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Comments 84801 to 84850:

84801. Phila at 14:13 PM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       I have a PhD, but I'm not comfortable disclosing anything about it. All the same, I really, really, really want all of you to know that I have one. OK. Now that everyone knows I have a PhD of some sort -- according to me -- I can say whatever I want without having to provide evidence for it, right? After all, I'm simply citing facts known to myself as an expert, right? That's how it works, isn't it?
84802. Dave123 at 13:48 PM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       You can find a copy of Happer's US Senate Testimony from 2010 here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/happer_senate_testimony.html another one of those merchant of doubt organizations. What I've also seen, and can't find right now is Happer making disparaging remarks about doing DOE reviews of the climate scientists. I suspect they knew they were in front of a hostile audience with him. I'd also raise this question about biological sinks for CO2. If CO2 were generally the limiting nutrient for plants, then wouldn't you expect that despite human CO2 emissions, that the system wouldn't have budged much from pre-industrial times? Plants should have sopped up every ppm. Take this forward: How high does CO2 have to go before the biological sinks equilibrate with our **present** level of CO2 emission from fossil fuels? How useful overall are these two thought experiments in understand what bogus notion is being advanced in terms of increased plant growth2?
84803. Rovinpiper at 13:34 PM on 26 May 2011
       Abraham reply to Monckton
       Question 14 of Monckton's Deliberate Response is interesting. Monckton claims that he was paid nothing for delivering the speech in Minnesota. He also challenges Abraham to provide evidence to support the claim that Monckton is paid by the Science and Public Policy Institute. If you look closely, you'll notice that he did not actually deny being paid by SPPI. Is there any way to prove whether or not he is compensated for his work on SPPI's behalf or for his speaking appearances? If he is not compensated, why on Earth does he do it? Is this his way of "giving back to the community"? Note: When reading Monckton's response it is important to note that he was responding to Abraham's original presentation , not to his later, more refined presentation.
84804. scaddenp at 13:01 PM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       Hey JMurphy - apparently we are compadres. How do. Apirate. As far as I can see wottsup provides a counterpoint to WUWT disinformation. I didnt express any opinion on whether I thought it was any good, only to ask whether its counterpoint was based on published science. I tackled you over why you thought the qualifications of the person were relevant in any way, because I dont think so. I am arguing for forming your opinions on the basis of peer-reviewed published science not opinion in blogs, unless those blogs are also informed by that science. WUWT is not. Skepsci is.
84805. apiratelooksat50 at 12:58 PM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       Marcus @ 104 "CO2 is a greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming, which is necessary for life on Earth as we know it." Actually, pre-industrial, Holocene levels of CO2 (260ppm-280ppm) contribute to *The Greenhouse Effect*-not Global Warming as you claim. Global Warming, or Climate Change, is the result of some external forcing that leads to a global energy imbalance. If you can't grasp this key differentiation, then how can you teach all the other, more complex issues to your students? So, you are calling 260-280 ppm CO2 normal, and anything above that is abnormal and caused by humans. To be "normal" the Earth's atmospheric CO2 concentration needs to be within that very narrow range. Anything above 280 ppm is abnormal and leads to global energy imbalance. That is just a start to your post. Please reply if my interpretation of your post is incorrect.
84806. apiratelooksat50 at 12:47 PM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       scaddenp@103 "Apirate - I am not sure what your point is. Does wottsupwiththat back his opinion with published or not? That's the important point, not the qualifications. Every one has an opinion, but there is only one reality." My point was in reply to your compadre JMurphy's post: "Anyone who gives any credence to WUWT as a source of unbiased information (of any sort, let alone scientific), needs to go to WottsUpWithThat now and again, if they want to stay properly informed." If you are going to call me out on the lack of published opinion, then you should have called out wottsupwiththat via JMurphy as well. In the interest of fairness, tell me why you did not call out JMurph on his post about wotts...
84807. scaddenp at 12:44 PM on 26 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       Actually I dont believe time-series are used, let alone abused, in climate physics at all apart from prediction of future solar forcings. They are of course useful for model validation against paleoclimate but have no part in the formulation of such models. Your comments about hockey sticks suggest you are somewhat misinformed there but please feel free to follow up in the appropriate thread. KR's link to R&C 1978 is the paper I meant. PS. I hope your promised new physics that predicts planetary temperatures isnt in same vein as Postma's
84808. Marcus at 12:36 PM on 26 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #2: Green Jobs
       I simply don't agree with your pessimistic appraisal Andy. Take Germany as a case in point-using primarily what would already be considered "outdated" renewable energy technology (from c2000), they've managed to boost the total amount of electricity supplied from *non-hydro* Renewable Energy sources from about 4% to almost 16%-in the space of only 10 years. Yet their GDP & employment rates don't seem to have been negatively impacted. Now to put this into an Australian perspective, Germany supplied 105TWh of electricity per year from non-Hydro based renewable energy. Australia's current electricity demand is 255TWh per annum. So, using an area as small as less than 10% of the total area of Germany, Australia could supply nearly 50% of its total electricity needs from non-hydro based renewable energy, & reduce its total CO2 emissions by more than 100,000 tonnes per annum. Of course, if we could also reduce our annual per-capita electricity use so that its on-par with that of Germany (about 7,000kw-h per person, per year), then that same small amount of land could supply around 70% of our annual electricity demand. Of course, as I said above, the technology has advanced quite a long way since Germany started this process, especially in the area of renewable energy *storage*, so I've little doubt that Australia could supply the vast majority of *all* its electricity needs from renewable energy sources-with precious little disruption to the economy (with the exception of a temporary disruption caused by the shift away from the current dominance of our fossil fuel/primary industry focus to a greater emphasis on secondary industries-like Manufacturing).
84809. scaddenp at 11:52 AM on 26 May 2011
       Monthly Climate Summary: April 2011
       If I were forced to bet, I would go fluke and guess next year will be normal. However, there is so far a dearth of published science on this so if someone (Rob?) can present a more convincing case for an alternative explanation from peer-reviewed sources, then I would very interested to read it.
84810. jonicol at 11:47 AM on 26 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       Response: Thanks for the response. The web page you have quoted to Ramanathan is different from the one(s?) I had found before - and shorter. Thanks also KR for the comment. I'll have a look at Science of Doom. As you will b aware, time series is an area which is itself abused a lot in Ohysics of climate and the strict analysis depends on a regularly repeated factor, not necessarily sinusoidal, but with a fixed period to its structure. Trying to predict behaviour depending on functions which are not repetitive or "cyclical" is where a lot of statistical analysis comes to grief in science and in particular physics. It is only useful to fit such an expression to randomly varying data for which the functional form is very well known as a method of extracting information from noise. The FORM of global temperatures is not known either in the past or in the future, which is where Mann's Hockey Stick analysis came to grief. The only possible analysis of functional dependence might depend on analysis using known cycles to look for in the components of a very long term Fourier Analysis of the known temperatures. One might also try some other set of orthogonal functions other than sinusoids which are the basis for Fourier analysis. This is not dissimilar to Tamino's methods. However, each function must be unique and the set must be "complete" to work. Things like the solar sunspot cycle are easily picked up in this way. The amplitude of these cycles of course is too small and the period too short to account for more than a small part of global temperature change. Other cyclical events such as the variation of other solar surface parameters, the change in the eccentricity of the earth and the polar axial precession are other contenders the latter having very long periods associated very tightly and fairly completely with the onset of the Ice Ages and intermittent holocenes. As with a Fourier transform of a function, the components may be quite small in number, yet the function may display no suggestion of itself being cyclical - it is the combination which makes the function. You probably knew all this but I just get carried away. BTW, Scaddenp,I agree totally with your comment on the misuse of the first law and the idea of "Statistical Modelling" is coverd I believe in my comment on the inaplicability of a single assumed time series type function which unfortunately seems to be given legs by a number of people. Cheers, John Nicol
84811. Marcus at 11:44 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       "CO2 is a greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming, which is necessary for life on Earth as we know it." Actually, pre-industrial, Holocene levels of CO2 (260ppm-280ppm) contribute to *The Greenhouse Effect*-not Global Warming as you claim. Global Warming, or Climate Change, is the result of some external forcing that leads to a global energy imbalance. If you can't grasp this key differentiation, then how can you teach all the other, more complex issues to your students? "The burning of fossil fuels and land use practices by humans affects the amount of CO2 entering the atmospheres and oceans." Well, at least you got *this* bit right. "Climate change is a naturally occurring phenomenon." Only if there is a natural source of forcing that can be identified as being responsible-like changes in insolation or long-term volcanism-neither of which is true in this case. "However, humans are partially responsible for changes in the climate." Actually, given that insolation has been trending *downwards* for the past 30 years, I'd say that humans are *predominantly* responsible for the climate change of the last 30-60 years. "Climate change effects may range from benign to serious and there are some catastrophic predictions." Really apirate? All the *peer-reviewed* predictions are for serious to very serious, with only a few making catastrophic predictions (largely based on the impacts of clathrates). I've yet to see any *peer-reviewed* predictions that suggest global warming will be in any way benign-at least on a *global* level. Seriously, just your claims here suggest that your knowledge of the subject is extremely limited.
84812. Eric (skeptic) at 11:41 AM on 26 May 2011
       Monthly Climate Summary: April 2011
       As ClimateWatcher implies, "growing unstable" is meaningless without a measurement. Likewise a "higher energy state" sounds to be like global OHC or some other global state which has no direct influence on tornadoes here. There seemed to be two local factors this year, the strong jet, the dry line further east in the April outbreak and low latitude storminess in the current outbreak. If any of those are trending positive with global warming, I will be quite surprised. There are models that include the dry line (e.g. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&context=geosciencefacpub) but are notably studying natural variations. I have not found model results for spring storms in the U.S. (studies of winter events seem to be more popular). But it will be good to see a post that focuses on US local factors rather than generic world-wide trends.
84813. Bern at 11:39 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       witsendnj: the deniers leave a crucial bit of the story out when they talk about CO2 being good for plants - the phrase "all other conditions being equal" i.e. "Increase CO2 leads to increased plant growth and crop yield, all other conditions being equal" In other words: for increased CO2 to be beneficial, the plants must have adequate supplies of water and soil nutrients. As regular readers of this site will already know, predicted impacts of increased CO2 in the atmosphere mean that plants in many areas will almost certainly not have adequate supplies of water & soil nutrients. I largely agree with your last paragraph. The funny thing, though, is that drastic energy conservation may actually result in little or no impact to the economy. Here's an opinion from industry: “It’s thousand-dollar bills lying on the ground. People just need to bend over and pick them up,” said Eric Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens Corp., the U.S. arm of the Munich-based conglomerate.
84814. adelady at 11:13 AM on 26 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #2: Green Jobs
       Andy "...I don't believe that there are many thousand-dollar bills lying on the energy sidewalk just waiting to be picked up." Maybe in relation to power generation. But there are a goodly number of any denomination bills lying around for investment in nega-watts. There's an almighty amount of work to be done - and money to be made/spent - by DIYers sealing gaps in their houses through to tradespeople upgrading buildings of all kinds and on to engineering and architecture professionals retrofitting large structures as well as modifying projects already on the drawing board.
84815. scaddenp at 11:10 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       Apirate - I am not sure what your point is. Does wottsupwiththat back his opinion with published or not? That's the important point, not the qualifications. Every one has an opinion, but there is only one reality.
84816. David Horton at 11:07 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Marcus - in the same spirit as using "skeptic" to mean someone who isn't skeptical, and "liberal" to mean Tony Abbott, "genuine environmentalist" has come to mean those who have absolutely no interest at all in protecting and conserving the world we live in.
84817. witsendnj at 10:59 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Marcus #53, that is an excellent point. First off, according to this paper describing an 11-year study (http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=119583&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click) in the real world plants to not absorb the amount of excess CO2 predicted by models. Even more critically, the idea that CO2 is good for plants ignores the effects of the other greenhouse gases and hydrocarbons that are released during the same process of fuel combustion. The ozone that results is well-known to be toxic to all forms of life. Humans suffer asthma, emphysema, allergies, cancer, and other maladies, all epidemics. Exposure to ozone stunts the growth of trees and annual crops and reduces the quality of fodder, seeds, nuts and fruits. In a world beset with food shortages from extreme, unprecedented weather events due to climate change, such as the floods, droughts and wildfires plaguing several continents, and a reduction in fish stocks from polluted, acidifying seas, the only sane collective action would be drastic energy conservation on an emergency basis while we transition to clean sources.
84818. Andy Skuce at 10:51 AM on 26 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #2: Green Jobs
       Dana@19. To be clear, I agree that arguments like Calzada's and Carter's need to be rebutted. Inactivists are all too quick to exaggerate the costs and to neglect to mention the economic benefits of any move to renewables. Where I disagree with you is in the section "Renewable Energy Creates More Jobs than Fossil Fuels". I think that such claims are arguable and may well be overstated, especially when they are put forward by a renewable energy advocacy group making difficult apples-oranges comparisons. If we exaggerate the positive secondary effects of a needed policy, we risk making those into the main area of contention with contrarians. Basically, I acknowledge the need to play defense on this subject, but we should be careful not to overreach with the offensive game. Perhaps I'm overly pessimistic, but I don't believe that there are many thousand-dollar bills lying on the energy sidewalk just waiting to be picked up. Any progress toward decarbonizing our energy system is going to be disruptive and costly, and it will require government intervention. To be sure, there will be short-term economic winners as well as losers but this isn't about the short-term.
84819. Marcus at 10:32 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Here's another point-if, as Jay Contends, Happer is a "genuine environmentalist" then he'd be arguing for a significantly reduced consumption of fossil fuels anyway. After all, extraction of coal & oil do *enormous* damage to the air, waterways & soil-not to mention oceans in some cases. Burning of petroleum generates particulate emissions, benzene, nitrogen dioxide & a number of other chemicals which contribute to photochemical smog & acid rain. Burning of coal produces radon, cadmium, mercury & particulate emissions-& generates millions of tonnes of fly-ash waste that needs to be disposed of. In some cases, it also contributes to acid rain & photochemical smog too. So even on the most basic environmental grounds-& even if AGW were somehow disproved tomorrow-it's severely unwise to go on consuming a resource that is so clearly harmful to both our environment & our health.
84820. apiratelooksat50 at 10:32 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       Jmurphy@98 I went to your link at wottsupwiththat.com and found this: "Who are “we”? We are me. To make the creepy rock-pokers work harder I’ll stick to just a first name; Ben. I earned a B.Sc. in Geology in the Eighties at a leading Canadian university. I started an Earth Sciences Master’s degree shortly afterward, but for economic reasons have spent my working life mainly in the Information Technology field as both a programmer and a systems administrator. Politically I believe that governments represent the collective interests of their citizens and should act to both protect and enable them. This is a “librul” perspective." To say that I am at least as vetted as this guy: I earned a B.Sc. in Biology at a leading American University in 1987. I started and actually was awarded my M. Sc. degree in Fisheries and Wildlife Biology at another leading American University in 1991. Since, then I've worked for international based environmental engineering consulting firms, international based manufacturing companies, and started my own environmental consulting company. I'm experienced in modeling for Title V air permitting, and NPDES wastewater discharge permitting. Plus, I am on the forefront for permitting cooling water intake structures in the American Southeast.
84821. scaddenp at 10:26 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       Apirate - of course I am biased. I strongly prefer published science to misinformation. I think current climate theory is strong enough to make bells ring about our CO2 levels. On the other hand, I also decided early what data would make me change my mind and look for it. At any point where a strong prediction from climate science is incompatiable within error bars to observations, then something must give. Strong predictions include: OHC increasing; upper stratospheric cooling; upward 30 year trends; accelerated arctic warming; changing OLR spectra. However the pseudo-skeptic evidence for discrepencies so far are either about claims that the science doesnt make or misrepresentation of observational data.
84822. scaddenp at 10:18 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       "(DB) Interested in buying a bridge?" :-) I guess we should leave that to individuals to judge. Going further might breach the "no stalking" guide in Comments Policy.
84823. apiratelooksat50 at 10:15 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       JMurphy @ 98 and scaddenp @ 99 One question with a yes or no answer: Is SKS unbiased? Even more: Question 2: Are you unbiased?
84824. ClimateWatcher at 09:33 AM on 26 May 2011
       Monthly Climate Summary: April 2011
       16 "In summary, this year’s incredibly violent tornado season is not part of a trend... the climate is growing unstable and is transitioning to a new, higher energy state..." ??? The energy relevant to tornadoes ( which stem from mid-latitude cyclones ) is driven by temperature gradient and most certainly not from the sum total thermal state of the earth. One of the predictions from the gcms was increased warming at the poles. Should this verify, one might expect reduced storminess as a result of reduced pole to equator thermal gradient. Fortunately, the main factors determining the general circulation change very slowly: orbital angles, location of the oceans, location of the continents and mountains. That's why the Namibian Desert has been a desert for sixty million years.
84825. Johnny Vector at 09:32 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Based on the way he taught me undergrad quantum mechanics 30 years ago, my default explanation is that he is entirely too sure of his own abilities and too lazy to look up the actual articles. (His idea of helping us with a problem set during office hours once took the form of quickly teaching us the variational method, which was introduced about 3 weeks later in the syllabus. That takes some serious not-caring.) Some of the above comments do seem to point to the option of more deliberate misrepresentation, but I remain open to the possibility of blinding hubris.
84826. Michael Hauber at 09:20 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Co2 is not a pollutant. Its a banana. And any government that wants to tax Co2 is obviously a banan republic.
84827. mandas at 09:19 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       This is a perfect example of how denialists like to twist things to suit their purposes, and how wrong they get it: ".....But correlation is not causation. Roosters crow every morning at sunrise, but that does not mean the rooster caused the sun to rise....." But in this case, correlation IS causation, except Happer twisted backwards. The roosters crowing did not cause the sun to rise, BUT... the sun rising DID cause the roosters to crow.
84828. Alexandre at 08:03 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Cadbury #7 says Furthermore, Happer was fired by Al Gore as director of energy research, which just further proves the point that global warming began and is still a political movement. Spot on. That political movement brilliantly orchestrated since Tyndall and Arrhenius. Must be quite a secret brotherhood. I bet we could trace some ancestor of Al Gore back then, plotting to achieve... something, a century or two later.
84829. scaddenp at 07:42 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       DB/Paul Barry, note that "Jay Cadbury, phD" denies that he is NOT the same "Jay Cadbury, phD" that posts on other climate sites eg, the thread from here and comments that follow.
       Moderator Response: (DB) Interested in buying a bridge?
84830. Rob Honeycutt at 07:38 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Les... Yeah, I was just looking at the JASON connection. There was one climate related paper published in 1990 titled Detecting the greenhouse signal (May 1990; JSR-89-330). That research would have been done when he was there.
84831. scaddenp at 07:35 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       Apirate - how many articles at WUWT would we have to debunk with published science before you changed your mind? Or are you saying you cant distinquish between pseudo-science there and real science here? A blog post is as good as a peer-reviewed paper?
84832. shoyemore at 07:33 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       @Dr Jay Cadbury,#7 Your shocking misstatements about climate science (without citing any references at all, just like Happer) are so far off the point that they lead me to believe you are having us on. If Professor Happer is your advisor on climate science, then you need to get a new one.
84833. les at 07:32 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       43 - Rob Not quite all... I hadn't realised he was a member of "Jason"... Again, one should consult ones copy of Merchants of Doubt; Jason's principle role is military advisory, it's mostly physicists (not a bad thing, IMHO) and also advised the DoE on Climate / CO2 in the late 70s... So he fits the MoD profile very well: right wing, defense oriented, highly legitimate as a scientist, using delay and doubt tactics... Exxon money...
84834. Rob Honeycutt at 07:18 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       I think Happer's position at the George C Marshall Institute pretty much says it all...
84835. nealjking at 07:06 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       I don't know Happer, but a good friend of mine is a colleague of his, at another university. Happer is well-enough versed in climate science to know how the enhanced greenhouse effect works, as he gave a talk in which he discussed it; correctly giving the detailed explanation instead of the high-school level summary that is usually given. Therefore, it is all the more shameful that he pretends to think that the reason that climate scientists think AGW is happening just because things are warming up. He knows better; he's pretending to be stupid to please his audience. This is what is known as "lacking intellectual integrity." It's a pity that education and professorial status don't protect you from this; it also takes a kind of moral backbone. If he really does need a review of why climate scientists think what they think, he should check out Stuart Weart's site on the American Institute of Physics website, The Discovery of Global Warming: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm Or maybe he should just think about his grandchildren, if he has any; and take seriously the concept that they will have to live in the ACTUAL world of the future - not just the one that he tells stories about. Maybe that will encourage him to apply his technical talents to understanding, and not obfuscating.
84836. JMurphy at 07:02 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       Anyone who gives any credence to WUWT as a source of unbiased information (of any sort, let alone scientific), needs to go to WottsUpWithThat now and again, if they want to stay properly informed. They must obviously also have missed this classic : Canadian Harp Seals In New England (“prediction” of cooling?) And his use of dodgy photos : Ice at the North Pole in 1958 and 1959 – not so thick Also, don't forget the many Steven Goddard 'classics' - so many, in fact, that even Watts had to let him go. (And that is just skimming the surface of the murky pond) Anyone who wants to maintain any scientific credibility does NOT refer to WUWT for anything but laughs.
84837. KR at 06:41 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Jay Cadbury "I think what got lost in the article is that Happer is a true environmentalist and believes we should be focusing on some other problems in the environment." If Happer was in this article simply arguing distribution of resources between different environmental issues, this thread would not exist. Instead, Happer went on a Gish Gallop of major proportions - stacks of errors, untruths, flat out lies, ad hominem arguments, etc. With his background, this is inexcusable behavior as a scientist, and I (and a number of other people) are quite reasonably wondering as to his motivations. Given his position as Chairman of the George Marshall Institute, a "non-profit" industry and right-wing advocate group, it's reasonable to conclude that this is an advocacy paper, not a scientific one. Happer's Princeton credentials therefore represent an Appeal to Authority in this case, a misuse of his position at the university. If presented in honesty, it should have been given a disclaimer to that extent.
84838. pbjamm at 06:39 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Dr. Jay Cadbury@33 "I don't understand how plants would ultimately suffer with elevated co2 levels because they were huge in the time of the dinosaurs with high co2 levels." Perhaps you should try researching the subject instead of commenting on it in ignorance. @sphaerica I think Dr J is baiting SkS
84839. David Horton at 06:31 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Whether Dr Cadbury is real (in various senses) or not, he is playing silly games with SkS readers here. A genuine person, a genuine "friend of Happer's", stung perhaps by the criticism of this post, might indeed turn up to see what's up with that. But having turned up, presumably for the first time, he would quickly discover that this is a site devoted to dispelling the bad science that Happer has represented. He might then click on "Arguments" or "Resources" - could read that all his myths have been presented before and dispelled by actual scientists. Could then, if he thought there was still some great truth revealed only to Happer and himself, come back to test us with this great undiscovered truth. Given someone who is clearly too lazy to do that, and I can't see it happening, there isn't a lot of point in doing a rehash of all the skeptic arguments on this site for Dr Cadbury.
84840. scaddenp at 06:22 AM on 26 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       "Thermodynamics is important but it isn't the be-all and end-all behind climate science and, as you scaddenp will know, is sadly not well understood generally. " Frankly claiming some causal relationship by overfitting a statistical model, where the proposed causal relationship implies violation of 1st law, does indeed deserve the abusive term.
84841. Rob Honeycutt at 06:22 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       Jay @ 22... "okay that's not what I asked for. But I do in fact understand distribution curves." Then you surely understand the implications of shifting the distribution curve one way or another. You will still find larger extreme events in the past even when shifting the curve one direction. That is not an indication that a shift is not occurring. As Albatross pointed out at 24, the shift is happening. I know this is not a scientific way of looking at it, but just think back for a moment. When do you EVER remember people talking about 1000 year extreme weather events? I've been around long a while I can not remember this. I remember 100 events. Today we are witnessing many 1000 year events in consecutive years. As anecdotal as that is, it suggests to me that there is something very serious starting to happen. Published research backs that position up. And the science suggests this is going to get worse. To pull back on topic, it's this that I find unconscionable that people with the educational background to know better - people such as Dr Happer - are leveling such a litany of demonstrably inaccurate statements at the climate science community. It boggles the mind.
84842. scaddenp at 06:18 AM on 26 May 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       "I tried to match the CO2 hockey stick to the Greenland temperatures shown in the attached graph which I prepared with the idea that temperature trends are magnified at high latitudes. Can you see the correlation?" So how about instead matching global temperature to total forcings? That is what the climate models are actually about. Claiming that modellers expect that climate is only based on CO2 is a straw man.
84843. Bob Lacatena at 06:12 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       33, Cadbury, I guess it all depends on what you mean by "plants". Overall, plant growth will probably increase dramatically. But the plants that thrive will not be those that thrive today, and they won't be in the same areas as today. Interestingly, C4 plants have evolved for low CO₂ but high temperatures, so it will be interesting to see which species of plants fail, which succeed, and how they evolve to handle a climate with more CO₂ but also higher temperatures and more, less or inconsistent precipitation. The Hadley Cells are expected to enlarge, and precipitation patterns will change, so we can expect deserts to grow. That's not good for plants in those areas. Droughts may be more frequent and more severe. We've already seen two of the worst in the Amazon just since 2000. One possible extreme proposition is the conversion of the Amazon rainforest to savanna, since rainforest plants are so ill-equipped to handle water shortages. There's still a lot of work being done there, so it's a question mark, but it's not something to just shrug off. Plants can start to move further north, but the soil is particularly bad up north, where glaciers scraped away the top soil, and there hasn't been enough vegetation long enough to create more. So I guess in a few thousand years plants may be thriving there, but not in our lifetimes. Beyond this, the the change in seasons and seasonal daylight is more dramatic. I'm not sure which plants will be able to survive further north with good temperatures, but different light, moisture, soil and seasonal conditions. And, of course, what most selfish humans mostly care about is food crops. That could be very bad, if precipitation and moisture changes make the northern and northeastern US more fertile, but central, southern and western US all less fertile, along with great swaths of the USSR, and the countries along the northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. So you see, your logic is rather simplistic. You stopped way short in the process of projecting what may happen, and what the implications are.
84844. apiratelooksat50 at 06:09 AM on 26 May 2011
       Skeptical Science Educates My Students
       DB @ 95 and Albatross @ 96 For clarity's sake: I find both WUWT and SKS to be basically diametrically opposed on the GCC topic. I don't take either one at face value. I like to look at each and follow links and develop my own thoughts. If you will notice I listed just a few sources where a researcher can go to find the actual data and not the opinions of others after digesting and regurgitating that data. There are plenty more available. You may find WUWT to be a disinformation machine, and on the other hand I'm certain that the followers at WUWT find SKS to be a propaganda machine. Regardless, both can be used as a lead-in to investigation of new evidence. I'm really more of a centrist on the issue of AGW and enjoy reading different viewpoints. I prefer to go to the source and analyze the data myself rather than reading another person's breakdown of the same data. I am very open minded on most issues (including AGW). I have a BS and an MS degree in science disciplines, have over 20 years experience in environmental consulting, 5 years experience in environmental science/biology education, and 9 years experience running a successful environmental consulting company. Question me if you want, denigrate me if you want, but you are really doing yourself a disservice. I agree with you mostly, but not totally. And, I suggest that we stop using terms like 'skeptic'/contrarian/denier and their opposites believer/warmist/alarmist. A reasonable discussion without the "tagging" would be more productive.
84845. les at 06:02 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       33 Jay - I mean, like you said "Furthermore, Happer was fired by Al Gore as director of energy research, which just further proves the point that global warming began and is still a political movement." So the 'fact' of the firing is, to you, sufficient evidence of AGW being a political movement... although, of course, Happer got his job many years before Gore as Bush fired his predecessor for AGW reasons... although that may have been more oil money than politics... may be? So? How do you know better?
84846. Patrick Kelly at 05:59 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       

       In short, even Princeton can make mistakes in who they decide should represent their department

       The implication clearly being that Happer should be removed by the powers that be at Princeton. Are you prepared to come out and openly espouse that postion?
84847. les at 05:58 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       33 Jay - why? It's completely consistent... Exxon clearly had a big say in the Bush administration. Seems the Georgy Boy Marshall Institute gets cash from Exxon etc. He used the classical "needs more research" Merchents of doubt technique... So, why don't you agree? Just 'cos he's a mate?
84848. Kevin C at 05:54 AM on 26 May 2011
       Can we trust climate models?
       #9 Galloping Camel: Yes, Charlie understood me correctly. My only reservation is that a 1-box model is just a bit too simple, because the real system seems to require at least two characteristic periods to fit the 20th century behaviour. With only one, you have to fit the multidecadal response and lose the faster ones. This is most apparent in a failure to fit the response to volcanic forcings. (I haven't tested that however, it is my synthesis of several different bits of work by Tamino and the others.) I actually agree with Arthur Smith here that attaching a physical meaning to even the 2-box model is suspect. You may as well abandon the pretence of physicality and simply determine the response function by a parameterised deconvolution, where a parsimonious parameterisation is chosen to best fit the observed data. Two exponentials happen to work quite well, but it may be possible to do better. Conceptually, cross validation should tell us just how parsimonious to make the parameterisation, but looking at the curves my gut says that there is not enough data once you account for autocorrelation.
84849. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 05:52 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       @Les I agree with some of that but I don't think Happer was hired to disagree about climate change. @Sphaerica See I don't understand how plants would ultimately suffer with elevated co2 levels because they were huge in the time of the dinosaurs with high co2 levels. Since greenhouse owners often pump levels of 1,000 ppm into greenhouses, what level would be detrimental to plants?
84850. Bob Lacatena at 05:52 AM on 26 May 2011
       Even Princeton Makes Mistakes
       15, Cadbury, The list continues:

       More CO2 is supposed to cause flooded cities, parched agriculture, tropical diseases in Alaska, etc., and even an epidemic of kidney stones.

       I haven't myself seen these studies, but even if they exist, the implication here is clearly that if it hasn't happened already, it will never happen. This is a lie by implication.

       The question is how much warming, and whether the increased CO2 and the warming it causes will be good or bad for the planet.

       No one scientific has raised this question, only deniers. The question is "how bad", not "good or bad." This lie falls somewhere in the gray area between a direct lie, a lie by implication, and a lie by omission.

       The argument starts something like this. CO2 levels have increased from about 280 ppm to 390 ppm over the past 150 years or so, and the earth has warmed by about 0.8 degree Celsius during that time. Therefore the warming is due to CO2.

       This is a bold faced lie. First, it's not an "argument," it's a scientific position shared by the vast majority of practicing climate scientists. Beyond this, the argument has to do with radiative physics, contemporary observations, deductions through paleohistory, and more. The argument was never "CO₂ rose, and so did temperature, so the former caused the latter." That one was probably the most egregious lie in his article.

       There have been many warmings and coolings in the past when the CO2 levels did not change

       This is another lie by omission. Any climate change which endured for a half a millenium or more did see changes in CO₂ levels, which were a result of the warming. Periods like the Medieval Climate Anomaly did not last long enough to produce CO₂ feedbacks. But more to the point, the planet has never before had an intelligent species capable of digging up and burning the carbon that nature spent hundreds of millions of years burying. It should be no surprise that this has never happened before, or that because there can be other causes for climate change, this cannot be one of them.

       Since the end of the little ice age, the earth has been warming in fits and starts, and humanity’s quality of life has improved accordingly.

       This is a lie by implication, i.e. that because temps have increased, and human quality of life has increased, then the two are related and any warming of any magnitude is good. But who was it that said "correlation is not causation?" Oh, yes, it was Happer, just a few paragraphs back. And before that he said "in reality, you can get too much or too little of a good thing." This time he should listen to himself.

       Our present global warming is not at all unusual by the standards of geological history, and it is probably benefiting the biosphere.

       Another lie by ommission. It's not unusual, and life and the planet may well survive, but such climate change in the past has spelled the end for many species, and will be just as dangerous to ours. The statement about benefiting the biosphere has already been addressed, and is a direct, egregious, and complete falsehood. Okay, this is getting boring, because pretty much every other sentence in his article is a falsehood of one sort or another. I'll stop here, rather than clutter the entire comment thread with more of his drivel.

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