Jan
Thanks Dr. J.P. Costella: the climate floodgates are opening
Good old-fashioned honest journalism by Pittsburghlive.com pointedly embarrasses Penn State and their pernicious professor, Michael Mann. Their editorial reviewing the “Climategate Analysis,” by Australian physicist, Dr. John P. Costella and now available from the non-profit Science & Public Policy Institute (scienceandpublicpolicy.org), has really caught the attention of Pennsylvanian readers.
Since running the editorial on Dr. Costella’s latest exposé, the Tribune-Review’s (local paper) found its circulation jumped 14.8 percent from 146,520 to 168,218 on the back of Costella’s story. Dr. Costella was clearly delighted with the response, “I’ll give you 168,218 to 1 that it ruined at least one of Mann’s meals!”
Thanks to Costella’s newly re-published analysis of the leaked emails from on the world’s key Climatic Research Units at the University of East Anglia, researchers into the Climategate scandal have been having a field day unpicking 13-years’worth of lies, deceit and fraudulent junk science all perpetrated at taxpayers’ expense. The cost to the U.S. economy for implementing policies based in such junk could run into trillions of dollars.
In the wake of the Climategate scandal has come a flood of other shocking revelations to derail the juggernaut of pro-green climate policy pursued by world governments. After Climategate, Pachaurigate, Glaciergate and Amazongate, now President Obama’s U.S. Administration is expected to be defeated in Congress on its unpopular and expensive climate cap-and-trade bill after Republican, Scott Brown, scored a sensational victory capturing the staunch Democrat seat of recently deceased Edward Kennedy.
The true depths of the climate scandal is causing great interest in the Pennsylvania heartlands of disgraced dodgy tree-ring counter, Michael Mann. Pittsburghers have been fascinated to find that the greatest fraud ever committed in the history of science was being perpetrated within their midst.
Michael E. Mann is famous for his ‘hockey stick’ graph often used by former U.S. Vice President, Al Gore when preaching his sermons on the ‘terrible threat’ of global warming. Mann’s graphs were much trumpeted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) before being debunked as fraudulent by independent analysts.
The impact in the hometown of disgraced climatologist Michael Mann has been so great it will surely add to the pressure on Penn State. The university’s own investigations to root out all the rotten apples in this scandal.
In 2009 Mann was appointed Professor at Pennsylvania State University, in the Department of Meteorology and Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. Since 2005 he has been Director of the university’s interdepartmental Earth System Science Center. He previously taught at the University of Virginia, in the Department of Environmental Sciences (1999 – 2005).
John Costella’s study has been accepted by all sides of the global warming debate as a faultless exposure of the trickery and deceit of public-funded climate scientists intent on bolstering the now discredited theory of man made global warming.
Pittsburghlive.com explains,
“John P. Costella, the 149-page report’s author, does a tremendous service by documenting, step by step, how science was perverted to advance misguided ideology, cynical politics and personal and professional interests. Costella proved that there was massive ‘research’ funding — with strings attached requiring production of ‘evidence’ backing preordained eco-wacko ‘findings.’ The fakery that took place in Penn. State Uni. and other government-funded institutions helped spread such venality far and wide among ‘scientists.’ What Climategate reveals and his report itemizes is ‘science’ unworthy of the name — and on a vast scale.”
Costella was ably assisted by retired British nuclear physicist, Dr. Phillip Bratby, who edited and proofread this sterling analysis before Costella presents all the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in precise chronological order, with an insightful scientific commentary. Pittsburghlive.com broke to Costella the news of his article’s succes late into the night, Australian time.
John says, ”I used some of the Australia Day public holiday yesterday to read the SPPI Reprint myself. Although I’ve visited the U.S. three times, I’ve never been to Pennsylvania (the closest I got was D.C.). But if plans to fly me over in the coming months pan out, I will most certainly be visiting the good folk of Pittsburgh. I like them already. “
The SPPI Reprint is at:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/climategate_analysis.html
The original web page is at:
http://johncostella.webs.com/
”The only differences are very small edits and typos that I continue to make to the web page as they are picked up. (The SPPI Reprint seems to have lost all italics, and occasional spaces, but that is of little consequence),” John said.
“However, the SPPI Reprint, with its inclusion of my op-ed piece as an ‘Introductory Essay’, seems to have spread like wildfire, not least of which being an incredible discussion at the legendary Watts Up With That site a few days ago,”
Yesterday, another top climatologist caught up in the Climategate conspiracy — Alabama State Climatologist and UN IPCC lead author, Dr. John Christy — was dismayed at the unethical conduct of Michael Mann and other climatologists, has demanded that the IPCC seek to restore its damaged reputation in their next climate report by providing “an alternative view section written by well-credentialed climate scientists.”
Thanks to John Costella and other brave scientists who have stepped forward, it is hoped a Federal Department of Justice criminal investigation will bring down this blatant racketeering.
Possibly related posts:
- Now get John Costella’s climategate email commentary in a PDF “book”
- Penn State decision on Michael Mann due on this week
- BREAKING! Penn State finds Michael Mann innocent of suppressing or falsifying data
- Penn State Protects Michael “Climategate” Mann
- Economic stimulus funds that went to Penn State climategate scientist should be returned
Oh, Dennis also wrote:
Nobody is claiming that we should wait until CO2 gets to 2 or 3 times what it is today. At the current growth rate there’s plenty of time (do the math), so not a crisis.
Irresponsible “glass half full” optimism. You’re assuming that the feedbacks (understood ones, partially understood ones and any unknown ones) will end up being in your favour and also, astonishingly, forgetting that the climate system has a colossal inertia, much of which is due to the oceans’ heat capacity. A supertanker takes ages to change direction and there is thought to be at least a thirty year lag in temperature response – so we have around thirty years of global warming already in the pipeline even if we stopped emitting excess greenhouse gas tomorrow.
If we listen to the denialists and wait until any truly bad stuff shows up we will be thirty years too late to do anything about it, and even worse things will carry on getting more dangerous for at least another thirty years. Absolutely crazy!
To: alarmist Nick:
CO2 for the past 80 or 90 years has been increasing in the atmosphere at the rate of 2ppm. To double from its current 385 will therefore take almost 200 years, but you can’t wait ’30 years’ ?!
As usual, not even an effort to provide any evidence that CO2 has anything at all to do with temperature. But lots of “dangerous”, “denialists” , “crazy” – just what one expects from a thoroughly brainwashed religious zealot.
Recently two german physicists and one Hungarian scientist have pointed out that “green house” concept is not relevant when dealing with the open atmosphere. Here’s yet another
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/nothing/pdf/EPAInput.pdf
These guys claim that the alarmists will never be able to present any evidence that Co2 has anything to do with climate. But, hey, Nick, keep the faith.
Denis,
Hi again. Just a quick note as to why being skeptical(yours, mine, and others) is valued. Scientists at Arizona State Univ. revealed (some time ago) that data sets used to predict increased temperature for the US were actually manipulated and thus false. It is precisly due to this ( and also at CRU and other major US sites) that one HAS to conclude that those using the falsified data were doing so to their own detriment. If there were actually warming continuing, then there would be no need to “tamper” with the evidence. Read and continue to ignore the truth (avg temp has been declining since 1998), those of you who blindly continue to follow the false AGW proclaimation.
The following is directly from http://www.co2science.org
A Warming Bias in the U.S. Temperature Record???
——————————————————————————–
Reference
Balling Jr., R.C. and Idso, C.D. 2002. Analysis of adjustments to the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) temperature database. Geophysical Research Letters 10.1029/2002GL014825.
What was done
The authors analyzed and compared the trends of six different temperature databases for the conterminous United States over the period 1979-2000. These databases comprised: (1) the unadjusted temperature data of the United States Historical Climatology Network (RAW), (2) the RAW data adjusted for (a) time of observation biasing, (b) changes to the new maximum/minimum temperature system equipment, (c) station history, including other instrument adjustments, and (d) an interpolation scheme for estimating missing data from nearby highly correlated station records (FILNET), (3) essentially the FILNET data adjusted for urbanization effects (URB-ADJ), (4) the updated dataset developed by Jones (1994) of the University of East Anglia (IPCC), (5) the satellite-based lower-tropospheric temperature dataset (MSU2LT), and (6) the radiosonde (balloon-based) temperature data that comprised “the surface reading taken the moment the balloon is launched,” which “typically occurs near 1.5 m above the surface, which is near the shelter heights used in the USHCN data set” (SONDE).
What was learned
In comparing the difference between the FILNET and RAW temperature trends, Balling and Idso found a nearly monotonic increase of over 0.05°C per decade, which they found to be highly significant at the 0.0001 level of confidence. In addition, they found that “the trends in the unadjusted temperature records [were] not different from the trends of the independent satellite-based lower-tropospheric temperature record or from the trend of the balloon-based near-surface measurements.”
What it means
In the words of the two Arizona State University Office of Climatology researchers, the adjustments that were being made to the raw USHCN temperature data were “producing a statistically significant, but spurious, warming trend” that “approximates the widely-publicized 0.50°C increase in global temperatures over the past century.” It would thus appear that in this particular case of “data-doctoring,” the cure was much worse than the disease. And it likely still is! In fact, it would appear that the cure may actually be the disease.
Unfortunately, it also appears that the disease has spread, both far and wide, and become a global pandemic; for Klotzbach et al. (2009) have recently found that for the updated period of 1979-2008, “there have, in general, been larger linear trends in surface temperature data sets such as the NCDC [the U.S. National Climate Data Center] and HadCRUT3v [University of East Anglia] surface data sets when compared with the [satellilte-derived] lower-tropospheric data sets.” And they note that Santer et al. (2005) have said that such could occur “if the surface warming had been over-estimated by 0.05°C per decade in the IPCC data,” which is the very same difference that Balling and Idso obtained.
Perhaps, therefore, it is not only the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that needs to have the validity of its temperature adjustments audited. Some institutions in the United States may be deserving of such treatment as well. It may be a hard pill for some of them to swallow; but with so much riding on the outcome — and the health of the planet hanging in the balance — the treatment would surely be worth it.
References
Jones, P.D. 1994. Hemispheric surface air temperature variations: A reanalysis and an update to 1993. Journal of Climate 7: 1794-1802.
Klotzbach, P.J., Pielke Sr., R.A., Pielke Jr., R.A., Christy, J.R. and McNider, R.T. 2009. An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. Journal of Geophysical Research 114: 10.1029/2009JD011841.
Santer, B.D., Wigley, T.M.L., Mears, C., Wentz, F.J., Klein, S.A., Seidel, D.J., Taylor, K.E., Thorne, P.W., Wehner, M.F., Gleckler, P.J., Boyle, J.S., Collins, W.D., Dixon, K.W., Doutriaux, C., Free, M., Fu, Q., Hansen, J.E., Jones, G.S., Ruedy, R., Karl, T.R., Lanzante, J.R., Meehl, G.A., Ramaswamy, V., Russell, G. and Schmidt, G.A. 2005. Amplification of surface temperature trends and variability in the tropical atmosphere. Science 309: 1551-1556.
Good Day Denis.
Thanks Mike.
Here’s some other takes on CO2:
The first one below is a basic discussion for the layman.
http://www.middlebury.net/op-ed/global-warming-01.html
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v2.pdf
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-7715-Portland-Civil-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d12-Hungarian-Physicist-Dr-Ferenc-Miskolczi-proves-CO2-emissions-irrelevant-in-Earths-Climate
The one below was referenced in an earlier email. Two of the others cover the german physicists and the hungarian physicist. John O had picked up earlier on the German physicist, which before then I recall referring to some, but don’t think I had the website handy.
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/nothing/pdf/EPAInput.pdf
Mike: If you haven’t seen this one, you’ll enjoy it. This is the “dad and son” (supposedly) study done on US (raw) data from 1900 to almost current. They picked US sitings where data was available from 1900 to (almost) current. For each urban area they chose a “nearby” rural area. But they processed the two groups separately. (NASA GISS data). Rural areas showed no temperature increase for 100+ years, whereas Urban areas showed a gradual increase in evidently just (urban heat island) warming.
Now I personally have no problem if they had found an increase in temperature not related to UHI. That still doesn’t prove it’s anthropogenic, even assuming the entire increase in CO2 over the last 100 years was all due to man. (the increase has been a straight line, 2ppm/year, not likely to correlate well with industrial growth.)
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2009/12/rural-us-sites-show-no-temperature.html
Dennis Ables wrote:
“CO2 for the past 80 or 90 years has been increasing in the atmosphere at the rate of 2ppm. To double from its current 385 will therefore take almost 200 years, but you can’t wait ‘30 years’ ?!”
That is an example of the quality of your thought? The depth of your knowledge? People like you are even worse than I thought.
First, the graph of CO2 is asymptotic. The rate of growth is faster, the closer to “now” you get, so your simplistic calculation is off. Secondly, it takes no account of the increase in CO2 emissions from the ocean as it warms up (you did know that as the oceans warm CO2 will outgas from them?). Basic laws of physics. Thirdly, the ocean is saturating in the amount it can absorb from the atmosphere http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/ajw/Reprints/Schuster_Watson_JGR_in_press.pdf this link is a draft of a paper that you won’t have to pay to see. As the ocean is one of the two biggest “sinks” for excess carbon, the amount of our fossil fuel emissions staying in the atmosphere will build up much faster.
For everybody’s sake – if you’re so ignorant that you don’t know this sort of stuff without somebody telling you, then you’re too ignorant to have a valid opinion on climate change and it’s your absolute duty to keep your mouth shut and stop muddying the waters, in case you fool somebody else, who just might go on to vote in a wrong and dangerous way.
“As usual, not even an effort to provide any evidence that CO2 has anything at all to do with temperature. But lots of “dangerous”, “denialists” , “crazy” – just what one expects from a thoroughly brainwashed religious zealot.”
Actually, it’s people like you who are the brainwashed propagandised “useful idiots”. Your request that I provide “any evidence that CO2 has anything at all to do with temperature.” is as lunatic as if you demanded proof that putting your hand in molten lead will harm you, or that putting a certain amount of joules into a certain amount of water will raise its temperature by a certain amount of degrees C. This is all established science. Nobody with their head screwed on disputes it. And yet, clearly, you do. What does that say about your cognitive ability?
It’s not even as if the well known, and definite, greenhouse gas characteristics of CP2 were recent science fer chrissakes. It’s been science for well over a hundred years. Here’s a very good and all encompassing history of the development of the science over the last century or so. It is chock full of references and links to scientific papers and observations proving beyond all doubt http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. BTW, you will also see many of the old, but long resolved, scientific controversies that the denialists have been recently “mining” to fool the gullible with e.g. that CO2′s absorption bands are saturated so any further increase cannot retain any more heat. That particular canard dates back to the early 1940′s and was resolved in the 50′s. And yet lying scum like Monckton keep trotting out their crap at public meetings…
Recently two german physicists and one Hungarian scientist have pointed out that “green house” concept is not relevant when dealing with the open atmosphere.
You just believe any damn fool (or misleader) who says anything you want to hear, don’t you? These guys are cranks – nobody significant gives their ideas any credibility and yet cognitively challenged people seize on whatever they say just because it fits in with what they want to believe. Apart from anything else, their entire effort is based on a giant sized straw man. They misunderstand, or deliberately misrepresent, what is meant by “greenhouse”. It certainly was never meant that the radiative characteristics of greenhouse gases were the same as the characteristics of a garden glass greenhouse. Sheesh! How addled some people are. You can’t look at an imperfect analogy created to simplify a concept for the general public, then point to the imperfections in that analogy as some sort of proof that what the overwhelming majority of peer reviewed climate science says is incorrect! I know you people moan and whine when you get correctly called stupid but that is because you are so unbearably arrogant in your stupidity by not recognising your own severe limitations, coupled with your seeming inability to realise when your idiotic ideas have been shot down.
You incompetent morons are risking my planet – my children’s planet – with your extreme stupidity and irresponsibility.
Nick: My goodness! Such a rant!
I could also start this out the same way “… and this is the quality of YOUR thought?….” but while my claim would undoubtedly be more appropriate than yours, neither claim would contribute towards the resolution of the AGW issue.
You failed to mention that during the past decade of cooling the CO2 in the atmosphere has continued its monotonic (NOT asymptotic) increase, and at least one of the “scientists” at CRU admitted that this cooling in the face of increasing CO2 was a travesty. Of course, the others at CRU didn’t have to verbally confirm that admission, since all of their computer models crashed. Evidently you have some other theory. The CRU team will want to hang onto you – many of their true believers are abandoning ship. And here you are, at the same time apparently suggesting that the increase in CO2 is partly or mostly due to a warming ocean and not all attributable to man? I certainly have no problem with that. While the ocean clearly emits considerably more CO2 than what man is contributing, (several hundred GT as opposed to 20 or 30 GT, as I recall), the ocean is also at the same time busily (re)collecting at least some of it, moreso after the water cools. I believe the alarmists position (yours?) is to blame the entire increase in CO2 (since it was at 280ppmv), on man, claiming that otherwise mother nature would be “in balance”. I am aware that the ocean contains considerably more CO2 than our atmosphere, and that following a warming period of the earth, about 800 years later in the most recent case (thanks to the MWP) the ocean reacts by increasing its release of more than the usual amount of CO2. But, Nick, that’s not much of an argument for CO2 driving temperature. (In fact, I don’t find it relevant.) And then there was the time where CO2 was several times higher than now and the planet was going into an ice age. And now we have cooling and CO2 has continued to increase.
The science of the postiive and negative feedbacks related to atmospheric science does not appear to be settled – even among those who still agree that the term “greenhouse gas” (and similar physics and thermodynamics) applies. There are ongoing debates about how to estimate the relative size of postive and negative feedbacks, even whether the net result is postive or negative. (And then there are these other scientists, more coming out of the woodwork now, who claim – and not exactly haltingly – that atmospheric considerations are very different in the open atmosphere than what happens in an enclosed greenhouse- that using the same kind of analysis violates basic thermodynamic laws.) You may, as usual, feel (as does algore) that this science is also “settled”, so feel free to direct your (ahem) expertise at those guys.
And Nick….. Your assumptions about me, and what I may or may not know were a chuckle, but really reflect badly on you. Seriously, your rants make you sound like a religious zealot, and it’s not even Sunday.
Please understand that, in the future, your tirades will not be acknowledged. I know it will be a crushing blow. You evidently do need attention. Perhaps an anger management course would help?
Nick = LOL!
Here is more that is in accordance with what Denis is talking about.
81,000 years ago the sea level was one meter higher while the C02 level was lower.
Riddle me that one please Mr. Nick.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/11/new-paper-in-science-sea-level-81000-years-ago-1-meter-higher-while-co2-was-lower/
Nick: “You incompetent morons are risking my planet – my children’s planet ”
That sentence says all we need to know about you – like skeptics don’t love their children, right? FYI the Gerlich paper that debunked your beloved GHG theory has not been debunked in almost 2 years since peer-review publication. Moreover, apart from physicists trashing your pseudo-scientific BS mathematicians have now waded in. Michael Beenstock and Yaniv Reingewertz of the Department of Economics, The Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, Israel, have shown that although greenhouse gas forcings share a common stochastic trend, this trend is empirically independent of the stochastic trend in temperature and solar irradiance. Therefore, greenhouse gas forcings, global temperature and solar irradiance are not polynomially cointegrated, and AGW is refuted. MY son is a undergraduate physicist and MY daughter a talented linguist and musician – I love them deeply- no less than you love YOUR children. So wise up , be civil, learn something, or F** off!
Oh – forgot to mention the CO2 feedback emissions from thawing permafrost. Not to mention the methane…
Dennis claims he won’t be acknowledging me any more. Not surprising. He has refused to see the holes in his beliefs and arguments, that I delineated, as if they never happened and his only tactic seems to be to comeback with a whole new slew of frequently and comprehensively demolished denier memes. The way Monckton lies and misleads and presents false logic and ideas is clever. All of the wannabees like Dennis are just a waste of time. They appear to be incorrigible.
John – read all the comments on the WUWT story. Plenty of people point out alternative explanations. As, no doubt, you know there are plenty of other planetary climate forcings apart from CO2 that have altered things in prehistory in such a way that it resulted in strong climate changes, sea level changes and mass extinctions of species. With the exceptions of giant meteor strikes, and episodes like the Deccan traps period of sustained massively widspread vulcanism, none of these forcings were as strong as, or changed as rapidly as, we have forced CO2 levels to do in recent centuries – at an accelerating rate. Perhaps it’s too late.
Bawk! Bawk! Bawk! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Nick….if it is so obvoius that we have AGW why can’t you prove it? All you do here is postulate.
Bawk Bawk John.
Are you blind? I refer you to my earlier post http://www.climategate.com/thanks-dr-john-costella-the-climate-floodgates-are-opening/comment-page-1#comment-2636 in which I showed IN HIS OWN WORDS that Richard Lindzen, one of the favourite denialist /inactivist scientists does not dispute the basic science (or indeed that there is a consensus). He basically says yes, AGW is happening and we’re mostly responsible because of our activity. He has to say that because the scientific proof is overwhelming, obvious and the basic proofs have been around for a hundred years. I know them, Lindzen knows them, anyone can look at them – if you don’t know them then WHY THE F*$K DON’T YOU LOOK AT THEM? I even linked to the history of global warming website where the full and massive scientific history, with links to the actual papers, are laid bare. And yet you mindlessly chant that I haven’t provided proof. Has anyone ever picked you up and shaken you in sheer frustration at your appallingly stupid arrogance?
I also pointed out that most of the crap “arguments” that you people come out with were actually scientific objections to the early theories that were answered and settled back in the 50′s and 60′s but have recently been resurrected by the denialist machine on denier blogs and denier books and in articles by denier journalists to fool the credulous bolshy public – people like you. Read that website and you will see all the long settled arguments that have been twisted into propaganda that the likes of you mindlessly regurgitate and propagate.
And you have the nerve to feel confident about your views – the colossal cheek to actually feel smart?!!
The squawking troll John says “why can’t you prove it? All you have done here is postulate” Words fail me as to how cataclysmically stupid or ignorant or malevolent “John” must be.
Lindzen disputes the estimated climate sensitivity, which the scientific mainstream says will lead to a most likely 3 degrees C per doubling of CO2. His own personal theory claims it will be around 1 degree – unfortunately for him evidence from palaeoclimatology shows that the climate sensitivity is greater than his figure. He is not a palaeoclimatologist and it shows.
And yet a denier buffoon like you goes “Bawk Bawk” because that reality doesn’t fit in with your desired fantasies. Yes, I am calling you a denier (as in “in denial of reality”), not a sceptic, because you have clearly turned a blind eye to what I already posted. Did you read it? Did you understand? Maybe you suffer from http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Dunning-Kruger-effect-and-the-climate-debate.html Dunning-Kruger syndrome like most rabid deniers.
This syndrome is where someone is too incompetent to know or realise that they are incompetent, even when it is repeatedly pointed out to them. If any particular part of their stupidity is demonstrated to them, they sort of forget by the time the next bit of idiocy is being demolished and so on. They are incorrigible. Suppose a D-K sufferer has ten great (they think) ideas. If someone competent, with heroic effort, demolishes them one by one, the D-K sufferer, at the end of the exercise, will still believe they have ten great ideas – do they forget? does their massively misplaced overconfidence lead them to believe they must be right so anything that appears to destroy their beliefs must be wrong?
Did you stay up all night writing that crap? If so it’s a waste of time, you’re a f’ing moron and you are currently in ignore mode….so blather on.
Nick,
How the climate reacts to positive/negative feedback is far from settled. AGW debate history is littered with the gross misuse of known concepts to explain earlier failures of stated certainty. If the natural world doesn’t comply something is cooked up to explain it or better yet the natural world is cooked up as in glaciergate, aftricagate, amazongate, etc… Why would you base international policies effecting the lives of every person on the plant on such a Rube Goldberg contraption? I suppose you might answer as Thomas Friedman did recently “if there’s even a one percent chance they’re right we have to do it” You seem to want us to bet the house that the ball will land on green 5 because you’ve got a strong hunch but we’re being stiff-necked about it. So you get pissed-off and start screaming that we don’t care about your kiddies. The burden of proof is on you Nick. Your camp has failed that test and we’ve proven that much. btw Nick one of my kiddies is a nurse in Haiti this morning. Somehow she learned about empathy for others.
We do have evidence that atmospheric CO2, in any event, has a net negative feedback. It’s been as high as 7 to 9000 ppmv (in the distant past, admittedly) and the world is still around after 4+ billion years. Entities in nature with a positive feedback are rare, for obvious reasons. Also, there is no likelihood that China and India intend to cooperate, which implies that drastic measures taken by us will cripple our economy and will have little or no effect on the problem (if CO2, in fact, is a problem.)
Cap & trade will not work unless the usage cost is very high, else people will just grit their teeth and pay anyway. (But, guess what that does to our economy? Energy consuming industries could not possibly compete against their counterparts in China and India, (which are already providing the world with much cheaper labor) and would have no choice but to move to some other country. Unemployment would continue to rise, so more unhappiness and more debt. (Our country is already bankrupt. A bitter aside: all of our incumbent politicians – both parties – should be thrown out. Term limits should have been implemented years ago.)
Suppose the industrialized countries all agreed to implement a similar cap & trade arrangement. (zero chance based on current status). There would still be lots of pain, likely higher unemployment, because many energy consuming industries would shrink, but it would really hit the 3rd world countries because the only way for them to escape poverty is to have access to such things as water and power. (energy). That doesn’t cause much heartbreak for those of us lucky enough to have been born here rather than, say, Bangaldesh, but it is a moral issue that shouldn’t be ignored. (The millions killed due to our DDT ban comes to mind.)
There appears to be only one choice, and that is for us to take prudent measures to cut carbon and get cracking on drilling for natural gas and building nuclear power plants. (I personally believe we should also be drilling offshore and in the Arctic, to provide more of our own energy to reduce exporting $$ for oil, especially to those countries financing terrorism. )
Rather than an all encompassing cap & trade, congress should bite the bullet and pass legislation (and make a big announcement about it) that (say) an additional 50 cents tax will be added to each gallon of gas -and every year, for at least the next 20 years. Consumers industry will take note and plan accordingly. Implementation could be delayed until (say) 2011 since the economy is still staggering.
Denis Ables wrote February 14, 2010 at 8:00 am
“We do have evidence that atmospheric CO2, in any event, has a net negative feedback. It’s been as high as 7 to 9000 ppmv (in the distant past, admittedly) and the world is still around after 4+ billion years. Entities in nature with a positive feedback are rare, for obvious reasons.”
You need to distinguish between a positive feedback and a runaway feedback. There are positive feedbacks all over the place – runaway feedbacks are, of course, scarcer than hen’s teeth.
CO2 is definitely a positive feedback but, because of the logarithmic decline it has a feedback less than 1 so will not “runaway”. No credible source says it will.
When the CO2 levels were sky high (many 1000s of ppm) in the distant past, and the greenhouse effect was much higher than today, the sun was supposed to be 20-30% fainter than today so temperatures were broadly similar but life was abundant pole to pole
Nick:
re: positive feedback vs. runaway feedback
Thanks.
Good comments, gentlemen. Thanks for your contributions.
And …… the beat goes on ……
Water vapour feedback is negative
In a third paper, accepted for publication by the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Climatology, three scientists – two Australians and one American, revisit data on upper-atmospheric humidity. The three are Garth Paltridge, Albert Arking and Michael Pook, and they have found that, contrary to climate model predictions, water vapour in the upper atmosphere is acting as a brake on global warming.
Established climate models assume constant humidity at all levels in the atmosphere as the temperature rises. But, using data from weather balloons accumulated over 35 years, these researchers find this is not so. At the lower levels, it is higher than expected, dropping below normal at the higher altitudes.
This, they say, implies that “long-term water vapour feedback is negative – that it would reduce rather than amplify the response of the climate system to external forcing such as that from increasing atmospheric CO2.” This, in one fell swoop, challenges the central premise of the warmists that, once CO2 reaches a certain level, we experience runaway global warming.
oops….. forgot to credit it back to source…. it’s on the usual “new” within one of those circulations…. of Climate Depot