It’s not news that you’re in denial about the damage to human health and welfare caused by burning fossil fuels.

Most of the world, however, doesn’t share your delusional beliefs.

No matter how hard you wish, the reality of the physical world is what it is.

Your ignorance is not a superpower. And it’s not catching.

On the issue of whether C2 would be ignored by the MSM, I’ve mentioned several references in The Australian. Here’s a letter from today’s Australian Financial Review. The writer, Des Moore, is the AFR’s most-printed, with one or two letters each week. He’s also gets op ed columns in both papers.

Climate Change meetings may fade away (Letter published in AFR, 29 Nov 2011) (Square bracketed omitted by Ed)

In Review’s “Reprise on climate” (November 25) Mark Lawson outlines various possible scientific explanations of the failure of temperatures to increase over the last 13 years, and Marcus Priest’s “The global climate is now cooling” (November 26-27) offers possible explanations for the almost certain failure to reach a binding agreement on reducing CO2 emissions at the Durban climate change conference.

Yet there are many other possible explanations for that imminent failure and its likely continuance.

First, an increasing realisation that analyses by the sceptical scientists group have exposed errors or gross exaggerations by the consensus group. Future temperature predictions modelled by the consensus group have omitted or down played likely negative influences on temperatures, resulting in significant overstatements in such predictions.

Also, as temperatures have not risen for many more than 13 years over the past 100 even though concentrations of CO2 have increased over those years, this puts any causative relationship between the two in considerable doubt.

Second, the emergence of a second round of ClimateGate, involving the exposure of about 5000 exchanges within the consensus group of scientists, has confirmed evidence of manipulations of data and of exaggerated outcomes for media. [Also pertinent is the just published analysis by respected Canadian economist McKitrick revealing seriously deficient review processes by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change].

Third, more and more uncertainties have emerged about analyses by the consensus group. In addition to the wider realisation “uncertainty” was used over 1,000 times in the science section of the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, many analytical uncertainties are acknowledged in the recent IPCC report regarding extreme weather predictions and the analysis in the just published Pacific Climate Change Science Program report involving the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. The use by the latter report of no less than 18 different climate models is also hardly a vote of confidence in analyses.

These and other developments suggest the consensus group of scientists can no longer justify the claim that there is a need for urgent action to reduce CO2 emissions. In these circumstances international conferences on climate change may well fade away.

Des Moore, Institute for Private Enterprise, South Yarra Vic

Anteros,

Are you thinking of a particular emissions reduction plan? I believe the current end goal is to ‘stabilise’ CO2 concentrations in such a way that warming is limited to max. 2ºC. That entails a ~70% emissions reduction over the coming decades.

Regarding your calculation, I think it should use transient response rather than equilibrium sensitivity as a guide with such small numbers. A typical value for transient response is 1.6ºC = 2xCO2 = 3.7W/m^2.

forcing to achieve 0.1ºC = 3.7 / (1.6/0.1) = 0.23W/m^2

Concentration change from 400ppm to get 0.23W/m^2 forcing = 18ppm
by formula: 5.35 * ln(418 / 400) = 0.23W/m^2

Using 7.8 Gigatonnes of CO2 = 1ppm, 18ppm = 140 GtCO2

Using 0.43 metric tons CO2/barrel, 140 GtCO2 = 325 billion barrels

That agrees with your ballpark.

Ken, when setting up your experiment, you have to be careful to apply physics appropriately to make sense of results.

Pointing an IR source into space is a bit redundant. The Earth is already an excellent IR source itself, and it is measured in great detail by satellites. Some frequencies get from the surface out to space; this is called an “IR window” and is well known to astronomers as the only IR wavelengths they can use from the ground to view space. These are wavelengths where CO2 and H2O (and other greenhouse gases) are almost transparent. Other frequencies cannot get into space from the surface; these frequencies can be used to probe the atmosphere itself, and are the basis of atmospheric temperature measurements by satellites.

You can certainly probe where greenhouse gases in our atmosphere absorb and emit certain frequencies, and this is an experimental confirmation of the greenhouse effect. It’s confirmation in the usual scientific sense of the word, as measurement of a predicted consequence.

The consequences for surface temperature are elementary physics; and not in any doubt. You aren’t going to be able to get a straightforward experiment to measure the 33 degrees often quoted as the magnitude of Earth’s greenhouse effect. That’s simply the temperature difference between Earth’s surface, and what temperature would be required to radiate the energy direct to space from a surface that absorbs the same energy from the Sun as absorbed by the Earth. Trying to remove the effect of the atmosphere is not really something you can do in an experiment directly. Changing CO2 concentrations in a greenhouse, for example, really doesn’t make any difference because it is the greenhouse gases in 10 km of atmosphere above the greenhouse that matters. The thermal emission to space is mostly from cold upper reaches of the atmosphere; it is the fact that the emitter is so cold that makes it less effective.

+1

lolwot

“Significant warming in the coming decades” certainly did NOT occur over the past decade, even though (as you write) it may only have been deemed to be “very likely but not 100%”, since it turned out to be “0%”.

Let’s see what the next decade brings:

- Very slight cooling (as in the past decade)
- No warming at all
- Very slight warming (continuation of the long-term trend)
- Significant warming (as in the 1990s)

It’s really anyone’s guess, lolwot.

Max.

Rob-

WHT’s idea of applying various fossil fuel risk weighting factors has some very interesting implications. Notice the low AGW factor of only 15%? It is accommodating to your (possible) claim that warming benefits largely counter risks. On the other hand, if a re-assessment of FF AGW yielded 60% less risk than previously thought, mitigation only gets rolled back by 9%, not 60%. If AGW is a non-issue altogether, mitigation roll-back is only 15%.

What WHT is worried about (and it seems somewhat legitimate) is that a clean assessment might roll-back mitigation by 100%, instead of 15% (or such). However, without a confident assessment, mitigation will be blocked anyway and we are wasting time that could be spent erasing the uncertainty. Let the chips fall where they may.

What I am criticizing WHT for is that institutionalized noble cause corruption is still corruption.

bi2hs

Holly Stick

John Cook’s attempt to “prove” that natural cycles are not the primary root cause of the warming of the 1980s and 1990s is pretty dismal.

There very likely is an “anthropogenic component”.

But it is not very likely to be the most important component, since our planet’s climate has been changing forever, without any help from human CO2 until most recently.

BTW, just because we cannot explain all the mechanisms for natural climate changes does not mean that they do not exist. This is a logical fallacy used by many, including IPCC.

Max

@manacker

Even in it’s “diluted” form, the IAC report fingers the issues that McKitrick does. They differ sharply on what to do about it, but no AGW proponent has even acknowledged the issues that the IAC raises

Further, the IAC report listed out both the greywash problem ( >30% of referenced articles not peer-reviewed and not uniformally noted as such in direct contravention to the IPCC’s then-existing own rules) and the conflict-of-interest problem (essentially LA’s self-selecting their own papers). The IPCC’s reaction to these issues were: 1) to remove ALL identifying references to non-peered articles within forthcoming AR’s; 2) claim that imposing conflict-of-interest rules for the forthcoming AR5 would be “unfair” (Pauchari)

It is not the IAC recommendations that I am persisting with (as you’ve implied) but the simple listing of major problems that have been insouciantly ignored. NO AGW proponent has addressed these, including Freddie M here, and nor will they, yet the IAC seems not to be a target of argumentum ad hominen as I admit I had expected, but rather “death by silence” (which I agree I should have expected)

Understand – even the “soft” IAC observations and recommendations are simply silenced to death. It is this outright cowardice that I find nauseating – it’s akin to wading through the sewers

Paul S

Thank you indeed. I used some very rough estimates in my head, so I confess to being lucky.

I think many people of realistic/pragmatic persuasions feel that it is going to be nigh on impossible to restrain humanities consumption of oil [in its many incarnations], and probably the same is true – though to a lesser extent perhaps – with gas. Much hope therefore seems to rest on moving away from the big proportion of baseload that is fuelled by coal.

The numbers are still huge, but it is more medium-long term…

My pragmatic concerns remember that coal-to-liquid is economical at a premium of about $40-$50[??] a barrel which would be another problem to contend with. And secondly, as I think was mentioned down thread a day or so ago, it would take about 12,000 nuclear plants to replace all of the worlds power stations….

I’m then back to noticing that even with Kyoto and whatever other efforts the most alarmed of us have managed, Co2 emissions have increased by 50% since 1990.

I see this afternoon that Canada has decided that even Kyoto is too onerous!

A last thought – doesn’t 325,000,000,000 barrels of oil sound like an enormous amount todeliberately not use to achieve something effectively unmeasurable?

Just some musings…..

It’s pretty clear Kim is female and that Martha is both poor at deduction and perception along with be highly judgemental.

Martha’s would have made a hell of a puritan.

Hi M. carey -

My apologies for butting in…

First, I would caution you to avoid spiritual cretins when seeking religious advice (i.e. avoid theAmericanHeathen, atheists, etc.). You avoid mathematical cretins when seeking scientific advice, no?

Fair warning, I am a Bible cretin and nevertheless I am venturing my opinion. Years ago, my parents were exploring San Antonio and invited me to fly in and join them. We attended a Roman Catholic mass at a church built in the 1730′s in which the service was in three languages: English, Spanish and Latin. Even more unusual, every reference to God, was He/She, Father/Mother, etc. It was explicitly asserted that the persona of God was either asexual or multi-sexual. Perhaps that is the ‘us’ you are wondering about. (Remember, I am a Bible cretin.)

bi2hs

Oh, there’s plenty of evidence about funding from the oil industry. It’s all just against the cAGS supporters.

NW -

Gould’s a lightweight

Gould is the sole reason I switched from a double major in music and theology to electrical engineering and psychology. (My first biology class professor had an insane hatred of men so I fled to EE).

bi2hs
Stephen Jay Gould

I guess it would depend on what was said and the likelihood that it was a lie. If someone said that some well-documented episode of genocide had never happened and was a lie, then the moderator should say something or delete the post. If it is likely the statements were gross exaggerations then not so much. Lie is not the correct word to use about a future prediction though.

It is possible that some of the upward pressure in wheat prices is due to the Russian heat wave.

“Why is production down? Most of the decline in world wheat production, and about half of the total decline in grain production, has taken place in the former Soviet Union — mainly Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. And we know what that’s about: an incredible, unprecedented heat wave. ”

That is from http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/soaring-food-prices/

Maybe the Russian heat wave, which caused it to suspend grain exports to Egypt is more responsible for the food riots than the conversion of corn to ethanol.

I think the Lagi et al paper may have missed this because it was finished before the heat wave.
http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/08/russian-heat-affects-egypt/

Maybe global warming is already having political and social implications.

Read 60-70 of the worst (best?) examples of the leaked/hacked e-mails and see if you think they were just summarizing known science. They have a central message they really, really believe and are fanatical about not letting people speak against the consensus. Problems with FOI requests, peer review, not saying things in public that they say in private about uncertainties (and skepticism) regarding the science.

10-15 more years of conducting normal science and keeping an eye on climate is what is needed.

Nah.
He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He reads through all your e-mail
So be good for goodness sake.

Remember, students will be reading this! They don’t need incompetent grammar on top of the horse output that passes for public science education these days.

Excellent summary of the Emails:

…emails where they put each other down, where they conspire to get journal editors fired, where they conspire to keep inconvenient papers from seeing the light of day, where they conspire to delete emails, where they conspire (even with government officials) to avoid FOIA compliance, where they flippantly talk about buzzing around the world to exotic places (on the public dime), where they conspire to fudge results in particular directions – all of it is pretty disgusting, unprofessional, unscientific – ANTI-scientific, actually – and arrogant.

http://bit.ly/tPaojE

I know this is probably a little O. T., but I think it’s really important and so I thought I’d share it. You see the heir to a certain European throne just announced he is planning to build a speculative housing tract in the Galapagos Islands. Really! I mean, like, I’m not kidding! And, yes, I know the world real estate market in the toilet and all–I mean, you don’t have to bust a gut to tell me that! Well, naturally, this news all seemed a little weird, so I did a little surfing on the net and found a few dots and then some more and finally got ‘em all connected up and you’re not gonna believe the real story on this deal.

Well, it seems that there’s this big plan called the “New World Order” or, as you might see references to it in certain e-mails, “The Cause”. And then there’s this really far-out Mayan dude named Nostradamus (the guy is like totally mind-blowing–he even foresaw the rise of Robert on this very blog), who way back in 2012 B. C., predicted, like, a total downer called “The Apocalypse” where everyone, like, dies horribly due to a real drag deal called “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming” (all you need to know is the stuff is, like, a really, really bad-trip).

So, like, this housing project in the Galapagos is, like, actually where a very few special members of the elite, called philosopher-kings/queens, with blood-lines going all the way back to whore of Babylon and Imhotep and everything, are, like, gonna to ride out the end times. Then, when the coast is clear they’re gonna come back to take over the world and make our few surviving, heat-resistant, seriously-devolved morlock-like descendents into a food source for their carnivorous pets and polar bears.

Now the so-called “big-secret” is that these kings/queens are just gonna devote their time in the Galapagos to some harmless, un-inhibited toe-nibbling and tampon-themed, re-incarnation, dirty-talk fantasies with the guys like all dressed up in their plaid skirts and bobby-socks and all. And since the Galapagos islands are so remote, for once in their lives, the royals can supposedly enjoy their little innocent pleasures without seeing them in the next-day’s headlines of some creepy, Robert Murdoch tabloid. But don’t believe that limited hang-out cover-story!

The true facts are that these so-called philosopher kings/queens are actually shape-shifting lizards! I’m not kidding! And their real plan, when they re-locate to the Galapagos, is to drop all that burdensome pretense of looking like people and just assume normal lizard-form full time. And now the reason why the Galapagos was chosen becomes clear. Without spelling out the obvious, let’s just say, while we all perish horribly, the royals are looking forward to some real quality time chasing all that fetching iguana tail that runs loose on the islands.