Feb
It’s hot! It’s new! It’s not C02!
Based upon this UK Telegraph article I’d say this will be the new AGW Battle Cry: The Methane Time Bomb, aka the Al Queda of Climate.
Atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas, which is as much as 60 times more potent than carbon dioxide, appear to have risen significantly for the past three years running, scientists say.
To bastardize a quote from an old Martha and the Vandellas song: “It’s like an AGW heatwave burning in my heart….I can’t keep from crying….Tearing me apart!”
More melting of the Arctic ice caused by accelerating warming would release further gases, setting off a “feedback” mechanism which could send climate change spinning out of control.
I have to ask what warming, since it’s been cooling the past 15 years, but they can’t admit it, so now they have to have a conference:
The new figures will be disclosed this morning at the start of a two-day conference on greenhouse gases at the Royal Society in London. Professor Euan Nisbet, of Royal Holloway College of the University of London, and Dr Ed Dlugokencky of the Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder Colorado, will set out their findings in a presentation on “Global atmospheric methane in 2010: budget, changes and dangers
I wonder if those three key words can be decoded? I’ll take a shot at imagining what they might be saying…
Budget = How much money can we steal with this scam?
Answer: This could be big Pachauri!! We can start a Cap and Trade scheme on cow farts!!! We will be rich beyond our wildest dreams!!! Quick..call Al and give him the good news!
Changes = How are we going to get everyone off believing AGW is caused by Co2 and on to believing AGW is caused by methane?
Answer: Experts have long feared that vast amounts of the natural gas trapped in the frozen tundra of the Arctic could be unlocked as the permafrost is melted by rising temperatures, triggering a “methane time bomb” that could cause temperatures to soar.” That’s the ticket! A methane time bomb!! We can even get people excited about the Polar Bears dying and Penguins being replaced by Jellyfish! We can even blame Osama bin Laden and George Bush!
Dangers = What are we going to do if we get caught with our pants down this time?
Answer: We will hedge our bets by noting that…”It may just be a couple of years of high growth, and it may drop back to what it was. But there is a concern that things are beginning to change towards renewed growth from feedbacks.” This time if we screwed up we can use this to weasel out of it!
So get ready for the continuing soap opera called, As the World Burns! starring Al Gore and the AGW Scammer Troupe. Don’t forget to set your DVR, you won’t want to miss one episode!
Possibly related posts:
Unfortunately for the alarmists, once the simple maths behind this story is exposed, it’ll die a quick death.
According to the article, the increase in CH4 between 2008 and 2009 was 7 parts per billion. Assuming that’s not a typo, compare with the increase for CO2 during the same year: 1.5 parts per *million*, ie around 214 times more CO2 than CH4.
Even allowing for what seems to be an overstated greenhouse factor of 60 times that of CO2, the net effect of the increase in CH4 for that year is 60/214 = 0.28 that of the CO2.
I don’t find that “alarming”
Did you watch the last Star Trek Movie?
They had this long cable that hung from the space ship all the way down to the planet. They drilled a hole and then they dropped this red stuff into the hole and blew the whole planet up, really cool!
So we just do similiar, only we drop a pipe down to the Earth and we just pump off excess methane, CO2, or the ‘offending gas of the week’ into outter space!
Go ahead laugh, but you have to admit, this idea makes a much sense as anything Al Gore and his friends have ever said or done.
When you see that Michael Mann uses this idea as a grant proposal.. you’ll know it was posted here first!
“I have to ask what warming, since it’s been cooling the past 15 years, but they can’t admit it, so now they have to have a conference:”
We don’t admit it because it isn’t true. According to the Microwave Sounding Unit (satellite) data, the average temperature anomaly for 1994 was -.012 degrees C. The average for 2009 was .261 degrees C. Looks like it’s going up to me. The data can be found here:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Star Trek is where Dick gets his information. I think he talks to Mr. Spock about it, since he’s so logical.
Dick Morris wrote, “According to the Microwave Sounding Unit (satellite) data, the average temperature anomaly for 1994 was -.012 degrees C. The average for 2009 was .261 degrees C. Looks like it’s going up to me.”
Your reasoning is fallacious as you have employed an end point fallacy. If you start with the right year and end with the right year you can torture the data to get whatever results you want. The fact is that it was warmer in the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and several degrees warmer than the present during the Holocene Maximum which occurred during the Bronze Age and yet CO2 levels were higher than they are today. The Polar Bears survived and people prospered during theses warmer times. We have warmed approximately .7 degrees (giving the IPCC the benefit of the doubt) since the planet exited the Little Ice Age. Thank God id did warm as the little ice age was thew coldest the planet has been since the Holocene interglacial began with the possible exception of the Younger Dryas.
If the world wasn’t harmed by increased methane when the world was several degrees warmer than today (Holocene Maximum) it would be illogical to believe that todays temperatures will cause a catastrophe from an increased amount of methane in the atmosphere.
“Your reasoning is fallacious as you have employed an end point fallacy.”
I did not select the end points – they were given in the article.
Dick:
You may be an ornery so-and-so, and whether or not your quantum theories are correct, we all hope that you quickly recover. In the meantime, take solace from the bigger picture on climate. (I say “bigger”, because it ain’t the biggest.) After all, it takes something like 250 million years for the solar system to make one revolution around the milky way, and to establish a trend for that trip we’d need to first have data for several revolutions.
No need to bicker about the past couple of decades. In the meantime, check in at the website below for the biggest picture available so far:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/
Dick:
Phil Jones, of CRU fame, has admitted that the past 15 years there’s been no statiscally significant change in temperature.
He’s also admitted that the whole game has changed if the MWP is real. This is one of the esteemed members of the Church of AGW !
and, all this without any waterboarding.
Besides, about 300 years ago the little ice age bottomed out. It ain’t exactly unnatural to have a bounce off that bottom, so 300 follow-up years of warming is not unusual in such a scenario, And we’re still not at MWP level.
Yeah, Dick, but everyone KNOWS that the data is skewed because the data points were taken from hot air emanations such as heating ducts, urban sidewalks in the summer, Al Gore, etc.!
It hasn’t actually been cooling for the past 15 years. 2009 was warmer than 1995 for one thing. But don’t let facts get in the way of your argument.
And there’s nothing new about methane feedback. At least as early as 1987 the issue was being addressed. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1988/GB002i003p00221.shtml
So I don’t see why you’re pretending like its some recent revelation.
The UK is pretty sure they’ve discovered oil offshore to the Falkland Islands. Considering that this is the demon that is supposedly responsible for the production of the new Satan – CO2, have we put an embargo around it ? Have we refused to touch it for all the damage it’ll do ?
Not on your Nelly. We preach to the world the evils of fossil fuels, but when we get some of our own, boy does our attitude change.
As regards the more recent picture Dominic, if you consider that it’s been warming, then you’re in a boat on your own. Even the High Temple of Warmism – the UEA CRU (currently under official investigation), has conceded that it’s been cooling recently.
The eco-zealots won’t be happy.
I recall a video clip about Brazilian rain forests, a Brazilian (green) with a very long face was saying something to the effect “…oh dear we’ve just discovered 100 million barrels of oil off the Atlantic coast, what is to become of us…?”
The poor souls, I really feel for them!
No, the UEA CRU has not stated its been cooling in the past 15 years. Either you made that up or your parroting another anti-sciencer.
Dominic: The CRU may not have confessed to anything, but Phil Jones, in charge is quoted in Newsmax and elsewhere :
Jones also admits that the MWP “may” be real !
Insider Report from Newsmax.com
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Global Warming Scientist Admits Doubts
Proponents of man-made global warming have suffered a serious blow as leading climate change scientist Phil Jones now acknowledges that the earth may have been warmer in medieval times than now.
Jones also conceded in an interview with the BBC that during the past 15 years there has been no “statistically significant” warming.
“The admissions will be seized on by skeptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely made-made,” Britain‘s Daily Mail observed.
Jones recently stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in Britain after leaked e-mails indicated that scientists there were manipulating data to strengthen the argument for man-made global warming.
The data have been used to support efforts by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to urge governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions and to produce the “hockey stick graph” that shows temperatures relatively stable for centuries before rising sharply in recent decades.
Critics of global warming crusaders believe there is evidence that the world was warmer than today between about 800 and 1300 A.D., during the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP), due to evidence of high temperatures in northern countries.
“There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not,” Jones said in the interview.
“The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic, and Europe and parts of Asia.
“For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.
“Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th century warmth would not be unprecedented.”
Marc Sheppard, environment editor of American Thinker, declares: “As the entire anthropogenic global warming theory is predicated on correlation with rising CO2 levels, this first-such confession from an IPCC senior scientist is nothing short of earth-shattering.”
He also writes: “Indeed, we know that, during the MWP, ice-free seas allowed the Vikings to settle a then comfortably warm Greenland, where colonies flourished for many centuries. Modern archaeologists digging through [Greenland’s] permafrost have uncovered bones and artifacts attesting to the villages established there.”
Despite his concession that there has been no “statistically significant” warming over the past 15 years, Jones still maintains that he is “100 percent confident” the climate has warmed and said “there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”
These people will do anything to take controle of our lives…this switch to methane is not that big of a shocker to me.
…if they breath tax them…if they fart tax them…if they are born with three nipples tax them!!! Anything for our money!
That’s the only solution they ever have TAX,TAX,TAX!
They are so quick to say we are to blame and have no proof, but make us pay for it. But when they are exsposed that it is a scam (and that has been proven) and has cost the people BILLION’S of dollars, nothing is done!
Methane feedback has been known about in the literature since at least 1987.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1988/GB002i003p00221.shtml
Its not a “switch”.
…by “switch” I mean that they say our cars and trucks and way of life is causing all the co2 and will kill us…I’m sure they new about methane back in 1987 but that’s not what was coming out of our tailpipes, so they never really thought about taxing or controling us on it…but now look.
The cat’s out of the bag…time to get a new cat!
Here we go again. Round 2. This time people are wising up. Whatever the alarmists put forth will be laughed at.
Jack, methane feeback is nothing new. Its been in the literature since at least 1987. John D. Nier just wants you to think its a new idea.
See this article:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/1988/GB002i003p00221.shtml
was written in 1987 and suggests that melting ice could trigger a methane feedback. So its no new idea.
The problem is Dominic that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and any honest climate scientist is in the same boat.
I have a post on methane on the way, with some other interesting issues to comment on. As well as debunking many of the simplistic claims made by AGW supporters they all end up saying that the CO2/CH4 carbon cycle isn’t fully understood.
Did you know that methane blooms have been detected over forests ? That’s an obvious one that a fool could have foreseen (but not Al Gore it seems). So is your solution to chop down all the forests ?
As for wetlands – did you know that though they act as carbon sinks they also give off CH4 ? – the big demon of AGW, and that most UK wind turbines are being situated on peat lands releasing CO2 ?
What’s your solution ? go out and collect CO2 in a sieve. The only part of the AGW theory that matches, is that a silly theory deserves a silly solution.
“…AGW supporters they all end up saying that the CO2/CH4 carbon cycle isn’t fully understood.”
Nothing is fully understood. General relativity isn’t fully understood but you don’t mind using a GPS unit that relies on its laws, do you?
Dominic:
See my entry below (near the end). Methane is indeed a trace gas. Even at 20X CO2 in effectiveness, it’s still insignificant.
That dog don’t hunt.
I think it’s too many elk . I saw ~ 17 grazing across the road the other day . Let’s get out there and empty those forests of all those stinking animals .
The temperature has rocketed perhaps 0.3% in an century . Be afraid ; be very afraid .
“The temperature has rocketed perhaps 0.3% in an century”
What does that even mean?
Dominic:
As I recall, even the IPCC report showed a temperature increase of about .5 deg C over the past century. And if you look into the process of how surface station temperature data is obtained and processed (even in the best of circumstances) it’s pretty obvious that the errors (or fudges) introduced may well overwhelm the desired result. One of the websites that has done a lot of investigation on this is WhatsUpWithThat?
But, in any event, our bounce off the bottom of the “little ice age” (about 300 years ago) is natural, following a 500 year cool period, and in any warming period the warmest temperatures will invariably occur at the current time. That is, until the warming period tops out and starts cooling.
Does Dominic beleive everything the CRU repported?
I haven’t read all of their reports. Have you?
Dominic:
You may want to start out by reading Costella’s “ClimateGate” paper, among many other places.
Dominic, I’ve read enough to be Skeptical.
Please direct me to some of the papers you’ve read then.
Dominic:
Fred Singer is PhD climatologist, professor emeritus at UVa, and affiliated (as I understand) now with George Mason University.
http://www.examiner.com/x-33398-LA-Public-Policy-Examiner~y2009m12d29-Climate-Change-101-Is-the-globe-warming
Dominic:
Here’s a few more things to get you started…
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/02/sea-level-expert-sea-is-not-rising.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/sea-level-geoscience-retract-siddall
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/11/new-paper-in-science-sea-level-81000-years-ago-1-meter-higher-while-co2-was-lower/
http://www.climategate.com/12-more-glaciers-that-havent-heard-the-news-about-global-warming
Dominic,
Either you’re being purposely obtuse or you’re the most uninformed, misinformed person I’ve been exposed to in a very long time! Read up or shut up for you sound very ignorant and (fortunately) aren’t helping the AGW scam.
That is a truly bizarre comment. You didn’t even bother to read my post before replying to it. If you had, and had followed the links, you would have seen that the data I was using came from the Microwave Sounding Units on NOAA weather satellites. At first I thought you were just being facetious, but now I see that you are just as foolish as you appeared to be.
Dominic, Do you believe all that you have read that the CRU published?
You’ve got a really short term memory. I already told you, I HAVEN’T READ ALL OF THEIR REPORTS. See 4 posts above.
But you have read some of them. I was wondering which ones.
Methane. We will tax the beejeebers out of China.
The largest source of Methane CH4 is a rice paddy. Rice paddys crank it out. We must shut them down or like tobacco, tax till it hurts.
Hey, maybe the methane release during the MWP is why that period got as warm and lasted as long as it did. Now I won’t be as worried about the oncoming ice age (which seems to be a bit overdue!).
“60 times more potent than carbon dioxide?” Wow, it was just about a week ago that I read it was 20x more powerful. And prior to that, the highest I ever heard was 27x.
Even the EPA retards say it’s “over 20 times more effective”, you know if they thought they could BS it was over 30 or 40 or 60 times more effective and get away with it they would have.
http://epa.gov/methane/
Are there any reliable reports on what methane’s level (ppmv) is in the atmosphere, and whether and how much it’s recently increased?
Here’s one (1) answer to my own question, picked off the internet. Feel free to do your own independent research
“Since 1750, global average atmospheric concentrations of methane have increased by 150 percent from approximately 700 to 1,745 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) in 1998 (IPCC, 2001b) Exit EPA. Over the past decade, although methane concentrations have continued to increase, the overall rate of methane growth has slowed. In the late 1970s, the growth rate was approximately 20 ppbv per year. In the 1980s, growth slowed to 9-13 ppbv per year. The period of 1990 to 1998 saw variable growth of between 0 and 13 ppbv per year (IPCC, 2001b) Exit EPA”
So, check my arithmetic:
1745 ppb is 1.7ppm whereas CO2 is about 400ppm. (Check my arithmetic.) If correct, Methane in the atmosphere is about 1/200 of CO2, so there just ain’t a whole lot of the stuff. Also, the growth rate of 20ppb is not too worrisome.
At 20X as “effective”, methane is still not comparable (volume-wise) to CO2.
These cries of alarm make about as much sense as some idiot running around claiming that there’s a chance the sun won’t rise tomorrow.
“Accumulation of small additional amounts of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere as a result of anthropogenic activities has practically no effect on the Earth’s climate.”
Refer to: Chilingar G.V., Sorokhtin O.G., Khilyuk L.F., Gorfunkel M.V. (2009).
Greenhouse Gases and Greehouse Effect. Environ. Geology, 58:1207-1213
Wow, that says it all!! Case closed. Thanks!
Come on you Clowns atmospheric CO2 (Plant Food) is a TRACE gas in our atmosphere…..ALL MANKIND WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITH MORE OF IT NOT LESS………..And it does not matter if it is man made or natural IT IS STILL THE SAME MOLECULE 1 atom Carbon 2 atoms Oxygen……..PLANT FOOD……The GIVER of ALL LIFE ON EARTH PERIOD.
The issue isn’t the total percentage volume or mass of the atmosphere that CO2 occupies, its its infrared absorption cross section that matters. Same for methane.
No matter what the cross section, if there’s very little of the gas in the atmosphere it doesn’t matter.
In the case of CO2, it’s absorption rate starts falling off quickly after 20ppm. Since it’s now at 380ppm, would seem to be far past being an issue.
In the case of methane, the EPA says 20X as effective as CO2, and guess what? It’s about 1.7 ppmv, or about 1/200th of CO2 which is 380 ppm. Also, the annual growth of methane is not only very low, but varies up and down, with 20ppbv (bilion, not million), a maximum. Therefore, unlike CO2 it apparently has no correlation to industrial growth. Finally, the MWP had higher temperatures and methane, if it had any effect at that time, obviously did no harm then.
Unless there’s something considerably more concrete, the CO2 and methane issue hardly justifies imposition of costly economic policies, let alone radical policies.
Send In Al ?……………The only place I would send him is to the same cell that Madoff occupies……for the same term……for the same reason……….DISHONESTY…LIES..&….DECEIT…….Like with Like I say……..What do you say ?
John D. Nier
Please, I can’t take any more humor. Have you seen today’s WSJ comments, http://tinyurl.com/yalyvsh? You guys have got to take this more seriously.
Phillip: the wsj website reference is not working for me. Can you download and paste the article? (if it’s worthy !)
Here Denis
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703510204575086303055077096.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs%3Darticle
Thanks for the wsj reference. Definitely powder puff treatment. It’s amazing that the IPCC’s claim that some glaciers would disappear by 2035, seems to be such a big deal for the news media. Actually, the IPCC hard-line and sustained defense of that “proclamation” was by far the more serious offense and that surely helped arouse suspicion amongst the otherwise uninterested, and uninformed public.
However, most of the US media is still not paying attention to their real crimes, namely the CRUs machinations with surface temperature data to show higher temperatures.
If they did this with the stock market (stock market manipulation) they’d have the SEC and the media all over them. But if they manipulate the carbon market no one evidently cares.
So WSJ wrote a fluff piece. What you’re saying with your comment about taking this more seriously eludes me. Please elaborate. Thanks.
I think we should put a tax on “bullshit” then we could sit back and rake in billions from the U.N. and IPCC the CRU and all the other idiots!!!
That is that old saying: “If bullshit was money he’d be a billionaire.”