I couldn’t have said it better my self… so I won’t.
H/T to R. de Haan for:
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/04/07/climate-models-go-cold/
Wherein you will find an extraordinary and very easy to read article that basically sums it up as things stand today. The jig is up, but the less bright players are still trying to get in one more hand of Liar’s Poker before the police haul them away. Yet it’s clear to everyone else at the table that their bid is way too high and they are having a Jump The Shark moment.
Carbon warming too minor to be worth worrying about
By David Evans
The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.
Let’s set a few things straight.
The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.
Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.
Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.
The disagreement comes about what happens next.
The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.
This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.
That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.
This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.
At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.
There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.
But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. It is no surprise that their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the U.S. Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.
They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade — yet they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected.” These people are not scientists. They overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they conceal the truth.
One way they conceal is in the way they measure temperature.
The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source.
Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results?
The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.
We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how exciting for the political class!
Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate 10-fold — in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!
Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.
Financial Post
David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia, on March 23.
I’ve quoted the whole article here, but please do “hit the link” and give them a “hit count” for it. As I’m non-commercial and this is for educational purposes, I’m pretty sure I’m within “fair use” doctrine, but frankly, they wrote the article and deserve the ad bucks for the “click”. Posting an article like that deserves some reward.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/04/07/climate-models-go-cold/
Musings from the Chiefio 
Thank you, thank you, E. M., for the link to the beautifully written comment on the tail end of the gravy train.
I too have been, and will remain, an environmentalist.
But I am furious with the long string of politicians – both left and right – who have used the environmental movement to further a tyrannical world government.
Again, thanks for this blog.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
Per Le Chatelier; the atmosphere is a gas equilibrium system wherein an increase in CO2 reduces the amount of water vapor it can carry and it comes out as precipitation. Water is seven times better at adsorbing IR energy and with 80 times as many molecules as CO2 is responsible for 99.8% of all atmospheric heating.
Between 1930 and 1970 we increased the amount of CO2 in air gearing up for, fighting WWII, burning down Europe and Japan. During that time Earth’s average temperature did not rise and declined in some years, again per Le Chatelier.
Jim Hansen and his gang got is exactly upside-down, but CO2 is only responsible for 0.2% of the heating effect at 380 ppm so it is of no real consequence in either case, but:
Where carbon combustion is responsible for 80% of all our energy the control and taxing of carbon will give the elected ruling class more power than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD and that means it will happen as we are a “democracy” and every blithering idiot has as much to say about what happens as those who know.
My new patent 7,855,061 will make me a very rich man when this happens and I will nurse my broken heart for science at the bank.
For analysis, science and humor see The Two Minute Conservative at http://adrianvance.blogspot.com Now on Kindle.
This is indeed a pretty good article. However, the following statement:
“There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.”
is probably not true. There is in fact plenty of evidence that the earth’s climate is indeed unstable, and probably bistable, swinging between “snowball earth” and “tropical earth.” Chaos theory shows that such swings are entirely consistent with basic physics; not every feedback is negative, nor does every positive feedback lead to runaway change.
David Evans makes other errors too, but this is the most serious. And Adrian Vance is dead wrong about the application of Le Chatelier’s principle.
I was curious, so I did a bit of googling…
I recalled reading somewhere, maybe even here, a comment from David Evans indicating he is married to Jo Nova. Looks to be so, as evidenced at the following site:
http://www.sciencespeak.com/
David has a copy of this speech in PDF form at http://www.sciencespeak.com/rally.pdf
@Oliver K. Manuel:
You are most welcome. BTW, if you could take a moment to look at the “Smith Cell” posting (especially in the comments) and tell me if there is any horribly wrong bit in the speculation about H- and how it might end up absorbed into a nucleus I’d appreciate it. (I figure if anyone here knows how N, e-, and P interact it would be you ;-)
I know it’s very rough, highly speculative, and probably wrong; but it would be interesting to know if there is even a “snowballs chance” of something like that happening. (You only need one in a billion if you have a few trillion atoms…)
@Adrian Vance:
What is the patent for? What does it “do”?
Per the air: I’m not so sure it is in equilibrium. I think it may be in bounded disequlibrium and driven by external modulators. In that context, Le Chatlier’s principle does not apply so much…
@Serioso:
To me, it looks like we are in a stochastic resonance type of situation. It “sort of repeats” but with a stochastic element. That’s short term. Longer term, it looks like a system bounded on one end by ice, on the other by water. So we have “semi-steady” states at each end, but can “crash” to either end from the other under external changes.
We get trapped in ice when the land is in the right places (as now) only poking up to warm under very exacting conditions of orbit and sun.
With the land in other positions, we get trapped in hot and tropical, only cooling a little (but not having a ‘runaway greenhouse’… just the cold bits stop being cold…)
In between, we can swing between those poles, but not cross them.
To that end, if David is talking about “this decade” he is likely correct. If talking about “this epoch”, then not. As most “climate scientists” talk about 30 years or less, I suspect he’s talking about that short scale too. At that time scale, things do tend toward “dynamic equilibrium” about a mean value (though with longer term oscillations).
So IMHO, you are both right. It just depends on the time scale. (Like a car on cruise control. For a 2 minute period, it is stable and returns to equilibrium. Over a day, well, eventually you run out of gas…)
In very short time periods, you can talk about equilibrium shifts. Longer term, not so much…. so until we know what time period is being discussed it’s hard to say if Le Chatlier has a contribution, as his principle is restricted to systems in equilibrium.
Sir: Our atmosphere is a gas equilibrium because water vapor can precipitate and gravity is a better bottle than a glass vessel with a cork in it.
I do not understand what you mean by a “stochastic resonance.” Sounds like smoke to me. Do you have any citations? I recommend you read the Wikipiedia reference on Henri Le Chatelier.
What in the world is, “a system bounded on one end by ice, on the other by water. So we have “semi-steady” states at each end, but can “crash” to either end from the other under external changes.”
Please, Adrian Vance
“One can only wonder what would be the impact of a similar freeze on the modern windmills”…
We already know that:
http://notrickszone.com/2011/06/01/alternative-energy-wind-power/
“During the last few cold winters in the U. K. wind power generation dropped to very low levels during the coldest days. This happens everywhere. Wind power cannot be depended on to supply heating electricity when it is most needed. It must be remembered that all heating systems require some electricity to move the heat within the system.”
@Adrian Vance:
I’m well familiar with M. Le Chatelier and his principle. (LOTS of chemistry…)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance
The basic idea is that some systems have an overly large response to a ‘bit of noise’. It is used in some kinds of radio detectors to good effect.
All I’m saying is that there’s a LOT more going on in the atmosphere than a bottle of gas, so things will wander well away from “equilibrium” for long chunks of time and space.
Per the “ice bound” vs “water bound”:
At one extreme of geologic time, we have “the ice planet”. Things freeze up and we become fairly stable. Temps wander a little, but not much. At the other end (like during the carboniferous) we are ‘the water planet’ and ice just can’t get a grip on the poles. So things are limited by water evaporation / condensation dumping huge energy to the sky.
In between, like now, we are “meta stable”. We have interglacials, when things are “just so” but even than can have sudden cold plunges (vis LIA, Younger Dryas, Iron Age Cold Period, et. al) and we can have Ice Ages with sudden warming runs (look at the history of any galcial and you find sporadic ‘runs to warm’ for a short period of time).
So, to me, the physics look “stable” in either Ice Planet or Carboniferous modes (which likely depend on where the land is on the surface) and suffering from “stochastic resonance” with the land as it is now. (That is, we can swap from Glacial to Interglacial depending on some large “noise” in the system and we can swap from LIA to MWP based on small “noise”. For “noise” you can read any / all of: Volcanos, Solar events, planets moving, snow / albedo changes, Jet Stream wander, PDO/AMO/AO, etc.).
We are constantly “out of equilibrium” as various bits of “noise” stir the soup…
Now, peg us in a Carboniferous and wobble the solar output a bit, not much happens other than some more / less rain (in keeping with Le Chatelier), or wobble CO2 and watch rain wobble…
Hopefully that is more clear.
The nub of it is that:
1) I think you are correct in the limit cases of geologic state where we are in a stable state.
2) I think Serioso is partly right “now” when we are in a metastable state with stochastic resonance impacts.
3) In very short time periods “now” you will also be right. (Basically, for small spans of time and space the “stochastic” parts do not have time to act). For example, take Brazil. Add CO2, get more rain. But take a 100 year view of the North Atlantic and the AMO is going to matter far more than any hypothetical equilibrium as all those solar, volcanic, etc. random bits interact with the ocean resonances…
So we will get a 60 (ish) year cycle from the PDO even with steady increase of CO2. We will ge a LOT more rain “now” from the PDO swap than we ever got from the rising CO2 from 1960 – 1990. The CO2 effect is swamped on that scale as the system is not in equilibrium on that scale… it is in stochastic resonance.
And while it may sound like “smoke”, it is a very well established bit of science. A very useful concept. Simply web search “stochastic resonance” and you will find a may references.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Stochastic_resonance
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StochasticResonance.html
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/StochasticResonance/
It’s one of those “signals int” things… where sometimes you can pull “signal” out of “mush” by adding a bit of noise at just the right place…
http://iopscience.iop.org/0034-4885/67/1/R02
etc. etc. etc.
Taking EPA to court
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2011/06/08/taking-the-epa-to-court/
They won’t give up, they won’t give up. They will try to put the carbon shackles on humanity even if it will take their last breath to get the job done…
Unlimited power and control, any totalitarian’s wet dream.
Lieberman thinks Congress can control weather
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/11386/Sen-Lieberman-believes-Congress-can-control-weather-The-run-of-extreme-weather-is-a-real-warning-to-us–Weve-got-to-do-something-about-this-ndash-Tornadoes-to-spur-passage-of-climate-bill
Sea level rise, melting ice caps and drowning polar bears have been swapped for Fukashima, tsunami’s and tornado’s.
Both the arguments and the “Agenda” are insane.
Our Congress has become a mental institution and our political elite are in desperate need of mental treatment.
To: E.M. Smith: Why bother with a “CYA,” Cover Your Ass, concept like “stochastic resonance” when Le Chatelier explains it so well? While the principle is most commonly used in solution chemistry it works equally well with gases.
The period between 1930 and 1970 has given the Anthropogenic Global Warming, AGW, gang fits since they came out from under their rocks in the summer of 1988. Le Chatelier explains it very well when seen in the light of the absorption curves, the energy/wavelength relationship and atmospheric analysis.
You do not have to stray from the basic physics of the atmosphere to explain it and put the AGW people away.
You can read all about my most recent patent at http://FuelFarm.i8.com It is written for anyone who made it through junior high school General Science.
Only the blog sphere provides opposition
Alan Caruba: EPA protecting you into an early grave
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2011/06/epa-protecting-you-into-early-grave.html
@ ADRIAN VANCE
“Since they came out from under their rocks in the summer of 1988”
Just for the record:
It was January 22, 1986 to be exact.
That’s the date when the AGW scare received it’s lick off press conference.
Just another evil and ill spirited doctrine “Made in Germany”.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/01/19/dr-wolgang-thune-slams-climate-policy-efforts-to-steer-climate-are-utopian-pipe-dreams/
@Adrian Vance:
Ah, yes, the Butanol patent. Always liked that “bit of work”… (And I think it’s the right solution, too…)
Stochastic Resonances is not a CYA concept. It is a very useful tool for understanding a variety of things that don’t make sense otherwise. (Not the least of which is why putting a little ‘noise’ feedback into a regenerative reciever often gave a better signal…)
It is thought to be the reason for the 100,000 year interglacial cycle that can’t quite make it otherwise…
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+signal+value+of+noise%3a+adding+the+right+kind+can+amplify+a+weak…-a010447878
So, you see, it’s a rather very useful and real world usable concept.
Somewhere I have an old tube circuit for a detector that had a little “noise injector” to make it work better… Long before the concept had a name, it was in use. IIRC we built one of these in my Radio Class in high school back about 1968 or so.
Given that weather and climate are just full of semi-stable quasi-oscilating systems in a sea of noise, I’d find it amazing if there were not stochasitc resonance effects.
BTW, Le Chatelier does not explain why rainfall decreases up to the PDO flip, then increases after it. CO2 was increasing the whole time… Yes, it’s a nice tool, and I think it does apply in places and times where you can say the system is more or less in equilibrium (such as Brazil during a season); but it’s pretty clear that on the 100,000 year scale we are not “at equilibrium” and that at the 60 year scale we have an oscillator (i.e. not equilibrium either) and that at the it’s best for explaining such things as rising air making clouds.
http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/equilibria/lechatelier.html
Please note that phrase “dynamic equilibrium”. As The Sun Changes and The Planets orbits Change and The Albedo Changes and The Volcanism Changes and….
We are not in a state of “dynamic equilibrium”. We are in at best a meta-stable state of dyanamic disequilibrium. See cosmic rays and clouds for but one example of why…
So in very short time scales where you can ignore those stochastic influences, yes, Le Chatelier can provide insight (but not explanation…). For longer term time scales you need other tools too for gathering clues…
Or, put VERY short: We’ve flooding all over the world right now NOT due to some CO2 level change but due to other atmospheric changes as a result of the PDO flip and / or Solar Cycle shift (neither one of which is well understood) and none of it explained by Le Chateliar… (otherswise you must explain how nearly identical CO2 levels in 2000 did NOT cause such water wringing from the skies…)
1. @Oliver K. Manuel (8 June 2011 at 11:27 am)
I do not know why government science has been so seriously compromised for about four decades, but I suspect that a few of the world’s most powerful world leaders like Chairman Mao and Henry Kissinger realized there would be no survivors to a full-scale exchange of nuclear weapons.
Unless nationalism and national boundaries were eliminated, world leaders themselves might literally “die for their countries.”
That may be why Henry Kissinger persuaded Richard Nixon to visit Chairman Mao in China in 1972. See the opera, “Nixon in China,” recently shown on government TV stations – PBS.
2. @ E.M.Smith (8 June 2011 at 6:14 pm)
I watched some of the videos.
Knowing – from my own research – that hugh sums of public funds have been squandered over the past four decades to promote misleading information** about:
a.) The Sun’s origin,
b.) The Sun’s composition,
c.) The Sun’s source of energy, and
d.) The Sun’s influence on Earth’s atmosphere
I would rank:
The probable validity of CO2-induced global warming (P-AGW), against
The probable validity of excess heat coming from palladium/hydrogen reactions (P-Pd/H)
(P-Pd/H) >> (P-AGW)
Despite the fact that the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, the US National Academy of Sciences, the UK’s Royal Society, world leaders, Al Gore and an army of government-funded scientists would rank
(P-AGW) >> (P-Pd/H)
**As Eisenhower warned that government science might be corrupted in his 17 Jan 1961 farewell address to the nation (See video below).
Directlyrelated to the “Naked Emperor” article:
Science is not being corrupted, scientists are
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/07/science-is-not-being-corrupted-—-scientists-are/#more-41286
Climate isn’t up for debate
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/07/climate-isnt-up-for-debate/
Another excellent article from the Financial Post
For what it’s worth, a thought (or 3) –
In my youth I went and caught a bus to the subway, got on the subway to Center City, got off at City Hall, went to the top of City Hall and saw Willy Penn’s statue up close and personal, surveyed the city, made my way down, and headed for the Art Museum. Years before Rocky did it, I assended the steps, turned around and marveled at what time and man had wraught upon the landscape since colonial days. I don’t recall raising my arms and jumping up and down in victory. I then turned and entered the Museum. It was the first time I’d been in such a building dedicated to ‘art’. I determined I’d see everything. I recall seeing a movie about some artist not too long before, some European guy who had cut off his own ear. I thought I could paint as well as he could and had gotten into the ‘oil’ thing some months before. Anyway, long story short, hours later I exited the Museum. I had the worst pounding headache I’d ever had in my life. Really!
The more you focus on something the less you really see and the harder it is to focus on anything at all and if you don’t have something else to take your eyes and mind off that one something the more likely you are to get a headache, and give up, and get depressed, and not paint for a while.
It’s usually better to stand on the top of a tall building, with the wind in your face, and survey all around you for a few minutes, than to go inside and stare for hours at minute details (and a million of them to boot).
The reason life was so much better fourty something years ago is difficult to nail down, but I don’t recall sitting in front of a TV for hours on end, and thinking for long about anything or anyone. It seems the more we concentrate the less we really see, and appreciate, and the worse our headache gets.
(The Only folks who can see the Emperor’s New Clothes can’t see anything else.)
From the article:
“…the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.”
The author didn’t elaborate here; but what assures us “mile global cooling”. With a quite sun, it may be drastic global cooling.
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