Professor David Karoly of the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences is an expert on climate change, so like every other scientist who has read Ian Plimer's error-filled book, he was appalled at how bad it was. His review:
Now let me address some of the major scientific flaws in Plimer's arguments. He claims 'it is not possible to ascribe a carbon dioxide increase to human activity' and 'volcanoes produce more CO2 than the world's cars and industries combined'. Both are wrong. Burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide enriched with carbon isotope C12and reduced C13 and essentially no C14, and it decreases atmospheric oxygen, exactly as observed and as Plimer states on pages 414 and 415. Scientists have estimated emissions from volcanoes on land for the last 50 years and they are small compared with total global emissions from human sources.
Plimer even argues that the recent sources must be underwater volcanoes. This is not the case, because the net movement of carbon dioxide is from the atmosphere to the ocean, based on measurements that the concentration of dissolved carbon dioxide in the ocean is less than in the atmosphere. In addition, measurements show that the concentrations of two other long-lived greenhouse gases with human-related sources, methane and nitrous oxide, have increased markedly over the last 200 years, at the same time as the increases in carbon dioxide. This is not possible due to sources from underwater volcanoes. ...
Plimer writes repeatedly that global warming ended in 1998, that the warmth of the last few decades is not unusual, and that satellite measurements show there has been no global warming since 1979. He is correct that on time scales of the last 100 million years, the recent global-scale warmth is not unusual. However, it is unusual over at least the last 1,000 years, including the Medieval warming. Plimer makes the mistake of using local temperatures from proxy evidence rather than considering data from the whole globe at the same time. The report of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2006, cited by Plimer, states 'Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all individual locations, were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since AD 900.'
We do not expect significant warming to always occur for short periods, such as since 1998. Natural climate variations are more important over short periods, with El Nino causing hotter global-average temperatures in 1998 and La Nina cooler global temperatures in 2007 and 2008. Global-average temperature for the current decade from surface observations and from satellite data is warmer than any other decade with reasonable data coverage. Plimer is wrong to write 'Not one of the IPCC models predicted that there would be cooling after 1998'. Actually, more than one-fifth of climate models show cooling in global average temperatures for the period from 1998 to 2008.
Plimer writes that solar activity accounts for some 80% of the global temperature trend over the last 150 years. This doesn't fit the observational evidence. Increases in solar irradiance would cause more warming in the daytime, in the tropics and in summer, as well as warming in the upper atmosphere, and these are not observed. Changes in solar irradiance and cosmic rays show a large 11-year sunspot cycle and negligible trend, but observed global temperatures show a large warming trend and small 11-year cycle.
Plimer is wrong again when he writes 'An enrichment in atmospheric CO2 is not even a little bit bad for life on Earth. It is wholly beneficial.' This is contradicted when he writes that the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum was associated with mass extinctions. There are many other errors, both large and small, including volcanoes emitting CFCs and that the Sun consists mainly of the same elements as the rocky planets. Many of the figures have mistakes, either in the caption or in the data, and have no sources provided.
Plimer will, of course, respond to this criticism by calling Karoly names, and claiming that no-one has criticised has science.
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Curiously, the "volcanoes emit more pollution than humans" line was first stated (to my knowledge) by Ronald Reagan as Governor of California, arguing that LA (home of smog) didn't need emissions standards on cars.
Loved the pithy final paragraph. A fair assessment, I reckon:
> Given the errors, the non-science, and the
> nonsense in this book, it should be
> classified as science fiction in any library
> that wastes its funds buying it. The book can
> then be placed on the shelves alongside
> Michael Crichton's *State of Fear*, another
> science fiction book about climate change
> with many footnotes. The only difference is
> that there are fewer scientific errors in
> *State of Fear*.
Karoly may be onto something here. However, since Al Gore is fat, Plimer is right and Karoly is wrong. QED.
The pseudo-sceptic talking point is that climate always varies such as with the Palaeocene-Eocene thermal maximum. They obviously don't have any problem with mass extinctions.
I believe car CO2 emissions are about 9% of the world total human emissions??
Which translates to about 2Gt CO2 per year.
The estimated total of volcano emissions is 0.3Gt of CO2 equiv per year i think?
So even if the 9% car figure is to high. You have to be very optimistic to reconcile volcano emissions with car+industry emissions.
"Natural climate variations are more important over short periods". Just watch the denialists quotemine this leaving off the "over short periods" and say "even David Karoly admits natural variation is more important than human emissions.
They have no shame.
Can you please, please, please lift the week long suspension on Janama just long enough to see how he responds to Karoly's stuff.
A couple of points.
Karoly says that one fifth of models have predicted cooling since 1998. Why then was so much opprobium heaped upon Keenleside et al by the good burghers of RealClimate when they published their 2008 Nature article predicting a temp hiatus for 10 years or so?
Karoly also, briefly, critizes Plimer for saying the sun consists of mainly the same elements as the planets. While I would agree that Plimer's prose is clunky here, he is not wrong overall in comparing the sun to planets and meteorites
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wxHN9jP-mNMC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=C…
>Jeremy C: Can you please, please, please lift the week long suspension on Janama just long enough to see how he responds to Karoly's stuff.
Don't worry, Cohenite should turn up shortly with plenty of satisfyingly imbecilic excuses for his beloved Dr. Plimer.
Dave Andrews said:"Karoly says that one fifth of models have predicted cooling since 1998. Why then was so much opprobium heaped upon Keenleside et al by the good burghers of RealClimate when they published their 2008 Nature article predicting a temp hiatus for 10 years or so?"
Because 4/5 of the models did not?
RealClimate has a post about what models do and do not say. They ALL say significant warming over the long term.
Dave Andrews tries to get sciency, linking to a google book:"While I would agree that Plimer's prose is clunky here, he is not wrong overall in comparing the sun to planets and meteorites."
That book shows that the composition of the sun is not the same as meteorites. Anybody who entertains that notion even for an attosecond is seriously stupid. The scale is logarithmic. In other words H is 11 orders of magnitude more abundant than Li.
The sun is a mass
Of wrought iron and brass
A gigantic plasma sorter
Each atom to its class
On Sunday after mass
And if you don't believe this you oughter!
We need its spots
We need its phase
To explain climate change
Because the clouds
And cosmic rays
Are all way out of range!
You wrote "...criticised has science.", therefore you must be wrong, and by association Karoly must be wrong!
Dave A. baits another hook
> why then was ...
Was it then?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/global-cooling-wa…
Remember, don't assume the starting claim is true and get hooked into argument about the consequences. When you meet a strawman beside the road, walk on by.
Except, Hank, Dave A. is all about such strawmen. He finds it amusing that flinging them out takes him almost no time relative to the time needed for others to refute them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
"Don't worry, Cohenite should turn up shortly with plenty of satisfyingly imbecilic excuses for his beloved Dr. Plimer. - Dan L.
Don't think so Dan. Cohers is still MIA after engaging in hand-to-hand combat with a short sequence of numbers,
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/05/whoosh.php#comment-1664460
Karoly is on the record stating that the only way he can see the global climate cooling over the next 100 years, is if an extra-terrestrial visitor hits earth and fills the atmosphere with dust.
I think this is quite a narrow-minded view, especially for an Earth Scientist.
I guess he just wants the world to understand, that a distinguished professor like himself, cannot think of any other explanation for global warming.
Of course, absence of proof does not mean proof of absence.
Karoly should mail this review to Steve Fielding. Not that Fielding really cares about the evidence, I suppose :-(
Earthtide: *"I think this is quite a narrow-minded view, especially for an Earth Scientist."*
Huh? You mean he should be more "broad-minded" and accept any old crap as an explanation of climatic variation?
You seem to subscribe to the "I don't know what's causing it but I just know it isn't us" school of climate science.
Oh, and by the way, here's the standard question for "sceptics": *What, for you, would constitute "proof" of anthropogenic global warming?*
Come on, spell it out. Theory backed by evidence obviously doesn't do it for you, so what does?
Earthtide at #17
If a distinguished professor with expertise on the subject of (insert topic here)* cannot think of any other explanation, it's probably because (strains, thinks hard, ummmm ... aha!) there isn't a better explanation.
*
Explanatory examples:
- if someone has a 45 degree bend halfway along their thigh, distinguished professors think the pallid and panting casualty probably has a broken femur.
- if the sun appears to travel across the sky, distinguished professors think the earth is probably rotating
- if a car starter motor makes a click without turning the engine, distinguished professors think the battery is probably flat.
In order to find some common ground, would you please indicate which bits of the history and philosophy of science since William of Occam you accept.
"If a distinguished professor with expertise on the subject of (insert topic here)* cannot think of any other explanation, it's probably because (strains, thinks hard, ummmm ... aha!) there isn't a better explanation."
True. There may not be a better one.
"if a car starter motor makes a click without turning the engine, distinguished professors think the battery is probably flat."
True. But have you checked the solenoid?
Meanwhile in Canberra the Greenhouse Mafia have [captured another soul](http://www.stevefielding.com.au/blog/comments/fielding_talks_to_wong_on…).
Earthtide,
If the solenoid is analogous to the Sun, cosmic rays, Milankovich cycles or any other understood agent, the answer is yes, he's check the solenoid.
Earthtide:
OK Mr broadmind, what forcing do you see could cause the global climate to cool over the next 100 years?
It's the solenoid that causes the click.
24
Yes it's the click. no argument there. Checked the battery terminals? Don't want RACV to come all that way to give you a lesson in electrolysis. That would be stupid.
if a car starter motor makes a click without turning the engine, there could be a hundred reasons......
You have a physical mechanism, but no proof. The reason you have no proof, is because there could be a hundred other possibilities......
if a car starter motor makes a click without turning the engine, there could be a hundred reasons......
He hates these cans!
There wasn't any argument that there's a click.
By the way Mr. broadmind, what forcing do you see could cause the global climate to cool over the next 100 years?
Steve Fielding says this on his blog:
and this:
It is a sad thing indeed that a senator, who holds the balance of power, not only is as ill-informed as Fielding is, but that he has no capacity to discern the truth for himself at this late stage of the situation.
He is using Denialist factoids that were discredited years ago, but that keep popping up in a nightmare game of whack-a-mole.
It just goes to show... one does not need to be intelligent, or even moderately informed, in order to hold a position of power and responsibility. It also demonstrates why, as futile as it seems, it is so important to repeatedly try to educate the ignorants who continuously parade out the long-ago refuted Denialist 'facts' as if they were some newly revealed magical insight into the state of science that scientists themselves have somehow failed to notice.
God/Zeus/Cernunos/Gaia/Dollar help us...
I hope that at some point in the proceedings Fielding is confronted by a scientist who actually works in climatology. He might actually learn something, and in the process have the good grace to be embarrassed about his muddleheaded acceptnce of the rubbish to which he currently gives far too much credence.
"There wasn't any argument that there's a click."
None whatsoever. But just because it makes the clink sound, doesn't mean the battery is flat (or more specifically that the battery only has enough charge to work the solenoid, and not the starter motor). That's an assumption.
Dave Andrews writes:
Plimer didn't just say the sun was made out of the same elements as the planets. No one disputes that matter everywhere is made out of the chemical elements. Plimer endorsed the "Iron Sun" theory, which is crackpottery of the purest ray serene.
The sun's outer layers, by mass, are about 70% hydrogen, 28% helium, and 2% everything else, of which a small fraction is iron. The inner layers have a higher proportion of helium and a lower proportion of hydrogen. But the sun IS NOT primarily made of iron like a meteorite. This is something that is so well known, to dispute it shows one to be utterly clueless about astronomy. Plimer is an example.
Earthtide, would you be asking your car mechanic all this?
Would you?
Or would you suspect, if he'd said "well, the only possible reason left is the battery is dead", he'd checked other things too?
And if you DID continually ask him this, do you think he'd be doing a good job in future for you fixing the car, or do you think he'd tack on 150hours work checking to see if unicorns had worked their way into the engine manifold???
Earthtide #17:
"Karoly is on the record stating that the only way he can see the global climate cooling over the next 100 years, is if an extra-terrestrial visitor hits earth and fills the atmosphere with dust. I think this is quite a narrow-minded view, especially for an Earth Scientist."
Bully for you. Now, FYI there is a substantial difference between someone who has considered all the possible causes of the observed phenomena of climate change and used their mind to narrow them down to the most likely (Karoly), and someone whose breadth of vision and understanding is so selective that they call this "narrow-minded" (you). To return to your car analogy, where Karoly has checked everything else and has found that a fresh battery starts the engine, you're still claiming he should have established whether the tyres were correctly inflated.
Doing this once can be forgiven as a mistake; more than once is importunate.
Earthtide :
Looks like I have to be a bit more pedantic. You said:
The fact that there's a click (presumably observed coming from the starter motor/solenoid) shows that the solenoid is most probably working (always in my experience). Thus the click is already a check of the solenoid.
By the way, I haven't yet heard anything about what forcing you see could cause the global climate to cool over the next 100 years? You wouldn't want to be accused of being narrow-minded, would you?
>if a car starter motor makes a click without turning the engine, there could be a hundred reasons......
But that is just an event, like lightening or a hurricane.
If you took thousands of those click events over a period of time on similar vehicles, you would come up with statistical probabilities as to what is the most likely cause.
You guys simply don't understand Earthtide.
What he means is that it might be galactic cosmic rays causing the car to not stop. This should be checked before checking the battery.
Or perhaps the 2nd law of thermodynamics no longer holds. Or gravity. Maybe someone in Haiti has stuck pins through a fetish in the shape of the car.
One must check all of these and prove that each and every one can't be the cause BEFORE YOU CHECK THE BATTERY. Even if the battery is flat, it could be one of those other unknown things that has caused the battery to go flat. Therefore, you can't say with certainty that the battery itself is the cause. It's most likely a symptom of some sort of sky fairy effect we haven't been able measure yet.
If I was Earthtide's mechanic I'd do one of two things:
#1 Either throw him out of my shop or...
#2 Try every single suggestion he comes up with, but keep the meter going on the old cash register.
Steve Bloom,
Didn't RC get rather hot under the collar about Keenleyside et al then? Rather than a response in the literature they went overboard about making bets which soon deflected the conversation from the substantive issues.
BPL,
I haven't read any of Dr Manuel's papers, though he seems to have been getting them published for some considerable time, and I will now do some reading. Have you read any of them or are you, as usual, relying on the consensus view?
Of course, they had a second post diving into the substantive issues ... which you sneakily failed to mention.
#17 "Remember, don't assume the starting claim is true and get hooked into argument about the consequences. When you meet a strawman beside the road, walk on by."
Hank, I reckon instead of only walking on by, it is better to put a match to the strawman first. It reduces the burden of mis-information for others to face when traveling on the same road.
As for Plimer's book, I have a copy and it is pretty average (to put it politely). Chasing up footnote references and reading them, only to go "WTF?" when comparing against the Plimer-twist; well, there is only so many times a person can do that before getting the message.
Actually I am still quite surprised that Plimer would write a book like this; he surely has demonstrated the capacity to critically analyse in his past geology career, so why he didn't write a shorter book which concentrated on his argument, accurately supported by the references to the scientific literature, is a mystery to me. Of course, such a book would be very thin with few high-quality references.
Before bothering with Plimer's tome, I'd recommend reading Burrough's book "Climate Change in Prehistory", Imbrie and Imbrie "Ice Ages", Mark Bowen's "Thin Ice", and Schmidt and Wolfe's "Climate Change". All are better written, and the references (that I've chased up) are consistent with the main text doing the citing. Editing quality is way better in these books too. Oh, one other that I've yet to read properly, but looks interesting is Steven Mithen's "After the Ice: A global human history, 20,000--5000 BC."
"But that is just an event, like lightening or a hurricane.
If you took thousands of those click events over a period of time on similar vehicles, you would come up with statistical probabilities as to what is the most likely cause."
Very good. Most likely the battery is flat. So the distinguished professor goes and buys a new battery for $80,
replaces the old one, and the car will probably turn over.
Very likely. And even if the assumption is wrong, at least he has a spare battery....
What if you can't buy a new battery. What if the professor is on a field trip in remote central Australia, studying extra-terrestrial impacts?
After turning the key and hearing the dreaded "click" sound, the professor accepts the most likely scenario, and begins his ill-fated journey into the middle of nowhere.....
>What if you can't buy a new battery. What if the professor is on a field trip in remote central Australia, studying extra-terrestrial impacts?
>
>After turning the key and hearing the dreaded "click" sound, the professor accepts the most likely scenario, and begins his ill-fated journey into the middle of nowhere.....
Making the flat battery an...
To make the 'flat battery' analogy work, we'd have to say there will be serious consequences to delay repair.
Say, famine, disease, war, crash the economy. And you'd have to say that repairing the battery is relatively cheap compared to probable consequence of not repairing the battery (as well as there being lots of 'no-regrets' options for starting to repairing the battery).
Bernard @28 - Fielding is showing a lot of ignorance at a stage of the debate when someone in his position ought to be informed and up to date. It's not like global warming has just been sprung on him by surprise although I suspect he may have been the victim of some recent hard lobbying. The IPCC reports would have been a good start for him, back when they were released, and the CSIRO or Bureau of Meteorology. Looking to Ocean Heat Content - or borehole temperatures or trends in glaciers and icesheets or more properly all those and more - ought to be good for him. Just don't let him get diverted by the denialist version of the Argo float sensor problems.
Every last one of our elected representatives ought to have made the effort to be accurately informed on this and it's disturbing to think that behind the walls of party solidarity there are probably many more than Fielding and Joyce who aren't.
re 43, how about he's late for work, this is the third time and if he's late again, he'll be sacked.
Now he COULD move house to get a job or scrape up some work for McD's, but he'll lose his job if this problem isn't fixed soon.
Meanwhile he wonders if the dinosaurs have something to do with his car not working and asks the mechanic to look behind the credenza...
After all, buying a new battery will COST him money!
>What if you can't buy a new battery. What if the professor is on a field trip in remote central Australia, studying extra-terrestrial impacts?
It might not be the battery!
The analysis of all the causes of clicking in the numerous vehicles would give a likely cause, not what this event is caused by.
That is about as far as the analogy would go compared to climate change.
Dave Andrews writes:
I'm relying on having studied astronomy since 1973 and written solar models myself. I don't have to read Dr. Manuel's papers. For him to be right, everything we've learned about spectroscopy since about 1870 would have to be wrong, nuclear physicists would have to be wrong about how fusion works, pretty much all of stellar evolution theory would have to be wrong. It's as likely that Dr. Manuel is right as that the world really is flat after all.
I'm not being close-minded. I'm exhibiting common sense. Try to follow my example. Some fringe science is worth investigating. The idea that the sun is really made out of iron is not.
Mark @ 45,
A better analogy is that he's got a dirty great irregular black-blue-red mole that has double its size in recent months.
He's visited his dermatlogist, who says that he's sure it's malignant melanoma. He's called best minds in their most competent fields and they agree with >90% that its malignant melanoma. If you cut it out now you have a better than even chance of survival. If you delay the survival probability drops dramatically.
A his response is, "have you checked the solenoid?"
He has published a number of papers, but none have anything to do with the Iron Sun hypothesis as far as I can see, other than a couple of arXiv conference paper preprints from 2004 and one 2009 paper in... [drum roll please] Energy & Environment.
The fact that someone has published good work in one or more field(s) does not prove that everything they say is worth listening to.
Dunc,
"The fact that someone has published good work in one or more field(s) does not prove that everything they say is worth listening to."
Couldn't agree more.
BPL,
Plimer's belief in an 'iron' sun might be irrational. But you hold a belief which many people would say is irrational and has no basis in science, ie, the belief in God. Should I, therefore, reject everything else you say? Of course not.
You should do Plimer the same courtesy.
BTW, during the early part of the 20th C the consensus was that the sun was composed of iron.
The "DA's" speaks:
"Plimer's belief in an 'iron' sun might be irrational"
Nope, it's insane.
There IS a difference.
And to be honest, he could believe in Pastafarianism and STILL have more people and more science on his side than Plimer.
This is not the case, however, since Christianity is a lot bigger and does a lot of good in its name.
AND NEITHER ARE A SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT!!!!!
Whereas Plimer's raving lunacy IS.
Ergo, Christianity doesn't "fail science" because it's not part of it. Plimer's frootloopery does because it is trying to be.
BTW, only because they didn't know about nuclear fusion, dipstick. IIRC, it was actually thought that the sun glowed because of the loss of potential energy as the sun collapsed from its diffuse disk. Now how much iron did they think was in the sun?
Ah, not much:
http://www.thesurfaceofthesun.com/
QUOTE:
n fact astronomers of 100 years ago believed in a predominantly iron sun, most notably Dr. Kristian Birkeland. Dr. Birkeland studied the Northern Lights and became interested in the electrical interaction between the sun and the earth. His early lab research with an electrified iron sphere suspended in a vacuum ("terella") led to images that are remarkably similar to modern satellite x-ray images of the sun.
ENDQUOTE
So the sun was magnetic and iron was magnetic.
And you think this was their proof???
Another quote:
From his study of sunspots and their uneven rotation pattern, Galileo surmised that he must be looking at some type of gas atmosphere.
ENDQUOTE
And nothing else about theories of the sun being made of iron around the 1900's.
Care to elucidate, DA?
Dave Andrews: Please explain the difference between a falsified (as in, falsifiable and has been falsified) belief and an unfalsifiable one. Seeing as science deals with falsifiable claims, knowing the difference would be the first step in identifying what is unscientific.
Wasn't "the skills required to perform a task competently are often the same skills required to recognize competence in the task" a basic premise behind Dunning-Kruger?
Mark,
"BTW, only because they didn't know about nuclear fusion, dipstick"
I'll ignore the gratuitous insult, but think closely about what you say here. You are acknowledging that the state of science at the time, based on the best available evidence at the time, was unaware of important science that would completely overturn the conclusions of the time.
You need to ask yourself, given all the uncertainties we currently have about how the Earth's climate system truly operates, whether we are really in a better situation today. But more importantly whether we can really take long term serious policy decisions based upon our current understanding?
Dave,
Our present understanding of our climate, like our understanding of astrophysics has improved exponentially in the last century.
We aren't shooting in the dark.
You, however, are.
e
Most of us don't understand the chaotic motions of water in a pot on a stove. That doesn't mean we should assume it won't warm up from the heat.
Also, we already have a serious long term policy decision operating. It's called increasing the atmospheric CO2 level regardless of the consequences.
Dave Andrews makes excuses:"You are acknowledging that the state of science at the time, based on the best available evidence at the time, was unaware of important science that would completely overturn the conclusions of the time."
Well, that puts the denialists right out, since they have exactly the same physics to use, just incompetently applying it.
The discovery of fusion did NOT invalidate the idea that gravitational collapse can give off tremendous amounts of energy. That is how fusion begins in stars. Also, the new physics was discovered in regimes of temperature, pressure and size (nuclear) beyond the experiments of the time. The physics of climate is well within the range of theories that have worked with no hint of problem for 80 years.
The DA whines:
"I'll ignore the gratuitous insult, "
Uh, you insult someone's beliefs. Pull that plank out your face first, windbag.
"You are acknowledging that the state of science at the time, based on the best available evidence at the time, was unaware of important science that would completely overturn the conclusions of the time."
Yes, because this is SCIENCE, not, as denialism is, DOGMA.
Now, when someone comes up with an idea and it doesn't pan out, it DOESN'T GET ADDED.
If there is NO idea, you don't go "Well, it could be something else, so I'll just say it isn't what we think it is". Which is what you want us to do.
Now, got an alternative theory? Post it.
AMB #48. no I think mine was a better analogue. After all, he cannot guarantee he'll have a job to go to just like, if there's some flooding, there may be no place to move to. It's not liable to kill him directly, but his situation could get worse and death by suicide, exposure (can't get a home if you ain't got a job), violence (living on the street you gotta be careful) and his family are more likely to have a problem from it than him (if you live in the slums or on the street, your children are unlikely to have a better start in life than you).
Guys, you're missing the big picture with regard to the car not working. It is actually good for the driver if the car doesn't work because he can get fitter by walking and saves money on petrol.
"Guys, you're missing the big picture with regard to the car not working. It is actually good for the driver if the car doesn't work because he can get fitter by walking and saves money on petrol."
Hippie!
You just want to ban cars, don't you!
;-)
Anyway, Earth will be too busy asking if the mechanich has checked whether the chackra is misaligned to the local ley lines, causing the problem to walk to work.
Mark,
I did not insult BPL's beliefs. I said that many would regard his belief as irrational but did that therefore negate everything he said? And my answer was "Of course not"
To make the analogy more appropriate, how about we imagine him presenting his beliefs as science in a junk science journal? To make it even more appropriate, how about we change his beliefs from religion to something more "sciency" like Hollow Earth? What happens then?
As a person who has a very practical reason for knowing "the truth" about global warming, I found the point about CO2 production very interesting as I had heard the Plimer claim in other contexts.
However, I found the Karoly "rebuttal" of Plimer rather weak on the main points. For example, if CO2 is only a very minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, then that's a major point particularly vis a vis the prior point.
Karoly's rebuttal of Plimer's claim that 'Not one of the IPCC models predicted that there would be cooling after 1998' is "Actually, more than one-fifth of climate models show cooling in global average temperatures for the period from 1998 to 2008". This is one of Karoly's best rebuttal points!?! At best, it says that about 80% of the models were wrong. Further, Karoly did not say that the approximate 20% were IPCC models or even pre-1998 models used by strong global warming proponents. From many sources, it seems that the foundation of the global warming thesis has been their computer models which have failed miserably to predict the future.
Karoly's comments about short periods also undermines his main arguments for global warming.
It's important to me to know if global warming is based on good science, but so far the theory has proved weak and the empirical evidence argues against it.
Nick #63: "For example, if CO2 is only a very minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, then that's a major point particularly vis a vis the prior point."
Nick, where does Karoly say CO2 is only a minor contributor, and what is the "prior point" you are referring to?
Nick,
README
Nick:
How on earth does this empirical evidence:
1. 0.75 dec C warming since 1900
2. CO2 increased from 296 ppm in 1900 to 387 ppm in 2009
argue against it?
"Now, got an alternative theory? Post it."
Don't you mean *publish?*
Nick,
Sounds like you might have made some assumptions about AGW science that are not correct. (Plimer implicitly conveys a bunch of incorrect stuff, like models suggest CO2 will produce monotonic warming, and models don't account for other forcing factors).
It might help to think about effect/strength of CO2e in different time scales. The rise in CO2 over the short term produces smaller forcing than several natural cycles (eg.g ENSO). However, unlike natural cycles, the growth of CO2e keeps forcing temperature in one direction.
Hence, during the current phase of La Nina combined with solar minima we get temperature lower than the last few previous years. However, because of accumulated warming (accumulated CO2e) this slump in temp leaves us still close to record high recorded temperatures.
"Nick,
Sounds like you might have made some assumptions about AGW science that are not correct."
Assumption detected:
"The rise in CO2 over the short term produces smaller forcing than several natural cycles (eg.g ENSO)."
Assumption detected:
"However, unlike natural cycles, the growth of CO2e keeps forcing temperature in one direction."
Assumption detected:
"Hence, during the current phase of La Nina combined with solar minima we get temperature lower than the last few previous years."
Assumption detected:
"However, because of accumulated warming (accumulated CO2e) this slump in temp leaves us still close to record high recorded temperatures."
Earthtide,
I look forwarded, to your correction of any erroneous assumptions.
BTW,
your following assumptions are in error:
That it is assumed that:
1)The rise in CO2 over the short term produces smaller forcing than several natural cycles (eg.g ENSO);
2)unlike natural cycles, the growth of CO2e keeps forcing temperature in one direction;
3)during the current phase of La Nina combined with solar minima we get temperature lower than the last few previous years;
4)because of accumulated warming (accumulated CO2e) this slump in temp leaves us still close to record high recorded temperatures.
These are not assumptions. These issues are well established, with a large body of overwhelming evidence.
1)The rise in CO2 over the short term produces smaller forcing than several natural cycles (eg.g ENSO);
*are you suggesting ENSO is a forcing (like roy spencer?)*
2)unlike natural cycles, the growth of CO2e keeps forcing temperature in one direction;
*the attribution of human induced climate change is impossible without attribution of natural cycles (still waiting on the latter)*
3)during the current phase of La Nina combined with solar minima we get temperature lower than the last few previous years;
*frankly, the solar cycle unlikely to have much radiative impact*
4)because of accumulated warming (accumulated CO2e) this slump in temp leaves us still close to record high recorded temperatures.
*yes it is warm, and the rise in co2 may be driving it, but its still an assumption, understand?*
These are not assumptions. These issues are well established, with a large body of overwhelming evidence.
*They are assumptions, without knowing what the planet would be doing without our presence, may never be understood, so you win, for now....*
re 72: (and assuming your comments are the italicized ones)
#1 Nope, it's not a climate forcing, it's a weather one. Doesn't last long enough to be climatologically significant. Rather like the Day/Night cycle isn't but the polar axial tilt (summer/winter) is.
#2 The IPCC did a report on attribution. You're waiting because you're avoiding reading, not because the answer isn't there. (PS no more than 30% of the change is sun incuded and around 60% from CO2, likely more).
#3 "But it's the sun!!!". A 0.1% variation is what you get from sunspot cycles. That's 0.3 Watts change, IIRC. cf 2Watts for the 50% increase in CO2 over 50 years shows that the sunspot cycle can have as large an effect as 7 years of CO2 increase.
#4 It's an assumption that the sun will rise tomorrow. Until it happens. But that assumption is, like CO2 warming, based on known repeatable science. Understand?
#5 Yes, we do know what it would be doing without us. It wouldn't be drilling for oil. So take that one element out and you have 280ppm CO2. With that element, 380ppm. Now, we know CO2 is a greenhouse gas and 280ppm will cause ~6-8C warming, adding 1/3 will add something over 2C to the warming of the earth.
DA whines: "I did not insult BPL's beliefs. I said that many would regard his belief as irrational"
Nope, they aren't irrational, since one of the core ones is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "love thy neighbour as thy brother".
Nothing irrational about that.
And many more would argue you're a whinging windbag. Does that mean you think you shouldn't have complained?
Earthtide writes
ENSO doesnât force global energy balance, but ENSO does influence the SST (sea surface temp) in a cyclic way, it distributes heat to and from the surface. And being a cycle, doesnât force SST in the same direction, hence doesnât accumulate its effects. In short, ENSO effects the global surface temperature, but not the total energy balance.
These have been studies and quantified, see AR4 WG1.
there is no likely about it, its is measured and found to have minor effect, and as it is cyclical its effects do not accumulate.
It is a well established hypotheses with overwhelming evidence. It has been scrutinized more than any other field of science, and stood-up under that close examination.
Hence IPCC >90% confidence in CO2e being the dominant driver of current warming trend.
#73
Not a bad idea. :)
An 'Intergovernmental Panel on Day and Night' or IPDN
Very Nice! I bet the gravy wouldn't be to thick either. Everyone could jump on the train. Completely retarded
(i.e. Trenberth and Hoar (1996), humans would be changing the length of day.
As for the co2 wonder gas, I've heard it may also be responsible for gravity.
First computer model of sunspots (hope link works):
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/nsf-scf061809.php
I'm guessing they didn't model a big lump of iron to do it.
Which means it will be another model that is wrong for some peeps.
Earthtide, it's been 3 days and we still haven't heard anything from you about what forcing you see could cause the global climate to cool over the next 100 years.
Since you accused Karoly of being narrow-minded for this I guess that must mean you are narrow-minded.
Why should we care what anyone says who is narrow-minded by his own standard?
"As for the co2 wonder gas, I've heard it may also be responsible for gravity.
Posted by: Earthtide"
Any mass is responsible for gravity.
I can't tell you why it will cool over the next 100 years, for the simple reason: I can't tell you why it's warming now.
But as plimer says, *it's dynamic*
Sorry Karoly, extra-terrestrial impacts not required.
besides, impacts could result in warming.
"I can't tell you why it will cool over the next 100 years, for the simple reason: I can't tell you why it's warming now.
But as plimer says, it's dynamic"
Uh, the 100m sprint is dynamic.
Is that why it's warming???
What a load of dingo's kidneys you spout. Can someone get rid of this idiot? He's not even funny any more.
Mark @ 81,
I completely agree. This post @80 is either complete nonsense, or so brilliant that I can't understand a word of it.
Mark,
Whatever you may say a great number of people would regard a belief in God as being irrational. That does not mean that those same people would not think it right to treat others as they themselves would want to be treated nor not be generous in their attitude towards fellow human beings.
History often demonstrates the opposite in fact - thatis, it is religious zealots (of all religions) who are the most intolerant of their fellow humans.
Mark,
Actually, my last post might have been a bit harsh on religious zealots :-) because of course such people do not exist in a vacuum and they rely on a bedrock of orthodoxy (consensus) to give them legitimacy.
Shorter Dave Andrews: My opinions on climate change are being shot to pieces, so I'll attempt to distract and divide the people who are humiliating me by attempting to whip up a debate about religion.
Mark, take your red herring and shove it.
Earthtide:
I think I understand Earthtide's problem. He does not understand the difference between climate and weather.
Weather does not require external input to change. That's why he says "extra-terrestrial impacts not required" because he's thinking about weather.
Climate, on the other hand, requires a change in forcing to change. Earthtide does not yet understand this.
"Weather does not require external input to change. That's why he says "extra-terrestrial impacts not required" because he's thinking about weather."
Your obsession with equilibrium is simplifying...
I say again, if only we knew what the planet was up to.
We don't. There is no *initial* state, we inherited a changing planet, and change it does.
Climate changes for a reason. Give it a reason and it will change. What does it take to get this through to you?
Shorter Earthtide:
We don't know anything, so we know everything will be fine.
"Climate changes for a reason. Give it a reason and it will change. What does it take to get this through to you?"
What caused the *Younger Dryas* event? Explain the physics.
"We don't know anything, so we know everything will be fine."
Perhaps.
Earthtide says,
> "We don't know anything, so we know everything will be fine."
> Perhaps.
Ah, so apparently that's some 'skeptic' 'logic' Earthtide can get behind.
Here's some more:
"Hence IPCC >90% confidence in CO2e being the dominant driver of current warming trend."
Is the missing 10% a fair representation of the science we don't yet understand?
Of course not! Really, how could you not be skeptical?
"I say again, if only we knew what the planet was up to. We don't. There is no initial state, we inherited a changing planet, and change it does.
Posted by: Earthtide"
If only we knew what the planet was up to? We do: It's warming.
There is no initial state? Yes there is: if we stopped changing artificially the world, what would it be like?
We inherited a changing planet? No, on the scale of human history the world has been surprisingly static, except where we've lumbered in and knocked all the plates off the walls...
And change it does? Well, yes, if we force it to change, it will change. Now how about forcing it to change to something a little less inimical to your way of life?
> "Climate changes for a reason. Give it a reason and it will change. What does it take to get this through to you?"
>
> What caused the Younger Dryas event? Explain the physics.
Explain where "we cause a reason for the climate to change and it changes" becomes "we cause ALL REASONS for the climate to change".
Wheat farmers must make a killing in your neck of the woods...
The Younger Dryas change occurred for physical changes large enough to register globally.
We pump out enough CO2 to register globally.
The Younger Dryas caused climate change.
We cause climate change.
For people who keep complaining that the AGWers are "so fixated on ONE reason" and complain "it could be something else, just something we don't know about", they certainly hold to one-cause/one-reason themselves. Earth thinks that if we are the cause of ONE climate change, we MUST be the cause of ALL climate change. And, since we weren't around for some, we CANNOT have caused ALL climate change, therefore we cannot have caused ONE climate change.
We think of it as circular (yet broken!) logic, he likes to think of it as a seamless hole...
Earthtide,
You can put 90% in any risk assessment and see what it looks like. But you should also beware that its worse than that. It is >90%. And that from a very conservative organistion, with a very conservative vetting process.
The world was coming out of an ice-age from before that time to afterwards so climate forcing was changing. The Younger Dryas event was a bi-polar oscillation initiated by consequences of the deglaciation. i.e. the climate had a reason to change and it changed. It doesn't change by itself. If you're so fond of the notion that climate can change without a cause then point out a time when this happened.
i.e. We don't know anything, so perhaps everything will be fine.
Yes, but that doesn't mean the same thing.
If only we knew what the planet was up to? We do: It's warming.
*if you can't explain past warming, you can't explain present warming.*
There is no initial state? Yes there is: if we stopped changing artificially the world, what would it be like?
*no there isn't. the earth is always changing*
We inherited a changing planet? No, on the scale of human history the world has been surprisingly static, except where we've lumbered in and knocked all the plates off the walls...
* why has it been surprisingly static?*
And change it does? Well, yes, if we force it to change, it will change. Now how about forcing it to change to something a little less inimical to your way of life?
* if we if we if we if we if we if we if we if we if we*
What caused the Younger Dryas event? Explain the physics.
Explain where "we cause a reason for the climate to change and it changes" becomes "we cause ALL REASONS for the climate to change".
* the empirical evidence exists, we just haven't found it yet. one day we will know exactly how humans have influenced climate.*
Wheat farmers must make a killing in your neck of the woods...
The Younger Dryas change occurred for physical changes large enough to register globally.
We pump out enough CO2 to register globally.
The Younger Dryas caused climate change.
We cause climate change.
For people who keep complaining that the AGWers are "so fixated on ONE reason" and complain "it could be something else, just something we don't know about", they certainly hold to one-cause/one-reason themselves. Earth thinks that if we are the cause of ONE climate change, we MUST be the cause of ALL climate change. And, since we weren't around for some, we CANNOT have caused ALL climate change, therefore we cannot have caused ONE climate change.
We think of it as circular (yet broken!) logic, he likes to think of it as a seamless hole...
*yes, undoubtedly we do influence climate, that does not mean we are responsible for global warming*
95
What caused the Younger Dryas event?
The answer is simple. We don't know.
Let us know next time you get on a plane with a 90% chance of crashing. It'll be fun to watch.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
That doesn't mean we can't change it in an undesirable way.
98
I probably wouldn't get on the plane, if the pilot was planning on flying straight into some thunderstorms.
You make a scary point, but mine is also scary.
99
:) Exactly.
Earthtide,
How do you know there was a Younger Dryas event?
Explain the physics.
> if you can't explain past warming, you can't explain present warming.
Yes we can.
If you hold a blowtorch to a pot it will get hotter.
You don't have to know why the blowtorch is hot.
> why has it been surprisingly static?*
Because it's been surprisingly static.
> What caused the Younger Dryas event? Explain the physics.
Why? We're talking about CO2 causing the current warming, not about past climate changes. Current.
> the empirical evidence exists, we just haven't found it yet
No, we HAVE found the evidence for this one. The change of CO2 explains 60-85% of the warming. If it were something else, it would have to AT LEAST
a) explain why the CO2 effect is being hidden
b) why it too looks like CO2.
Your complaints are rather like Young Earth Creationists yibbering on about the evidence of paleontology. "It just *looks* like it's millions of years old!".
> yes, undoubtedly we do influence climate, that does not mean we are responsible for global warming
We're responsible for THIS one.
How else does "influencing climate" exhibit itself if not by changing the climate?
Like Ray on another thread, you are not genuine. That clip there from you shows why. You use weasel wording "responsible for global warming" rather than "responsible for this global warming event" because you can't be 100% wrong since we didn't cause the Younder Dryas and you hope that not being 100% wrong will be considered 100% right.
And if you are using "undoubtedly we do influence climate" (which is true and won't be argued against) you would not be saying "we are not responsible for this global warming" (which is what you want someone to think you're saying).
100
I do not disagree with you. Nice to see it works both ways.
103
you on the other hand, I disagree.
Listen very carefully. Tell me the reason *why* it has been static during the Holocene.
"Because it's been surprisingly static."
That is not an answer. You can't just say it is because it is.
> Listen very carefully. Tell me the reason why it has been static during the Holocene.
Why?
> I probably wouldn't get on the plane, if the pilot was planning on flying straight into some thunderstorms.
What does that have to do with a plane having a 90% chance of falling?
What you fail to notice you've said is that the mere CHANCE of your death is enough to motivate you.
Yet a 90% chance of killing someone else isn't good enough for you.
There's a word for that: misanthropy.
If I find a fossil and can't determine why the previously living inhabitant of the body that became mineralized died, then I can't explain any present deaths.
This person is not the brightest tide on the planet.
#106
You are beyond reason. why do you think every climate scientist on the planet wants to answer that question?
#108
If you come up with an analogy that is appropriate, let me know.
Shorter Ray:
If we're 90% confident that global warming is a problem, then the rational thing to do is to assume that global warming is not a problem! 10% > 90%! Galileo, here we come!
s/Ray/Earthtide/
Earthtide:
Your advice is to get on the plane, i.e. the 90+% risk of major changes in the climate.
Your attitude is scary.
Absence of evidence for what caused the Younger Dryas is not evidence of absence of cause for climate change. Do you always miss the point so easily?
Earthtide:
Absence of evidence for the cause of past warming is not evidence that there was an absence of cause for past warming. I'm glad you no longer disagree that there was a cause for past warming and that in general for the climate to change there must be a cause.
Thanks, that's what we're doing now with CO2.
re 109, I 'm not ASKING them. I'm asking YOU.
Why?
I notice that Earth hasn't disagreed with my diagnosis of misanthropy.
Therefore he agrees.
I think that kind of closes the box there and we don't need to answer him.
He isn't a human being.
Chris,
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
OMG the oft repeated mantra which can be used to justify anything and everything and is actually meaningless. On a par with the 'precautionary principle'.
117...
Actually meaningless?
Are you implying that if someone can not detect any danger by using their senses, no danger can exist?
115
Mark,
You are like the turd that wont flush.
If you remember, I didn't make the point that the Holocene has been surprisingly static, you did.
You were attempting to make the point that global warming is out of character.
However, if you don't know *why* the Holocene has been surprisingly static (i.e *the physical science*), then the comparison is of little use.
110 Earthtide,
Fires happened before humans appeared on the planet, therefore no fires are caused by humans.
Does *that* (false) analogy work?
117 Dave Andrews,
DA writes:
117 Dave Andrews,
I agree. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is nonsense. It *is* "evidence" of absence (but no more than that). What it should say is "Absence of evidence is not **proof** of absence".
"Evidence" and "proof" should not be confused.
(This crops up a lot in discussions about religion.)
121 MAB,
Really? It is clearly wrong, applying basic semantics and logic.
TS @ 122,
I understand the point you are making, but the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" logic relates to our ability to test.
The perspective you raise related to when we have overwhelming confidence in our tests. The long-hand explanation for my point is that when dealing with complex systems and proxies, we have less confidence in the understanding of what we are testing. Sometimes called error of interpretation.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/311/7003/485
http://tlt-swg.blogspot.com/2007/08/absence-of-evidence-is-not-evidence…
In relation to climate, we can't make the same observation for past climates changes that we can make for current climate change. Thus we should be aware that absence of evidence is more likely when looking past changes than current changes. We should be aware that not all these absences of evidence are evidence of absence.
120
Temperature changed before humans appeared on the planet, therefore temperature change may not be caused by humans.
Does that (true) analogy work?
TrueSceptic:
Earthide:
is not the same as:
Temperature changed before humans appeared on the planet, therefore no temperature changes are caused by humans.
Temperature changed before humans appeared on the planet, therefore temperature change may not be caused by humans.
Therefore:
"if you can't explain past warming, you can't explain present warming."
Because:
The present warming may be caused by a similar process associated with past warming, of which we cannot explain.
Did you go to school?
Shorter Earthtide:
10% is greater than 90%! 10% is greater than 90%! If you don't understand this, you're a turd that won't flush that didn't go to school! By the way, that wasn't a personal attack.
"...therefore temperature change may not be caused by humans."
Does that mean I can't put the kettle on for tea tomorrow?
129
Not if the IPCC gets their way. You will need a solar kettle the size of a fridge to make your tea.
Not if the IPCC gets their way. You will need a solar kettle the size of a fridge to make your tea.
you are wrong. as always.
[solar cooker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cooker)
131
Next time I go to the Sahara I must remember to pack my "solar cooker".
Unfortunately in Melbourne for example, you would have just as much success using a "lunar cooker" at this time of year....
So I imagine a solar cooker capable of working in winter, being about the size of a fridge.
Shorter Earthtide:
I ignore facts in favour of my own imagination. Also, 10% is still greater than 90%. If there's a 90% probability that global warming is a problem, then we hedge our bets on the other 10%.
10%
10% of
In any case, just because we can't describe in some detail what happened 10,000 years ago doesn't mean we can't describe in detail what happened in the last 100 years.
"In any case, just because we can't describe in some detail what happened 10,000 years ago doesn't mean we can't describe in detail what happened in the last 100 years."
You are wrong. There is a reason *we can't describe in some detail what happened 10,000 years ago*. The climate is complex.
It is no less complex today.
You are making a dangerous assumption.
Earthtide writes:
Who says we can't explain past warming? You?
Earthtide writes:
Because greenhouse gases, sunlight, and volcanic activity weren't changing very much.
BPL, maybe Earth means "you can't explain past warming TO ME".
Which is correct.
You can't explain something to someone who doesn't want to know.
"none so deaf as will not hear"
and
"you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"
both apply to Earth's unthinking and uncritical denial of AGW.
And as posted before, they're a misanthrope.
"You are wrong. There is a reason we can't describe in some detail what happened 10,000 years ago. The climate is complex."
Nope, the detail isn't needed.
You don't need to know how many bubbles will appear in your boiling pan of water to know the pan is boiling.
Well, maybe YOU do, but nobody with a working brain does.
The climate isn't complex. The details of what happens is complex. The reasons for it tend to be pretty simple.
Orbital changes. Supervolcanoes. Asteroid impacts. CO2 outgassing.
And the reasons for climate to change now remains pretty simple.
"Temperature changed before humans appeared on the planet, therefore temperature change may not be caused by humans."
Does NOT mean that temperature change cannot be caused by human activity.
Species went extinct before humans appeared.
Does this mean that we didn't kill off the Dodo???
"The present warming may be caused by a similar process associated with past warming, of which we cannot explain."
But we already HAVE a similar process happening NOW that explains it. CO2 outgassing caused global warming before (PETM and the enhanced warming beyond orbital insolation changes) and it is causing it now.
Did you go to shcool?
If it's something else, that something else has to undo all the changes CO2 has done before and that must be doing now (since now, like then, there is more CO2 in the atmosphere) AND have a result that goes up in a way that follows the increase in CO2.
Shorter Earthtide:
Because it COULD be "something else" it MUST be "something else"!
Earthtide, if it could be something other than what we think it could be, and you don't think it could be human CO2 production, then that something else can be, for you, human CO2 production.
At least WE have an idea what that something could be.
You're classic denial.
"IT ISN'T THAT! I DON'T KNOW WHAT, BUT IT ISN'T THAT!!!"
So I imagine a solar cooker capable of working in winter, being about the size of a fridge.
you are wrong. as always.
look at the [solar kettle](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/solarcooking/images/0/0f/Granada06_al…)
On 28th November 2005, he managed to produce boiling
water with the SK-TF within 3 hours at Dunedin, South
Island, New Zealand (49S), even when the ambient
temperature was 18º C.
"Because greenhouse gases, sunlight, and volcanic activity weren't changing very much."
Yep all those things are pretty easy to get your head around.
:)
All the nice easy stuff.
:)
And Mark mentions the orbital cycles. Very nice. Sounds like your up to date. Case closed!
I think you need to get on to Karoly and tell him not to worry about the Fifth Assessment Report.
"Because it COULD be "something else" it MUST be "something else"!"
MOST LIKELY.
Shorter Earthtide:
We can't explain past warming, because I'll reject any explanation you give. And again, if there's a 90% chance that global warming is a problem, we must hedge our bets on the other 10%.
143
I stand corrected.
I bet the 3 hours just fly.
Was Earthtide on the OJ Simpson jury?
> "Because it COULD be "something else" it MUST be "something else"!"
>
> MOST LIKELY.
So if I have a gun in my hand, a bullet missing from the chamber and a gunshot wound dead person in front of me, it COULD be something other than I shot him.
Therefore it's most likely I didn't shoot him.
Wow.
Just out of curiosity "sod", have you ever used a solar kettle?
I'm thinking of buying one....as a joke.
I can't wait to get my hands on the solar cooker
(a.k.a salmonella factory)
...lol
I bet the 3 hours just fly.
you are wrong. as always.
just don t use all the water, if you re planning to drink coffee in the next couple of hours.
but your right of course. alternative energy can not provide a boiling cup of caramel flavored starbuck coffee in 2 minutes in the middle of an arctic snowstorm. this proves beyond doubt that the technology is a complete failure.
Go ahead and buy a solar kettle, Earthtide.
Just out of curiosity "sod", have you ever used a solar kettle?
not this one, but i have seen a solar cooker in action. swedish exchange students had brought one for a project.
it was an overcast day in late spring in Germany.
we brought an electric grill along and were thinking about how to stop them from being embarrassed.
the cooker was performing well, the sausages and eggs were fast and well done
Is it possible that Earthtide and Plimer are related?
There seems to be a common trait between them.
What, tom? They're both nutters?
We need more proof than that.
Does that make us skeptical???
If it does, it's odd because despite being a skeptic, I don't think AGW is a load of baloney.
Which doesn't seem to fit with what people who call themselves skeptics seem to think it means...
Mark, I prefer to call myself a realist.
I become a skeptic only if I sense someone is trying to feed me a line of bs.
EarthTide (#126)
"'if you can't explain past warming, you can't
explain present warming.'
Because:
"The present warming may be caused by a similar
process associated with past warming, of which we
cannot explain."
Well, no, Earthie. It's all down to the reason we can't explain that previous warming - the processes are understood, but there's insufficient data to describe precisely what actually happened. The uncertainty is due to lack of data, not lack of undertanding of process.
Let's try the murder analogy again. When detectives can't reconstruct a crime scene, for lack of evidence, it doesn't mean they don't undertand how people can be killed, or what would happen if someone fired a bullet at someone else.
I take a sceptical view to a lot of what I read for the first time, and by scepticism I simply mean that I ensure I have teased out the main lines of argument and identified how strongly they are supported, and to what extent their are valid objections to those arguments.
It isn't easy to hold off from judgement until enough analysis as been done to be relatively informed. Certainly, I fail at it just like everyone else does. However, I try to follow through on issues. It takes a lot of time for some issues, as anyone who has done it for the issue of AGW can attest.
Now I can't categorically state that AGW theory is in fact the correct explanation for the last half-century of warming (or there-abouts), but I can state that it is the best corroborated theory to date. Not only that, but it has survived direct challenge by scientists over the years. Direct temperature measurments support it; the physics and chemistry support it; the geology supports it; many lines of proxy data support it; and mathematical models of the physics and chemistry support it.
The argument that: man wasn't around when other significant global warming events happened, therefore man cannot be responsible for what is happening now, is not a meaningful claim. Its main premise is that global warming happened without us, so this time is the same as previous times; unfortunately it turns out that the physics is the same now as then, and man's contribution of carbon dioxide in recent times has the same capacity to shift the global climate, that it has when released by any other source.
The difference is that since we are the ones increasing the carbon dioxide (and other green house gases), we have the option of reducing our contribution to increases in green house gases. Since we are adding to it at a much faster rate than any geologically recent time in the past, carbon dioxide increases are treated as a forcing of the climate system. On the other hand, since the absolute quantity of atmospheric water vapour/liquid/solid is very responsive to atmospheric and surface temperature, it is treated as a response to warming caused by increases in greenhouse gases.
If we could tag individual molecules of water, we would see that water in all its forms cycles in and out of the atmosphere very rapidly when compared with a tagged moleculae of carbon dioxide. It is possible to treat water using the adiabatic (ie slow manifold) approximation.
Water is an essential part of climate models in general, where for the above reasons it is treated as having rapid internal response to external changes in carbon dioxide via temperature changes.
The science is compelling.
Figuring out the appropriate policy response to that science is a much murkier process. Denigrating the scientists who have done the hard yards to (quite literally) dig up the data in some of most inhospitable places in the world, is simply a rhetorical strategy employed for the purposes of winning the policy debate.
A few bloggers here need to separate the science from the policy. It should be possible for a political conservative and a political progressive to completely agree with each other that the science is compelling. Their individual policy response may differ significantly, however.
The cardinal sin being committed by people such as Ian Plimer, Bob Carter et al is to start from their desired policy conclusion, which is demonstrably one of business-as-usual, and to then situate their appreciation of the science to support only that policy conclusion. It is especially galling to watch these otherwise distinguished scientists bring down the edifice of scientific practice by attacking other scientists while studiously ignoring the body of evidence accumulated so far.
Dirty politics annoys me mightily.
> Let's try the murder analogy again. When detectives can't reconstruct a crime scene, for lack of evidence, it doesn't mean they don't undertand how people can be killed, or what would happen if someone fired a bullet at someone else.
>
> Posted by: Gaz |
Now there's a better idea than putting Earth on a "Buddy Holly Airlines" aeroplane.
Lets show him the OJ trial, how the police didn't know EXACTLY what OJ did and then since Earth thinks this means murder can't happen, try an experiment on him...
Donald,
I am not a good explainer, but it has slowly occurred to me over the past months what we are seeing now isn't a scientific debate, that was really over years ago. It's a political one now, where one group in the argument are using "science" to support their political agenda. That's why, no matter what the broad body of real evidence is, the political argument only needs to pick that which it wants.
I don't think that many scientists arguing in good faith have really cottoned on to this (or have and don't know how to deal with it effectively yet).
BUT more disturbing to me than that idea was the corrollary that came to me shortly after.
If it is truly now a political argument between two groups who both (conciously or unconciously) accept the concept of global climate change (anthropogenic or not) what are their proposed actions?
Either we start to take action now or we continue business as usual.
There are obviously reasons, of varying merit, that could be used to justify either position. But stated simply, do we want to begin the fix now, which might cost us or do we put off anything till later, which will throw the cost onto others elsewhere on the planet and/or not yet born.
Morally this seems clear to me. There are a bunch of people who want to take some responsibility and accept the problem and get on with it and another bunch of people who are quite happy to f*** over anyone else (possibly even their own children) if they can avoid any changes now.
Framed this way the second group understand they can't be seen to be the amoral group they are, so will argue anything, on any pretext, rather than admit to the actual outcomes of their selfish position.
Yes. your absolutely right. The deniers are a sad bunch aren't they? Scientific prostitutes, big oil, some believe in intelligent design. many of them smoke and think smoking risks are overstated, and these same deniers exist today.
And of course the science is settled. people have spent their whole life modeling climate and they *know* it is humans. they have the physics to support it, and who would be crazy enough to question the laws of physics? Only crackpots like Plimer, who argue against everything from whether its even warming in the first place and the origin of co2 rise.
So there is plenty of fuel to go around. Karoly does not like the public to be mislead, so he takes on the deniers,
and rightly so. right?
*Wrong*. Why does he even give them the light of day?
I'm 90% sure I know exactly why he gives them attention they most certainly do not deserve.
Earthtide has given us:
a misunderstanding of how science works
sarcasm
the 'if there is something we don't know, then we don't know anything' argument
a misunderstanding of basic statistics
insults
and innuendo
along with various other avoidance techniques. What has been missing from his (her?) comments has been anything of substance and a recognition that a) knowledge will never be complete and b) at some point we have to make a decision based on what is known.
Tell me, Earthtide, what realistically attainable information would you accept as demonstrating that anthropogenic CO2 production is causing global warming? (Cue for ignoring the question or other avoidance mechanism.)
> And of course the science is settled. people have spent their whole life modeling climate and they know it is humans.
> Posted by: Earthtide |
And you seem to know it isn't.
EVER.
CO2 produced global warming before (PETM, for example).
Why can't it do so again?
Just because it came out of your SUV?
Isn't that a bit arrogant that you think the universe knows that you did it and will change its laws to fit you?
Shorter Earthtide:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Trolling_drawi…
Or rather, using slash underscore and the rest:
[Shorter Earthtide:](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Trolling\_drawing.jpg/800px-Trolling\_drawing.jpg)
Richard S: "Tell me, Earthtide, what realistically attainable information would you accept as demonstrating that anthropogenic CO2 production is causing global warming?"
Prediction, based denialists' response to this question in the past: It will be possible to paraphrase Earthtide's answer, if there is one at all, as "None".
Gaz, Earthtide isn't LOOKING for proof of AGW. Doesn't want it.
This is the problem people are having with them: they think that Earthtide is a geunine person.
They aren't.
They are a troll or an astroturfer or just a moron who wants to prove to themselves that there is no AGW and every singe attempt to tell them there is AGW is twisted to prove to their own damaged psyche that they are right.
Mark: Quite.
Earthtide isn't looking for proof, doesn't want proof and wouldn't acknowledge proof even if it trotted up and started humping his/her leg.
Ian Plimer tried for years to get rid of creationists by using faulty arguments. Unfortunately, he seems to be using some of the same faulty reasoning to try to get rid of climate change.
I am going to throw my weight towards the side that says Plimer's a probable conservative extremist who'll say any old dishonest thing he can that bashes "greenies" and he thinks might fool someone with a deficient education, and that other than that, there's no "there" there.
Listen to him long enough and it becomes an inescapable conclusion. On the plus side, he erred. He's SO BAD scientists who normally shun the public eye feel safe in jumping in and ganging up on him and beating him up. Heaven and Earth!
> He's SO BAD
He hears "bad to the bone" every time he walks into the place...
;-)
No cap and trade for Australia.
Hope you all enjoyed your conversations the past few years.
You lose!!!
It's all about the science, eh?
> No cap and trade for Australia.
>
> Posted by: Sally Johnson
How are they going to keep the sun off their heads then?
No, our children lose, and their children, and so on.
No, actually our children and their children are the big winners.
We won't be placing an extra 25% of the economy into the hands of left-wing loons via carbon taxes.
Here's a little advice. Put on a pair of britches that actually fit you and go after the real pollutants and chemicals that fill our seas, rivers and landfills and the true scientists will actually support you.
We won't be placing an extra 25% of the economy into the hands of left-wing loons via carbon taxes.
Jenny, you got the basic numbers wrong and the basic facts.
but this shouldn t have any effect on your opinion...
and i got your name wrong...
> but this shouldn t have any effect on your opinion...
>
> Posted by: sod
Don't you mean "this has never had any effect on your opinion"?
It doesn't have any proof that there will be 25% tax going to left wing loons. It doesn't have any proof that AGW is false. It just has a going hatred for left wingers. An idealogical blindness that ensures its opinions are discarded as the dogmatic tripe of the unedutatable slime of humanity it is.
Actually, Mark, that "ideological blindness" and its opinions are those that are currently in favour by those making the decisions right now. I know that must really rub you the wrong way. Do try to get over it.
Next time, try to make subjects like (so called) AGW a right wingers agenda and you might make some headway. Remember, you don't own an issue until it makes money for you. Give that advice some thought.
It speaks
> Actually, Mark, that "ideological blindness" and its opinions are those that are currently in favour by those making the decisions right now
But it doesn't think.
How can so much activity come from so little thought?
This really tells the story. Facts are *sooo* yeasterday.
25% of Australia's GDP is about $300 billion per year.
Which left-wing loons are going to get this money?
$300B for left-wing loonies, Gaz? Where? I'd like a piece of the action.
After all, the Right have had their snouts in the public trough for years, so it must be our turn!
$300 billion should be enough to build sufficient wind farms to generate Australia's total electicity needs.
Problem solved.
Put on a pair of britches that actually fit you and go after the real pollutants and chemicals that fill our seas, rivers and landfills and the true scientists will actually support you.
I'm guessing it's fluoride.
> I'm guessing it's fluoride.
>
> Posted by: anthony
Nah, it's Sodium and Chlorine.
A dangerous toxic solid and gas.
Terrible stuff infesting our seas...
@ Sally Johnston: No cap and trade for Australia. Hope you all enjoyed your conversations the past few years. You lose!!!
Close but no cigar. The people who will really lose are your kids and grandchildren. When they come to examine why it was that their forebears were so woefully, wilfully slow to act on such an abundance of evidence and information, I can only hope they don't unearth your comment, if only for your family's name and reputation.
Sally Johnston @ 173 - nice try, but you're not half as funny or half as clever as Janet Akerman :-)
Thanks Steve,
But I can't compete with the blistering rebuttle to climate science that Sally gave @169. Lets [go back](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/06/david_karoly_on_plimer.php#comm…) read it again an meditate on the insight provided.
> Lets go back read it again an meditate on the insight provided.
>
> Posted by: Janet Akerman
Aye, you're supposed to empty your mind of all thought and it certainly has shown that.
An example to us all, when tying to meditate...
Mark (187), when viewing Sally Johnston's posts it's hard to decide whether it's an example of an empty mind or an empty head. You be the judge...
> Mark (187), when viewing Sally Johnston's posts it's hard to decide whether it's an example of an empty mind or an empty head.
>
> Posted by: Steve Chamberlain
Ah, it doesn't matter, Steve: reading its comments makes me FEEL dumber.
Bringing me closer to the "empty mind" state deemed best for meditation.
I think Sally is putting us on, guys.
The problem is not a carbon tax. In fact, I could think of nothing better than flipping the table on the scientific community. Bring it on!
The problem is science itself. What happens if scientists realize co2 will only begin to significantly affect climate ..... in 500 years time.
What happens if they realize climate is unlikely to be affected for at least 1000 years.
What happens when they realize 20th century global warming
was natural.
Forget the Global Financial Crisis, and get ready for the
Global Scientific Crisis.
Scientist are comfortable in the fact that co2 will cause climate change. But they have made the easiest mistake of all. *When?*
Geez! Even Plimer appreciates *time*.
Unfortunately, climate scientists dont.
They think co2 now = warming now
:) lol
The climate is not a light switch. You cannot switch it on and off.
> I think Sally is putting us on, guys.
>
> Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson
Well, I'm not going to put Sally on...
> They think co2 now = warming now
> :) lol
> Posted by: Earthtide
Uh, how does CO2 know when to start warming up, then? Does it have a "wake up" alarm switch? Does it only start absorbing IR when it's been around for a few decades?
Where is your model that says that CO2 now won't cause warming now?
If you don't like models, where's your science that says CO2 now won't cause warming now?
PS read up on the PETM before you open your gob.
Earthtide writes:
Don't just make stuff up, Earthtide. Not on a blog full of people who actually know this stuff.
The correlation between temperature anomaly and ln CO2 in the same year is r = 0.87 for 1880-2008 (N = 129).
BPL (194), I think you may as well talk to the wall. Earthtide (odd how these folk dream up all these Grass Roots-type monikers) wouldn't know a statisticaly significant LSR line slope if it bit him/her/it in the residuals. Pearls before swine I believe the saying is.
> The problem is science itself. What ha
ppens if scientists realize co2 will only begin to significantly affect climate ..... in 500 years time
Mind you, he doesn't say why it would delay 500 years.
May as well why bother asking whether a bullet in the brainpan will kill you. After all the sonic shockwaves through the brain may happen only 100 years after the bullet hits the skull...
I mean, if it DID take 100 years for the shockwaves to start, you'd be dead of natural causes well before then!
So it's all right!
Bang Bang.
MG! Rdng ths psts mks m thnk m shrng blg wth bnch f nmrds...th sll crtn chrctr, nt th rgnl g.
Sm cmmn sns: C ds nt wrm nythng. Th bsc scnc s tht t s mr sl wrmd thn thr thngs n th tmsphr nd frthr ssmd tht t stys wrmr lngr . yr grnhs ffct. C s wrmd b th sn. Td's sn. Nt th sn n 500 yrs.
f th sn dsn't rs tmrrw, gss wht: c g.
*[Disemvowelled because of utter stupidity. Tim]*
i just stumbled over the plimer interview:
http://tinyurl.com/l74fo7
5 min into it, Plimer makes a wild claim about sea level change, citing the port of ephesus (now 15 km inland and 7 m about sea level) as an example.
the claim is of course complete bogus, as the port lay in a river delta, and was already not at the sea back then.
It lay on the left bank of the Cayster River -- straight across the Aegean Sea from Athens and Corinth -- in what is present-day turkey. The mouth of the Cayster formed the best natural harbor in the eastern Mediterranean.
so i posted a reply about this claim on [marohasy](http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/07/harsh-words-for-%E2%80%98denie…).
after writing this, i suddenly had the feeling, that i couldn t be the first to discover such a stupid error, and googled: (Plimer ephesus)
one of the results was this piece from 1995 (!!!)
http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=501
titled 1995 Annual Oration The Geology of Greenhouse of I R Plimer
Plimer was a denialist even back then, and basing his opinion on false "facts" then as well:
e have the famous old port of Ephesus in Turkey which is now some 12 kilometres inland and that happened in a period of 200 years.
Ahhhhh, Karoly, eh?
To use a tactic by my leftist friends - he really is a scientific hack.
Was before he became noted for being a climate 'scientist' and remains so to this day.
His contribution on the Great Global Warming Swindle was an embarrassment.
Based on any reasonable analysis of the data the lack of correlation in the 20th century between CO2 and temperature and the much better correlation with solar activity (currently being attacked by the Climate Taliban) should at least give policymakers pause for thought about destroying the economy of this great country for no impact on warming even if the science is right.
>To use a tactic by my leftist friends - he really is a scientific hack.
>Posted by: Jack Lacton
Rather conflicts with the conservative slant of the religious right he claims us part of with:
> (currently being attacked by the Climate Taliban)
Can't even get its own diatribe straight.
Is it a leftist conspiracy or a conservative religious right conspiracy?
And there's no correlation between solar activity and temperature unless you cut the graph so you lose the bits that don't match.
Some blowhard who watched TGGWS on the BBC and not bothered to check up on it since it said what he believes.
Jack Lacton writes:
1. The correlation between NASA GISS temperature anomaly and ln CO2 for 1880-2008 is r = 0.87. Here's the raw data if you want to do the calculation yourself:
http://BartonPaulLevenson.com/Correlation.html
2. I regressed temp. anomaly for 1880-2007 on ln CO2, dust veil index, and four different measures of solar activity, the latter taken one at a time to avoid multicolinearity. The measures used were TSI (solar constant), sunspot number, years since minimum, and years since maximum. Ln CO2 accounted for 76% of the variance, DVI for 2%, and none of the solar measures were significant. Sunspot number came closest but still only had t = 1.4.
3. Nobody is trying to destroy the country's economy. We're trying to save it.
Tim,
your software seems to start renumbering any numerical list I make if I put in any kind of interruption, like a link. Is there some way you can turn off automatic numbering? I had 1, 2, and 3 above, and your system made it 1, 1 and 2.
BPL, that's the way markdown does it and I can't turn it off.
You can number things
1) like
2) this
if you want to avoid the renumbering.
Thanks, Tim.