important—and that number is indeed insignificant next to the amounts in question.
It isn’t heat generated by humans but changes in the atmosphere which let less heat generated by the Sun head back into deep space.
When you put on a heavy coat, you are not changing much the energy from the Sun, nor the amount of internal heat generated by your organs, but the temperature that you feel does change.
In a nutshell, thanks to human activity, the atmosphere is “shining back at us” more than it used to. So on the ground we feel the direct radiation from the Sun, and all the radiation which hit the surface, goes up, and comes back down again. This second part increases the temperature a noticable amount.
It’s only because our biology doesn’t let us see in the relevant infrared part of the spectrum that this isn’t a phenomenon which is intuitively apparent to ordinary people.
Liz: “If false, can you calculate what comparative significance heat generated by mankind has.”
The question is not the total amount—the added flux from human activities is of course a small fraction of the total flux from the Sun. That is not the important issue.
The question is the relative effect of changes over time. These have been experimentally measured. Changes in the Sun’s output is very small over recent human history.
For instance, look at this figure, and in particular pay attention to the Y-axis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png
Over a solar cycle the net energy density arriving at Earth appears to change by 1 watt per square meter out of an average of about 1,366. So the variation is less than 0.1%.
So the important question is whether human changes match up or exceed to this 1 W/m^2 size variation—and they do and go in one direction—not whether humans can make changes comparable to 1,366 W/m^2 (they can’t).
” 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.”
It would probably be a good thing overall for farmers in Russia and Canada, but there are many other people on the planet who don’t live there.
The biggest problem is that most agriculture is not limited by sunlight, heat or CO2, but by H2O—water. Climate disruption will substantially change the patterns of rainfall and rivers and water works which are critical for the production of food and living conditions for many people. For instance, it’s far far better for human needs to get lots of snow on high mountains which then melts steadily over the spring and summer growing seasons. If you get rain instead of snow, you alternate between huge floods on the lowlands followed by drought.
Overall there are many practices in agriculture and infrastructure which have been developed in light of the steady climate which has existed for the last 10,000 years in which all of human civilization has evolved. It is very risky to disrupt that even if some people could benefit.
In the anthropological and biological record, significant climate shifts are frequently associated with extinctions of civilizations and species.
By the way, most scientists here are not “proponents” of global warming, as in “they are in favor of it in order to advance some political or personal agenda.” I think 100% of them wish it weren’t going to be a problem. The idea that they are in it for their own careers is silly.
Yes, there was work for geoscientists in diversified areas before “global warming” became known to average people and they would have gone into any number of subjects as a graduate student if human induced changes in greenhouse turned out (after calculation and experiment) to be unimportant at a global scale.
Liz Bockelman 1 July 2009 at 6:03 PM
If you plug “average geothermal heat per square meter'” into a google search, the first hit is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient, which states that the average power coming from the hot core of the earth is only about 1/10 of a watt per square meter(over the spherical surface of the earth). The energy coming from the sun is approximately 1366W/m^2 (over the projected circular disk of the earth facing the sun). This means that virtually all the heat that keeps the oceans liquid and powers the atmospheric circulation comes from the sun. If the sun suddenly shut off, the earth would cool down quickly, and get so cold that the greenhouse gases(most, if not all; certainly water vapor and CO2-methane freezes at 91 degrees k or -182 deg C) that slow the loss of heat to space would condense out, making the equilibrium surface temperature even colder. I found one online discussion, (but haven’t checked for reliability of their numbers) that indicated the temperature of the earth without the sun would be about 30 degrees kelvin, cold enough for oxygen and nitrogen to freeze out. http://www.bautforum.com/space-astronomy-questions-answers/45680-sun-extinguished-earths-temperature-2.html
According to http://www.evworld.com/library/energy_numbers.pdf, the earth receives about 10^25 joules per year from the sun, and consumes(as of 1990) 4X10^20 joules of marketable energy(most of which is fossil fuel, some is renewables, i.e. sun driven) so the directly human generated heat is trivial compared to that from the sun. The Top Of Atmosphere solar irradiance varies from about 1365.4 watts per meter squared to about 1366.4 watts/M^2, but that variation(less than 1%) doesn’t modulate the global temperature significantly – see http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1978/mean:10/offset:-1366/plot/wti/from:1978/mean:10
What has changed the global temperature significantly is man’s addition of CO2 to the atmosphere – although the absolute quantities are small, the relative change in CO2 is large, and the effects are important. see http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1960/mean:5/offset:-325/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1960/mean:10/scale:100
It’s analogous to my house. It is made of mostly wood, including the siding(brown), and drywall(grey), and weighs about 60,000 lbs, but it looks green, because of about fifteen pounds of woodstain on the outside, which is in turn mostly linseed oil and other binders, with less than 5 pounds of green pigment. I f my house and everything in it were made of glass, it would weigh a lot more, but would still be green because of that 5 pounds of pigment. if I added only 2 pounds of blue pigment to the stain, it would radically change the color, even though the house weighs many orders of magnitude more than than 2 pounds. The tiny(compared to the total mass of the atmosphere) amount of CO2 that human use of fossil fuel has added to the atmosphere has had a likewise measureable effect on the spectral properties of the atmosphere. If, in my imaginary glass house, I had lights on,from the outside it would glow green in the dark. After adding the tiny amount of blue pigment, it would glow blue, and the total amount of light escaping would decrease because of the additional absorption of longer wavelengths by the blue pigment. CO2 does the same thing for the earth, although the wavelengths are much longer, in the infrared.
Your true-false question about whether CO2 is a pollutant or necessary for plants and therefore all other life (well, except for the chemosynthetic based ecosystem around undersea volcanic vents) on earth is a false dichotomy – its like asking is water good; true or false. Well, if you’re asking about the glass of water I just drank (mostly water, with some byproducts of fermentation of soluble solids derived from grapes), it’s true, it was very good. If you’re asking a Katrina survivor who lost his home to flooding in New Orleans, too much water is not so good. Although plants need CO2, too much of that is not so good either. The same thing applies to your question about growing seasons-if, for instance, flowering is photoperiod dependent, but the pollinators emerge depending on temperature, then a warmer climate and longer growing season will mess things up, especially perennial ecosystems, where we don’t have the luxury of choosing a different variety of seed to plant every year like we do with corn. Also, along with warmer weather, changes in the pattern and intensity of rainfall are already occuring. If heavy spring rains wash out half the crop, and the rest of it dies in the summer drought, a longer growing season won’t help. see http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/extreme.html
It wasn’t climate scientists that promulgated the change in language from “global warming” to “climate change”, but a Republican political hack named Frank Luntz, who advised Republicans to use climate change as a way to spin public opinion away from becoming alarmed enough to want to do anything about it.
see http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/02/us/a-call-for-softer-greener-language.html
Earth hasn’t actually cooled. Anybody who says that is repeating a lie. Glaciers have continued to melt at accelerating rates, arctic summer ice is declining at accelerating rates, more 6-10 thousand year old ice shelves are collapsing. see http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg and http://www.grid.unep.ch/glaciers/img/5-9.jpg, or google Wilkins ice shelf.
It is false that the Irish Potato Famine was caused by weather. It was caused by blight. See http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/begins.htm The second year of blighted crops, the newly elected British government decided to stop relief efforts, get “the Irish fed via the free market, reducing their dependence on the government while at the same time maintaining the rights of private enterprise.” Millions starved to death. At least during our recent free market financial meltdown, not as many have died, but perhaps I’m being too optimistic – the potato famine lasted six years – we still have time.
If you are not impressed by the science so far, perhaps it’s because none of the sources you rely on have adequately communicated the implications of global warming. I would recommend in addition to Gavin’s suggestion, http://www.aip.org/history/climate/ and, from those lefty enviro watermelons at the Pentagon, http://www.climate.org/PDF/clim_change_scenario.pdf
“EL Says:
1 July 2009 at 2:08 PM
Mark – “It’s what you get OUT of energy that’s important. Not the energy”
Are you actually serious? ”
Uh, yes.
This would be why I wrote it down.
Are you saying that the hot engine is wanted out of a car and not all that moving about stuff?
If you could get the car not to heat up but use the same energy, would you not get MORE “moving about stuff”? Or is the reason for using ICE is so that we have to have a radiator and that doing without would kill off all those employed making radiators?
Are YOU serious???
Michael writes:
Why in the world would it “decrease human life expectancy?” Was human life expectancy significantly less when carbon dioxide was lower? Does it go up in correlation with CO2? I don’t get your point.
#559 John Reisman
Thanks for the link but all the ossfoundation links return “bad gateway”
Rod writes:
It was a stupid question, Rod. It didn’t deserve an answer.
Rod writes:
Okay, Rod, here’s your answer, for perhaps the 57th time on this blog which you’ve been reading long enough to have seen every time.
You do not determine a trend by drawing a line from the beginning point to the ending point. You determine a trend by performing a linear regression of the variable in question against time. You have to use ALL the points, not just the ones that seem to show what you want.
And in order to be a trend, the slope has to be significant, which means you need an adequate sample size. 1998-2008 is eleven years. The World Meteorological Organization defines climate as mean regional or global weather conditions over a period of 30 years or more.
This has been said many, many times. If you didn’t listen to it the first 57 times, why should we expect that you’ll listen to it the 58th time?
Shut off the obnoxious, arrogant baiting. We can answer yes or no to your stupid question, but an answer to a stupid question doesn’t mean anything, so we have no obligation to give it.
Liz Bockelman writes:
True but irrelevant. The change in radiation is due to the greenhouse gases human technology is putting out, not the existence of humanity. And, BTW, no one has ever been able to detect the temperature effect of the 11-year solar cycle, and a lot of people have looked for it. Let me know if you want the raw data, assuming you want to look for it yourself. Reconstructions of the solar constant exist going back 300 (Svalgaard) and 400 (Lean) years.
It seems to me Mr Reisman that there is something quite curious about treating anthropogenic Co2 as a pollutant and naturally occurring Co2 as not a pollutant.
Noting as we do that atmospheric CO2 concentrations above a certain point rejudice human interests, perhaps it would be better to claim that *this* Co2 (ie the supplemental Co2) is a pollutant.
Ultimately, the world’s carbon sinks will take up and flux Co2 regardless of its provenance, but of course, as we have seen, human activity has forced the fiogure upward. Some of this anthropgenic Co2 is in the sinks preventing natural Co2 from being stored there.
We needn’t trouble ourselves about distinguishing between the two because both “natural” Co2 and anthropogenic Co2 will have the same effect on the biosphere — it’s all pollution above a certain point after all, even if the thumb on the scale is very definitely human.
I don’t for a second belive that the “Iris effect” will overturn what is already known but can anyone here comment on the significance (or otherwise) of this paper, it claims to have found an 11yr cycle in cloud abundance that correlates to the sun’s 11yr sunspot cycle. Are there enough CR observatories to support their maps, I can only find five?
Liz Bockelman (#531): I found some lecture notes at Columbia that explain some of the theory compactly. This may be a help in getting started with some of the basics.
John,
Concerning your response (#515) to my post (#468):
The tenor of your post is exactly the reason why there can be no reasonable dialogue on Global Warming. As I said, I am not a scientist, but have honest questions about the weaknesses on both sides of this issue. However, rather than attempt to address the questions, you begin to “talk down” to me, and to chide me for not reading material on your “preferred list”. Most of my learning is done on the internet (before you malign the sources on the internet, I must remind you that RealClimate is ALSO on the internet), looking at both sides and also following the news. In addition, I read science periodicals such as you mentioned.
At this point, if you would like, you can cite all of the reasons why you are more qualified to dialogue on GW than I.
Todd
I have a few questions which require a clarification. Don’t take it the wrong way but I think your article is littered with ad hominem and ranting*. Never the less I have following comments and questions, which I hope you could answer:
I do not understand how the time scales are relevant here. Could elaborate a little.
That is quite damning. Could you give me the reference to the figure.
I do not think that these two statements are contradictory. Is it not possible that the sun can effect the climate even with out positive feedback?
Ok. I do not think that he’s argument is based on this assumption, which means that he could be still right even if he got this one wrong. Right?
—
Jari Mustonen
* I think following statements are not relevant and do not ,in fact, add to the credibility of your argument:
The document was not suppressed, but “suppressed”.
Alan Carling credentials are dubious.
He provides not evidence, but “evidence”.
Some of he’s references contains documents with dubious authors.
He thinks that if the problem exists, geo-engineering might be a solution.
More over, the document itself was quite large. I do not understand your hostility. If I were you I would be happy that someone is taking my field of expertize so seriously that he is willing to make such a document. I think he deserves the credit at least for the effort, if not for the content.
Todd whines: “The tenor of your post is exactly the reason why there can be no reasonable dialogue on Global Warming.”
And the tenor of your questioning (and the lack of any apparent learning) is a reason why there is no reasonable dialogue on Global Warming.
See, for example, RodB too: all this time and not one thing has changed for him. He still believes the same old crud and still makes the same old arguments.
“It seems to me Mr Reisman that there is something quite curious about treating anthropogenic Co2 as a pollutant and naturally occurring Co2 as not a pollutant.”
Think more along the lines of “a pollutant is something that is harmful and not wanted and is an avoidable consequence of what we want out of a process”.
Breathing out CO2 isn’t avoidable. It is a desired consequence of respiration.
Car exhausts of CO2 is avoidable and we want cars to move, not pump out CO2.
BPL says: “And in order to be a trend, the slope has to be significant, which means you need an adequate sample size.”
Not really true in the abstract sense. For the slope to be significant, it has to be greater than the uncertainty (which in cases of observational measurement, is the variance around the determination of the mean).
E.g. rolling a dice once doesn’t tell you whether the dice is fair or not. Neither does rolling it twice. Or, depending on your average, 10 times. That is, if you roll an average of 3.8 you may still have a loaded dice since it could be averaging 4. If you roll 10 times and get an average of 5.4 then the dice is almost definitely loaded.
Note: ALMOST.
Similarly for a fitting to a line: if the variation around that line is bigger than the slope, you can’t say it’s sloping one way or the other. So you MUST collect more data to say whether it is sloped upward or downward. If the slope is steep, you may be able to say it’s sloping UP (or down), but not say what the rate of change is, even though you have the same number of points.
And when forcasting and verifying, you need several values to say if it’s significant: a dice rolled 100 times that seems from that to be unbiased, rolling 2 sixes isn’t enough to say the dice has been changed.
Tamino (#473)
Just like John (#515) you disqualify me from asking honest questions because “after all, I’m not a climate scientist”. If you notice, the reference to a 10 year cooling trend was a QUESTION, not an opinion on my part. Parties on both sides of this issue have detailed graphs to support their theory. You say I haven’t the expertise to analyze the data, and you are correct on this point. Yet, that does not invalidate my question.
And your assertion that I’m a victim of propaganda is quite unfounded. There are MANY SCIENTISTS (including some who wrote parts of the IPCC report) who disagree with the conclusions reached by the GW proponents. Again, the dialogue must be open. Don’t try to shut up those who have divergent opinions.
Todd
[Response: Criticism of a bad conclusion is not the same as trying to ‘shut someone up’. – gavin]
#511 Jim Bullis
Wow, way to over-react there, Jim! As Tamino pointed out, I was not criticizing FFT itself, I was criticizing J.Bob for saying that using an overly complicated statistic was suspicious when he/she had already done the same thing by using FFT on the temperature record.
If it matters at all, I never found a use for FFT in my previous line of work (population ecology), although I did have occasion to use PCA on a time series analysis. From all the work I did with stats, it seems fair to say that FFT is considerably more complex than a linear regression. Perhaps you disagree, and you think that FFT is the simplest possible statistical test. Well, that would be your opinion, and you are welcome to it. I am not going to jump down your neck and call you a loon if that is your opinion, so perhaps you could extend that courtesy to others.
At the risk of being rude, if you don’t understand this, then you’re not really qualified to comment. The need to perform statistical analysis over adequate timescales is absolutely basic to any kind of trend analysis. It’s like the stock market, or currency exchange rates (both things that Carlin, an economist, should be familiar with). You can’t look at a short term drop or rise and say “oh, this shows that the long term trend of 8% growth per year in the stock market is now over for all time”. You can’t cherry-pick short segments of data in the climate record and make claims about trends, either.
It’s not rude, but simply accurate, to state that Carlin’s either statistically illiterate, or disingenuous.
Mark (575),
Honest questions met with Ad Hominem tactics. “Todd whines…”, “lack of any apparent learning…”, “same old crud…”.
The questions still remain, despite your predilection for attacking the person rather than dealing with the issues.
Todd
“I do not understand how the time scales are relevant here. Could elaborate a little.”
If any one data point is the sum of:
A) Baseline value
B) Increase over baseline
C) Random noise
and B >> C, you get a very noisy picture that is almost ignorant of B.
But, since A is constant and C adds or subtracts randomly then you can bring forth the value of B by adding lots of values together.
If you run for N years, you can tease out B when
B * sqrt(N) ~ C
If you have very few N, you will be unable to see B.
Rod B:
“From GISS, the mean annual anamoly for 1988 was +0.70 degrees C; the mean annual anomoly for 2008 was +0.55 degrees C. Over this latest “past” decade, is this rising or falling?”
Neither; all it means is that the mean annual global temperature anomaly in 1998 was higher than in 2008 according to GISS. It says nothing about temperature “falling or rising” over the latest decade or any other time period. To see that you have to look at a (statistically significant) trend over the period.
Why don’t we stop this meaningless game? Why don’t you provide some backup for your statement that started it all: “And yet, over the same decade, global atmospheric temperatures haven’t risen, and may even be falling”? Surely, it is more than just a comparison of two data points of a noisy time series?
Or may be you should just admit it was simply wrong and we all move on?
“I do not think that these two statements are contradictory. Is it not possible that the sun can effect the climate even with out [sic] positive feedback?”
The sun can’t effect the climate if it isn’t changing. The solar constant is pretty constant.
The sun cannot create a larger effect than it’s change without positive feedback. Sunspot activity makes a 0.1% change and that is much less than the change seen.
Liz Brockelman,
On the ‘CO2 is a pollutant’ thing: it’s all about the concentration.
Look at regulaton of other pollutants. These do rarely ban outright, but usually prescribe levels below which the concentration needs to stay in order to be unharmful.
Google for ‘oxygen poisoning’. Yes, you read that right, even oxygen can be poisonous. Above a certain concentration.
Second thing to remember is that the harmful effects of a pollutant don’t need to be direct. CO2 can do direct harm. IIRC, it is lethal to humans above 20%. At lower levels you can experience milder symptoms like drowsiness. Why treat the indirect harm that too much CO2 does through climate change any different? Harm is harm, the mechanism is irrelevant.
So, ask yourself: at what concentration does CO2 become harmful by altering the planet’s climate? Then the logical consequence is that any action that drives the CO2 above that limit is to be considered ‘pollution’.
“Ok. I do not think that he’s argument is based on this assumption, which means that he could be still right even if he got this one wrong. Right?”
Que?
If you’re wrong and his argument IS based on that assumption, then wrong.
If you’re right, then you may still be wrong.
And if they get that one wrong, they still got that wrong, whether their argument was based on that assumption or not.
Gavin,
Your response to 578:
“Criticism of a bad conclusion is not the same as trying to ’shut someone up’. – gavin]”
Isn’t that what’s happening in the scientific community right now. Climate scientists who are skeptical of the AGW advocates position are not even allowed to have their peer-reviewed papers entered into record in the debate.
[Response: I have no idea what you are referring to. What peer-reviewed paper do you think is being supressed, and what is the “record of the debate” in any case? If you are referring to Carlin’s stuff, that was just a cut and paste from a bunch of partisan websites – none of it was peer-reviewed. – gavin]
mark – “Are you saying that the hot engine is wanted out of a car and not all that moving about stuff?”
Without energy, you have no moving parts in your car. So energy is an important component of your car. I think it’s a moot point.
So I seem to have ruined the good name of the Fourier Convolution method. Here was the procedure I went through.
[edit – that’s enough of this. its off topic, and simply adding noise to this thread]
“Without energy, you have no moving parts in your car. So energy is an important component of your car. I think it’s a moot point.”
Energy is NOT heat. You even quoted me and missed it:
“Are you saying that the hot engine is wanted out of a car and not all that moving about stuff?”
E.g. maglev.
E.g. flywheel storage.
E.g. electric motors.
E.g. rail gun.
none of them require massive heat loss to produce the requested effect of movement.
re 581: “The questions still remain, despite your predilection for attacking the person rather than dealing with the issues.”
[edit – ok, that’s enough of this]
J.Bob, you have this Fourier discussion going several places:
http://www.google.com/search?q=“J.+Bob”+%2Btamino+%2Bfourier
Tamino’s, RC, easygate, and WTF, that I find; maybe others too?
I suggest Tamino’s, where it’s on topic and relevant.
[moderator: yes, this discussion needs to be taken offsite]
Todd, sure, “the questions remain” — they’re Frequently Asked Questions
The answers remain. “See the FAQ.”
See also: How To Ask Questions The Smart Way
Guide to teach how to ask technical questions in a way more likely to get a satisfactory answer.
http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
Merely repeating questions while ignoring answers already carefully put together just asks random people on blogs to retype them for you.
Why trust me, some guy on a blog, when you can look this up and get a clear, coherent, well-written answer long since checked for accuracy?
Rod B
Am I missing something? You’re not still mixing up climate and weather after all the time you’ve been hanging out in RC.
Does 10 years mean much in the climate trend?
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-warming-stopped
#566 Fran Barlow
Sorry, Sometimes if the site gets hit too many times at the same time it crashes. However, it restarts automatically 10 minutes after a crash.
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/co2-is-not-a-pollutant
Liz Bockelman wrote: “I am not very impressed by statistics and studies by scientists who are backing the science that mankind is responsible for climate change …”
Clearly, you are much more impressed by the pseudoscientific sophistry and outright lies that you have gleaned from ideologically and/or financially motivated denialists.
I admire the patience and compassion of those who have given of their time and knowledge in endeavoring to educate you with their responses. However, I expect you won’t be “very impressed” by that, since they are, after all, merely “scientists who are backing the science” rather than “conservative” media personalities.
#570 Fran Barlow
It would be more appropriate you address the issue with Merriam Webster. I did not write the definition.
1: the action of polluting especially by environmental contamination with man-made waste ; also : the condition of being polluted
#578 Todd
It;s not about general opinions based on other peoples opinions, it’s about well reasoned understanding/logical understanding of the empirical evidence.
I’m still baffled the 10 year cooling meme is still being bandied about here?
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/myths/global-warming-stopped
Remember the subject is climate change, and anthropogenic global warming, not any 10 year period.
Fran (556), your explanation of “climate change” and “global warming” is much more thorough and complete than mine. I was just looking for a quick answer. Good work.
Rod B wrote to Liz Bockelman: “I would agree that using ‘climate change’ instead of ‘global warming’ is a PR thing.”
Absolutely wrong.
Climate change is an effect of global warming. Global warming causes climate change.
Anthropogenic releases of previously sequestered carbon (prinicipally from burning fossil fuels) cause the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to increase.
The anthropogenic increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 causes the Earth system to retain more of the Sun’s energy.
The anthropogenic increase in the Earth system’s retention of solar energy causes the Earth system to get hotter: global warming.
The anthropogenic warming of the Earth system causes climate change.
I think the proper terminology should be “anthropogenic global warming and consequent climate change”.
Which can be shortened to either “global warming” or “climate change” depending on what part of the above-described chain of causation one is talking about.
The suggestion that the terminology is a matter of “PR”, implying that it is somehow dishonest and/or manipulative, is itself dishonest.