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siglerj at 09:26 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Where did the carbon in the ground come from?Moderator Response: [DB] Carbon is naturally present in the Earth's biosphere (land+air+water), existing in many forms. There is a natural flux of carbon into and out of the atmosphere (see here, both versions). Mankind has upset that natural carbon balance by adding a huge bolus of long-sequestered carbon back into it (like adding more players to one team while keeping the other team's numbers the same), unbalancing the cycle. The net result is that the system is seeking to get back to that balance, which involves the biosphere retaining energy in the form of heat. -
Marcus at 09:25 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Ah Ken, good to see you preaching from the same hymn-book as Gilles. It might not have made headline news (you know, what with all the property damage, deaths & evacuations), but news of load shedding & black-outs during the Queensland floods can be found in the print media *if* you're prepared to go digging. The closure of many of Queensland's coal mine during the crisis was, however, considered worthy of front-page news. Of course my whole point was to illustrate that, in such extreme weather events as these, loss of power is going to be the *last* thing on victim's minds-so represents nothing but a straw-man argument. It is worth noting, though, that the large, centralized nature of coal power station, as well as their reliance on a constant fuel supply that needs to be mined, does make it especially vulnerable to extreme events like these. Even in the absence of such events, coal power stations are horribly inflexible in their power output & lose significant amounts of generated electricity over the distances they're required to transmit over (between 10%-15% of electricity generated gets lost during Transmission & Distribution). Your claims re: Wind Turbines also sounds horribly out of date. My reading of current technology is that most modern wind turbines are designed to operate effectively under a wide range of wind conditions-something which has allowed improvements in Capacity from barely 20% to more than 30% in the last decade. Of course, with good siting & decent storage, many of the remaining issues with wind power can be largely iron out-and eliminated completely if you also have a good source of landfill gas. -
siglerj at 09:23 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@ grypo You make it sound like an organized conspiracy. Corporations are everywhere and in everything, including the green movement. Identifying CATO as being the face of corporations is an underhanded method to rally the fools who think all corporations are like ENRON and Skank of America. Yes some corporations believe in capitalism, but if a handout, bailout, subsidy or tax credit exists they'll gladly take the welfare or uncompetitive advantage, just like anybody else. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:18 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
siglerj said... "Personally, I think Geo Engineering is the best solution until efficient green energy can become a reality." Great! Then we are there. Remove all subsidies from fossil fuel industries. Pull in the external costs of carbon on human health and the environment. At that point wind and solar beat oil, gas and coal hands down. And renewables are in the process of getting even cheaper. If Libertarians would agree to this then we have solved the world's problems. -
Marcus at 09:13 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Climate Watcher, your claims are demonstrably *false*. I've got the GISSTemp data right in front of me, & the warming rates I get are as follows: 1910-1945=+0.125 degrees per decade; 1975-2010=+0.176 per decade. So the current warming is already unprecedented compared to the warming of the first half of the 20th century. Of course, it's even *more* unprecedented when you consider the fact that 1910-1945 was against the backdrop of rising Sunspot numbers, whereas 1975-2011 has been against a backdrop of *falling* sunspot numbers. Epic *fail* there Climate Watcher. -
grypo at 09:13 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@siglerj This article should help you understand why the carbon in the ground is the important carbon, not the carbon already in the cycle -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:13 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
siglerj... Virtually every pollutant occurs naturally as well as being man-made. Are you suggesting that we can't regulate ANY forms of pollution because they also occur naturally? -
siglerj at 09:10 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Personally, I think Geo Engineering is the best solution until efficient green energy can become a reality. -
robert way at 09:09 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
ClimateWatcher at 03:17 AM on 22 March, 2011 "2. Global warming is 'unprecedented' The period from 1910 to 1945 ( thirty five years ) had the same surface temperature trends ( CRU and GISS ) as the period since 1979." Prove it. Do note that I am the author of the following post which disproves your argument. Unless you can show me where I calculated the differences in warming rates wrong then your argument is null. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html -
dana1981 at 09:06 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Good point Tom. That was very northern hemisphere-centric of me! -
grypo at 09:06 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@siglerj "Corporations are in favor of capitalism, only in the competitors dreams." Corporations fund CATO and CATO does not want a tax on carbon emissions using utilitarian arguments under the auspice of libertarian principles. Perhaps you are discussing nanny-state conservatism? Crony capitalism? What does this have to do what I wrote? -
siglerj at 09:01 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
If CO2 is considered a pollutant you can't discriminate what creates it as being bad or good. If an owner is responsible for some CO2, how can they not be responsible for all their owned emissions? -
ranyl at 08:48 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
"If our CO2 emissions dropped to zero the carbon sinks would continue sequestering about 17 gigatons per year (17/7.81 = 2.18 ppm decrease per year)... there is no logical reason that this would change radically right away" CBD66 These acute excess sinks don't continue to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, they take ~50% of the extra excess CO2 added to the atmosphere be that from volcanoes, land use change or human burning of fossil fuels, but that is it, they soak up the excess, they don't actively remove carbon atmosphere if no excess is added. Basically with no emissions at all the rate of CO2 change in the atmopshere reverts back to the underlying balance between volcanic source and geological removal which is very slow. Then as this very slow (no where near 2ppm at year) causes atmospheric CO2 concentration to fall the sinks re-release the 50% of the excess they took up and why Cao et al (from previous post), found that to get CO2 concentrations to actually fall it is necessary to take all the extra CO2 that was actually added to the atmosphere and the CO2 that has been temporarily stored in the acute excess sinks. Also all the excess sinks capacity are now shrinking as per the papers in the previous post. Therefore 450ppm peak does mean ~450ppm for a long time unless active measures can be deployed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Also as mentioned when the earth warms CO2 always rises at about 7-40ppm per 1C, depending on different estimates although 7-14ppm most likely, but still rises and there is already another 0.6C to come due to lags in the system. Also the Pliocene was still 3-5C hotter at 350ppm or 1.8C-2.4C by 2100, 450ppm means more! Also all the pollution over China and India is causing a large haze cloud that is cooling those regions surface, therefore stopping burning fossil fuels in Asia will be another accelerant to global warming. "Stopping emissions will yield positive results / we are not yet 'locked in' to devastating climate change." Yes stopping all emissions from fossil fuels is essential and a strong positive first step, but the world is already locked into a significant period of global warming that needs urgent adaptation (including removing large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere) measures so that despite the coming climatic changes human actions can bring about a fullfilling sustainable eco-system enhancing carbon sequestering future and a general increase in human well being through mutual co-operation, at governmental, institutional and individual levels or the clear and obvious is ignored, CO2 emissions continue to be spent chasing excessive energy demand dreams and humankind lets climate change be an event that is devastating to human well being for no other reason than keeping far too many lights on. -
damorbel at 08:47 AM on 22 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #615 Tom Curtis you wrote:- "Do you also agree with me that this simple model does not violate any laws of thermodynamics? " Perhaps not. But what it doesn't do is model the atmosphere or RW1's model in #613 In #619 L.J. Ryan shows the flaw in your model - adding the same energy twice! It doesn't model the atmosphere because GHGs do not reflect light, they absorb and, to a certain extent, re-radiate it. When a photon is reflected its energy remains the same e.g. mirrors do not change the colour of light. When photons are absorbed they may cause re-radiation but this is not necessarily so, e.g. if a chemical change is induced by the absorption of a photon. If the absorbing material does re-radiate photons this may well occur at a much longer i.e. 'without limit' longer wavelength. What cannot happen (2nd Law again) is for a photon to be emitted at a shorter wavelength. More exactly, in a single photon process, a photon more energetic than the incoming photon cannot be emitted. But there are two (or more) photon events that result in the emission of single photons of higher energy than either of the input photons, but the total energy is still conserved. There is no law of conservation for photons, they start with an emission and end with an absorption, even if they travel light years between the two events. Re #616, les your box is just fine, it is what J J Fourier described - it just doesn't describe the atmosphere - as Fourier himself noticed 'the air is not held still in the atmosphere' Re #677 Tom Curtis your box has a major flaw; the energy source is outside the box but once inside it is reflected 100% this doesn't happen, the walls that reflect inside the box must also reflect 100% light coming from outside, there are no one-way mirrors in physics. Further, if you put a lamp inside with N Watts power and the walls were 100% reflecting (thus 100% insulating) the temperature would rise until something was destroyed! But consider, how would you get the N Watts power in? Heat conduction in metals in largely a function of electrons in the conduction band thus the wires would carry much of the heat inside back out to the generator (or battery) where the energy came from in the first place. The wires may get hot in the process but have you ever dealt with high power lights enclosed in a projector? Everything gets terrifyingly hot! -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:42 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
siglerj... "... you have to measure all carbon emissions then if that is the pollutant you are targeting, even the emissions exhaled by humans and the animals they own." How do you come about this assumption? It would seem to me that natural processes in the carbon cycle are not the problem. It's the excess introductions to the atmosphere by industry. -
Tom Curtis at 08:38 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Dana, is it possible to get a graph whih resolves the NH winter temperatures and the SH winter temperatures. The one you show only resolves temperatures by months, and of course the NH winter is the SH summer.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:35 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
ClimateWatcher... I would add that what you seem to be overlooking in the diagrams that you provided is the very clear fingerprint of AGW which is stratospheric cooling. -
siglerj at 08:34 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
I thought this was supposed to be non political? "...less to policy handbooks from corporate funded Washington DC think tanks..." This statement is completely laughable. Corporations are in favor of capitalism, only in the competitors dreams. Libertarians agree if you damage some other person's property you owe them for the damages. The problem is, you have to measure all carbon emissions then if that is the pollutant you are targeting, even the emissions exhaled by humans and the animals they own. Out of curiosity has anyone ever measured how much CO2 each country puts out based on human population and the livestock and pet population? Only the countries that have water on the border would benefit from this, what about the storms, floods, droughts?.........It appears the litigation process would be impossible to determine the real cause and the real solution meaning, the problem has to be tackled from a market perspective of lowering emissions through the best technology......government can't pick the best, they only pick GE windmills in the states ...cough fascism...Moderator Response:DB] Actually, human CO2 exhalations add up to 10 times that produced by volcanoes yearly, and about 10% of fossil fuel emissions. But since exhalations are part of the natural carbon cycle they have no net impact on atmospheric concentrations (yup, people actually look into this: people called scientists). Who's responsible for how much CO2 emissions is also tracked:
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:24 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
ClimateWatcher... So, your claim is now that there is no warming since 1970? Is that your position? -
Henry justice at 07:49 AM on 22 March 2011Latest GRACE data: record ice loss in 2010
I wonder if the hydrostatic sinking of Greenland has been factored into the calculations. This will offset some of the sea level rise from Greenland's sea destined meltwater.
Response:[DB] Henry, I think you mean isostatic rebound. The edges of Greenland are actually rebounding upward slightly as the overburden of ice dwindles, lightening its downward load on the basement rock. Think cork bobbing up in the water (buoyant). But it's not much. And yes, it's been factored into the calculations.
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RobertS at 07:31 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
MattJ "'grypo' got SO close to identifying the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Libertarianism -- and then shied away from exposing it!" I'm assuming the goal of this article was to show Libertarians that acting on climate change actually falls within the confines of their ideology, not that their ideology is "broken". I think you'll convince a lot fewer with the latter approach. I fear continual references to the Koch's funding will not help either, no matter how true it may be. -
ClimateWatcher at 07:23 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
#8 Rob, Look at the graphic above. That is from the RAOB, UAH and RSS measurements. That is not the absence of evidence. It is evidence of no hot spot. The models pre-dict it. The observations contr-dict it. That is all.
Response:[DB] Rob was kind enough to point you in the right direction:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Dispelling-two-myths-about-the-tropospheric-hot-spot.html
Please demonstrate good faith and do so. Thanks!
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Daniel Bailey at 07:21 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
CW also needs to read this and this for edification purposes. The Yooper -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:15 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
ClimateWatcher... I have to address this statement though... "So either there is no warming (since there is no hot spot) or there is warming, but the models are seriously in error" Think about what you just said there. The models actually DO show the hotspot. The hotspot happens to be really difficult to measure. But again, go read the relevant sections in SkS. It's a popular topic. You'll probably learn quite a lot. -
ClimateWatcher at 07:13 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
#3. Hmmm.... my follow up post was evidently dropped, so I'll repost... <snip>
Response:[dama1981]Your comment is off-topic. If you wish to continue this argument, please do so in "IPCC overestimates temperature rise".
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Rob Honeycutt at 07:11 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
ClimateWatcher... Have you read the relevant sections here at SkS? The science is quite clear on the tropospheric hotspot. So... 1) Every measure of the atmosphere shows warming. Surely you agree with that. Even the BEST study is apparently coming out with the exact same results. For the rest, I suggest you check out Dispelling two myths about the tropospheric hot spot. All your questions are answered there. Remember: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Time to get skeptical and look at the science. -
Rob Honeycutt at 07:01 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
between the lines... I think there are people here who want to reinterpret what the founding fathers meant my separation of church and state as a rhetorical tool used on the general population. But the rhetoric is little more than that (IMO). When you get into the legal precedence of separation and original intent (which ironically is more of a "constructionist" - i.e., conservative - position) it's very clear what they meant with the first amendment. The challenges we have today, in the US, are relative to monied interests having tremendous influence in politics. But even then I think it's unlikely they'd be able to over turn established laws, even Roe v. Wade, much less alter the first amendment in any serious manner. What they (means the Koch's) is delay any kind of vote on a carbon tax by influencing enough votes in Congress to kill it. We'll see if Obama can pull off a major upset in 2012 and pull along a long list of progressives into office with him. THAT is what will be needed in order to get any kind of movement on carbon limits. -
ClimateWatcher at 06:58 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
#6 Rob, 1) The hotspot is NOT a fingerprint of AGW. Right. It is a finger print of ANY warming ( the models indicate a hot spot from CO2 increase, solar increase, and albedo change). So either there is no warming ( since there is no hot spot ) or there is warming, but the models are seriously in error. 2) The hotspot is difficult to pin down. If no hot spot was occurring, it would certainly be difficult to pin down. 3) It has been indirectly measured. Were this indirect measurement accurate, one would have to ask why it was so contradictory to RAOB -and- MSU (both UAH and RSS), which agree fairly closely. -
L.J. Ryan at 06:33 AM on 22 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
725 Tom Curtis 720 partial re-post What if we removed the pot of water and simply inverted a larger empty pot over the red hot burner, i.e. no conduction. By your supposition, the burner should get hotter...correct? What is the temperature of the top (actual bottom) of the pot? Would the burner get hotter then 500C? What if we directed the burner toward your magic box. Would the outside of the box, insulation pulled back for sampling, be hotter then 500C -
luminous beauty at 06:33 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
MattJOr Einstein's denial of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics?
OT but a pet peeve of mine. Einstein was not in denial over the Copenhagen Interpretation. He was skeptical in the best scientific tradition. His skepticism led to the formulation of the EPR paradox, which, although it hasn't led to any widely accepted global interpretation of QD providing an algebraic, as opposed to probabilistic, solution to quantum wave function collapse as Einstein had hoped, did demonstrate the incompleteness of the Copenhagen Interpretation, and has led to profound discovery and ongoing research in QD. -
L.J. Ryan at 05:42 AM on 22 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom Curtis 720 You said: "In this situation, the heating element will be glowing slightly red, showing a temperature of about 500 degrees C." Do you really think the water boils because of "lid" forcing. If you made the lid transparent to IR from 100C to 500C, would the water still boil? I say yes. But before I endeavor to explain this scientifically sound principle, I'll let you reconsider your latest GHG analogy. hint...pressure cooker. What if we removed the pot of water and simply inverted a larger empty pot over the red hot burner, i.e. no conduction. By your supposition, the burner should get hotter...correct? What is the temperature of the top (actual bottom) of the pot? What if we directed the burner toward your magic box. Would the burner get hotter then 500C? -
L.J. Ryan at 05:40 AM on 22 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom Curtis 718 You said: " the photon does not increase its energy. Rather, if you feed in one photon per time interval, at equilibrium there will be four photons in the box, each with the same energy, and hence the total radiant energy in the box will be four times that which is fed in in each time interval." I did not specify a rate, you did. A single photon will transverse the box and/or absorbed and re-radiated countless times within a second...so why no increase in energy? Is there a minimum energy for your box? -
dana1981 at 05:38 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
NYJ #22 - well said. CW #23 - The planet is made up of both land and oceans. Please stop cherrypicking whichever is most convenient for you to make your incorrect argument. -
Don Gisselbeck at 05:32 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Mr Thompson forgot "Al Gore is fat". But seriously, I really hope he and the other "climate skeptics" are right. I would love to still be skiing the Salamander and Stanton Glaciers in late summer ten years from now. I have even allowed myself some hope as I have seen them gain snow the last few years. Nothing exposes this hope as vain and deluded like the arguments used by the various "skeptics" reported and posted here. The endless repetition of long ago destroyed arguments, the repeated proof of the D-K effect, the inability to find facts a bicycle mechanic (me) can find in seconds scares me as much as any projection made by "warmists". -
ClimateWatcher at 05:16 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
#21 Dana, We are using different periods, but certainly for SST data you can compare the greater warming rate of 1910-1945 (0.41C), with the slightly lesser warming rate from 1975-2010 (0.39C) GISS land/sst of course does indicate a lesser Early Twentieth Century warming than contemporary, but the CRU, missing from your chart, does not. -
between the lines at 05:16 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Rob, and MattJ, I can't speak about the USA, as I'm not in that country, but in one whose polity is considerably older. Yes, the general framework of laws moves quite slowly - far too slowly to keep up with accelerating technological, social and economic change, in sad fact. Seen from this angle, the slowness of change can be a problem. The interpretation of the laws is another issue superimposed on that, and I gather that in the US some are now trying to overturn the formerly deep-rooted separation of church and state, for example. Quite small alterations can have huge ramifications, rendering the polity vulnerable to organised lobbies. So I do not share your sanguine view of the stability of long-established laws. In the uk our politicians continually demonstrate that their main concern is for their own short term interests, and the voters, in the main, are no better. And so the ship of state is steered onto the rocks while the crew and passengers are busy partying. -
invicta at 05:15 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Thompson in his first answer writes "the vast bulk of the population have very little knowledge of science so they find it impossible to make judgements about even basic scientific issues let alone ones as complex as climate. This makes it easy for those with agendas to deceive us by using emotive statements rather than facts" So he got something right -
NewYorkJ at 05:05 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Solar and "ocean cycle" hypotheses can't explain the majority of the warming over the 20th century, and can explain very little of recent warming. The two hypotheses tend to contradict each other. If one maximizes the solar effect, this leaves little room for PDO/AMO warming in the early 20th century, thus little room for such an influence in the recent period - and we know the solar influence has been flat or negative (given the last decade) in the recent period. If one minimizes the solar effect, this allows for some other forcing to explain the early century warming. Assuming anthropogenic attribution is precise, let's arbitrarily assign the rest to PDO/AMO. But then one has to explain why cooling in mid-century was very modest. If solar variation has little influence, and PDO/AMO "forcing" is significant, what kept temperatures up? If most of the early century warming was PDO/AMO, where was the same magnitude of cooling? And why hasn't it cooled in the last decade? Why has global mean temperature shot up over the last 100+ years through complete ocean cycles? The magnitude of solar forcing does indeed have a fair amount of uncertainty. It's interesting to see contrarians start to move away from solar variation, which presumably has something to do with a very deep recent solar minimum, which has failed to reduce global mean temperature as hypothesized. But then they're back to trying to explain MWP/LIA. Fred Singer would not approve. The PDO/AMO indexes correspond with ENSO variation. In the late 70's, we had a transition from more la Ninas to more el Ninos. Much of the short-term trend over that period can be explained by that transition (similar to the early 1940's activity), but nothing more, and we've had a transition back since then, but strong warming over the entire period. -
ClimateWatcher at 04:47 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
#6 - Gary "our investigations...show a human fingerprint." What finger print(s) do you refer to? There should be warming due to increased CO2. I'm on board with that. But the only 'fingerprint' of the models that I know of is stratospheric cooling. And stratospheric cooling HAS occurred. But there's some nuance. Most of the stratospheric cooling since the MSU era began can be accounted for by the two 'step function' temperature drops associated with the Volcanic eruptions ( El Chichon and Pinatubo ). The years preceding the eruptions and the trend in the lower stratosphere since Pinatubo resolved ( say 1995 ) are warming or flat. Still, the trend is consistent with CO2 forcing, but is there another finger print you are thinking of?
Response:[dana1981]There are many anthropogenic global warming fingerprints
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les at 04:46 AM on 22 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Gilles - I am sorry yo have introduced data and to have confused you. I picked a point they where the same to get a benchmark. It's what scientists do. I thought you'd enjoy the point as it's just hand waving and broad brush strokes - your style. It it doesn't work for you, please feel free to present sone facts - of the level if rigger you require from others - to back up your assertions. -
dana1981 at 04:44 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Gilles #19 -"I don't see any significant anthropic temperature change before 1970 in your figure 1, so can you clarify this point ? where is the 0.64 °C anthropic warming in models ?"
The anthropogenic (this is the correct term by the way, not "anthropic") warming prior to 1970 is close to 0.2°C. The equilibrium figure I cited (0.64°C) does not take the ocean lag or non-CO2 forcings like aerosols into account. Regardless, Figure 1 shows that the vast majority of the 20th century warming was anthropogenic, so I still fail to see your point. The figures in the article answer your question. Pre-1970, the roughly 0.3°C warming is approximately half natural and half anthropogenic. ClimateWatcher:
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les at 04:39 AM on 22 March 2011Sea level rise is exaggerated
Well, no defence of your numbers. I think we can take them as false and without credibility. -
Paul D at 04:35 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
New battery cathode technology, promises very short charging times for current battery technologies (NiMH and Li-ion): http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110320164225.htm -
dana1981 at 04:31 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Nick #4 - thanks, good catch. Keen #5 - Thanks. It doesn't surprise me that this sort of junk is put on the web. What bugs me is that anybody takes it seriously! MattJ #7 - thanks, I previously used the phrase for Lubos Motl, but it applies even better to this document. -
Rob Honeycutt at 04:27 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
MattJ... But we aren't having to change any laws to do this. The solution only requires that the government enact a new law, which is far easier... given enough votes. No wonder the Koch-backed Libertarians are fighting this so hard! This is quite literally a new tax on their industry designed to make their product more expensive so that people will use less of it. The Koch's are being very smart business people. They know the only way to defend their prodigious business is to get like-minded people into Congressional and Senate seats and stop any votes that would enact any kind of carbon tax. Ultimately I think they are going to fail in that effort because they are having to go to such extreme lengths to do this. They are quickly alienating moderates in the US. My prediction is that Obama will be reelected in 2012 along with majorities in both houses again. That is when we are going to see, probably not cap and trade, but a cap and dividend law go into effect. -
MattJ at 04:26 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
@KeenOn350- If your approach to political science were as scientific as your approach to climate science, (or even just as close as scientific as possible, for those quibblers who deny that it is a science), you would not be surprised. This is situation NORMAL. Most people just do not understand the idea of believing only what is proven, by the best 'scientific' method available, to be true. On the contrary: they have a strong habit of first deciding what they want to believe, and then looking for 'facts' that encourage them to persist in this belief. In fact, it takes many people long training in the scientific disciplines to overcome this habit. Not even all scientists do. Remember Linus Pauling on Vitamin C? Or Einstein's denial of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics? But what I really wanted to say is that though the point by point refutations in this article are all good, and I will no doubt remember some of them, what REALLY sticks is that excellent summary of the whole mess to be refuted: "Gish gallop of Moncktonian proporations"! Now THAT will stick, but only because I already know who Monckton is and what a "Gish gallop" is. -
GaryB at 04:26 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Climatewatcher, whether the current warming is unprecedented or not is irrelevant to determining the cause. It's only relevance is when it convinces us to investigate the cause, which it has done. You can actually drop the concern over the shape of the hockey stick, our investigations independent of that shape show a human fingerprint. -
grypo at 04:15 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@MattJ I agree with you about the Koch Brothers. They have destroyed the individualistic movement in the US over the last 30 or so years. But it goes beyond them hijacking an idealized version freedom, it is about replacing the pursuit of maximizing individual liberty through principle with a over-reaching trust in market fundamentalism. -
Berényi Péter at 04:13 AM on 22 March 2011It's not us
In the advanced version of The human fingerprint in global warming dana1981 writes: "Trenberth et al. (2009) used satellite data to measure the Earth's energy balance at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) and found that the net imbalance was 0.9 Watts per square meter". This proposition is false. What Trenberth has actually found in said paper is this: "There is a TOA imbalance of 6.4 W m−2 from CERES data and this is outside of the realm of estimates of global imbalances that are expected from observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere" That is, Trenberth says satellite data are useless for measuring Earth's energy balance. Then he continues: "The TOA energy imbalance can probably be most accurately determined from climate models and is estimated to be 0.85 ± 0.15 W m−2". So. The energy imbalance is not measured, it is determined using computational climate models. Then, what he actually did to satellite data is described like this: "An upper error bound on the longwave adjustment is 1.5 W m−2, and OLR was therefore increased uniformly by this amount in constructing a best estimate. We also apply a uniform scaling to albedo such that the global mean increase from 0.286 to 0.298 rather than scaling ASR directly, as per Trenberth (1997), to address the remaining error. Thus, the net TOA imbalance is reduced to an acceptable but imposed 0.9 W m−2 (about 0.5 PW)". That is, he increased both OLR and albedo relative to actual data by amounts he considered acceptable in order to arrive at an imposed value of TOA imbalance. Therefore it's not true he has "found that the net imbalance was 0.9 Watts per square meter", but took a value based on model calculations and imposed it on satellite measurements. What Trenberth did is questionable, but defensible in a sense. Whenever you have next to useless data with unknown but large error margins, you either throw it away or do odd things to it in the hope at least something can be saved. If the data are as expensive to collect as CERES data are, NASA scientists have no choice but follow the latter path. On the other hand grave misrepresentation of Trenberth's pain as it is put by dana1981 above, is indefensible. Calculations can be verified against measurements, but they can never be verified against (the same!) calculations. That is, Trenberth's figure of 0.9 W/m2 net imbalance at TOA is still an unverified claim. There is an important difference in science between true and false statements. The latter kind implies anything along with its own negation, therefore it's a bit ill suited for deriving meaningful results. -
MattJ at 03:59 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@Honeycutt "Once laws take effect it's very hard to change them under our system of government." That is the problem. Now we are up against a problem so severe, we cannot afford to wait that long. Since we did no act in time, the whole world is going to be faced with more stress than any of the world words, more harm than any since the Black Death. Democracy is not going to survive this huge sea change.
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