The Telegraph explains what Lord Smith of Finsbury believes is necessary to Save The Earth. The idea is simple: everyone should be given a ration coupon corresponding to a carbon allowance. The free people of the world may thereafter go about their business, provided they pay out of their carbon allowance for everything they do.
It would involve people being issued with a unique number which they would hand over when purchasing products that contribute to their carbon footprint, such as fuel, airline tickets and electricity.
Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using. If their “carbon account” hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits. Those who are frugal with their carbon usage will be able to sell their unused credits and make a profit. Lord Smith will call for the scheme to be part of a “Green New Deal” to be introduced within 20 years when he addresses the agency’s annual conference on Monday.
Finsbury, who is the chairman of Britain’s Environmental Agency, “is a British Labour politician, and a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister. He was the UK’s first openly gay MP, coming out in 1984 and, in 2005, the first MP to acknowledge that he is HIV positive.”
Prior to assuming his position, Finsbury was “Director of the Clore Leadership Programme, an initiative aimed at helping to train and develop new leaders of Britain’s cultural sector”. He is also active in the theater and in setting advertising standards. What has this got to do with the environment? Probably everything.
Antony Gormley, an English sculptor noted for his proposal to erect a work called the “Ejaculating Man” on Seattle’s waterfront, had choice words for the BBC’s audience. It differed somewhat from Lord Finsbury’s in detail, but not in spirit. Gormley believed that the best way to help Save the Earth was to go about barefoot.
embedded by Embedded Video
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Now why didn’t we think of that? One person who probably continue to wear shoes is Al Gore. The Times of India reports the former Vice President as well on course to becoming the world’s first Carbon Billionaire.
Since he abandoned mainstream politics following his defeat in the 2000 presidential polls against George W Bush, Gore’s personal fortune has risen from 1.2 million pounds to an estimated 60 million pounds, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. … “Al Gore wants to become the first carbon billionaire and he is poised to do it,” Marc Morano of climatedepot.com was quoted as saying by the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
“As much as Gore’s made now, it is going to be a piker league compared to what he is going to make in five years if all these new carbon trading mandates go through,” Morano claimed.
What Finsbury and Gormley have in common is that they Know. Never mind how they know, they just do. And if you don’t get it, well why you never will. Global Warming is less about science than Getting It. By allowing the public to see into the thought processes of the enlightened ones, the Internet may provide the world’s first cure for snob envy. There may be more common sense in a Nepalese village than in certain quarters of High Society. Maybe Cole Porter had it right. Smart society is not always.
When you’re out in smart society
And you suddenly get bad news,
You mustn’t show anxiety
And proceed to sing the blues.
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!
What frails, what frocks!
What furs, what rocks!
What gaiety!
It’s all too exquis!
The French Campagne!
So good for the brain!
That band, it’s the end!
Kindly don’t fall down, my friend.
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party this is!
Have you heard? It’s in the stars
Next July we collide with Mars.
Well, did you evah?
What a swell party
a swellegant, elegant party, this is!
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233 Comments
1. rickl:Like with a bank account, a statement would be sent out each month to help people keep track of what they are using. If their “carbon account” hits zero, they would have to pay to get more credits.
So basically, the ultra-rich will be able to continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed.
And “pay”? Pay who? The government? The UN?
Nov 15, 2009 - 3:51 pm 2. john lynch:So this is effectively a 100% tax on consumption above a certain level. So, people would find other things to do with their earnings. Probably nothing good.
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:15 pm 3. cfbleachers:The difference between a radical leftist and the useful idiot that follows him…is the latter is trying to find a way to spend his entire day standing around with his hands in his pockets.
The former is trying to find a way to spend his entire day with his hands in your pockets.
For those of you yonger than my 56 years on this plaent, please don’t let my tombstone read “here lies a man who got do-gooded out of existence”.
What do you call a do-gooder with bad intent?
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:29 pm 4. sirius_sir:The more carbon emissions we dump into the air, the faster forests and plants grow.
This new revelation is the result of research done by the North American carbon program. Scott Denning, Ph.D., a physicist from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, explains the North American Carbon Program… Physicists tracking the data have found an unexpected benefit of rising carbon dioxide levels. Dr. Denning says it’s unusual. “Stuff is growing faster than it’s dying, which is weird,” he says.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0603-can_carbon_dioxide_be_a_good_thing.htm
Let’s just say Al Gore is a greedy bastard who loves money more than trees. That goes as well for his acolytes. I resolve, in my own small and individual way, to perpetuate the observable benefits increased carbon dioxide levels provide. I encourage others to do the same.
Go Green, people. Save the forests. For the sake of a just, sane, and more verdant world, keep those carbon emissions coming!
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:33 pm 5. bogie wheel:Next to the “end of life” counseling (aka death panels) in the health care bill(s), the allocation of rationed carbon allowances per person is a program about as ripe for abuse of power, and the destruction of individual liberty, as exists in the West today.
Who gets to decide what a person’s ration number is? Will some people be deemed “more essential” in their work and/or “contribution to society” than others and, hence, be given a higher ration number? And as rickl points out, who gets paid for the carbon usage? And will the elite be able to buy their way past their ration number?
At what point will they start rationing the number of times you can exhale in a day?
I can’t figure out which nightmare story we are in: “Heart of Darkness” (the horror! the horror!) or “Bridge Over the River Kwai” (madness! madness!). Gee, at the rate things are going, slave labor and cannibalism may not be too far off. Colliding with Mars next July might put us out of our collective misery.
BTW, the Sinatra-Crosby recording of “Well, Did You Evah?” is a particularly good one. The Sinatra-Crosby-Deano studio recording of the “Guys and Dolls” album (hard to find but worth it) is also pretty dang great. Frankie blows everyone else away but maybe that’s just my personal Sinatraphile bias at work.
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:46 pm 6. bogie wheel:What do you call a do-gooder with bad intent?
They used to be called blue-hairs … y’know, nosy old ladies across town with nothing better to do with their time than try to “reform” you.
Now they have gone national, and have the US Tax Code, several divisions of lawyers, and assorted weaponry at their disposal. I think Shakespeare had the right idea as to their disposition in “King John.”
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:53 pm 7. whiskey:Note: Finsbury is openly gay. The other guy is an artist known for explicit (and gay-themed) works.
Culturally, economically, and politically, gays, Blacks, Hispanics, and women line up against Whites, married couples, and families. While the lines are not absolute, and folks do cross (i.e. ultra-liberal families, a few conservative gays and Blacks), by and large the identities are descriptive.
Most of the West’s post-War history consists of elites plus various identity groups making a war of annihilation upon the White middle classes. Particularly White men.
The reason this happens is lack of fear. Lack of fear of White majorities retaliating. The best way to put a stop to Finsbury and the shoe-less guy is to punish them. Hard. In every way legally and morally possible. Lawsuits a plenty (the Sarah Palin ethics charges treatment). Dig into every nasty bit of personal life of themselves, their families, their friends, etc. Call it the Joe the Plumber or Bristol/Trig Palin treatment. And so on.
Until people like Finsbury are afraid, they will keep on doing this. I note in passing how Muslims have used fear (by killing people) to make criticism of Islam forbidden. Toby Emmerich refused to show the destruction of the Kabaa in “2012″ because he did not want his head cut off.
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:55 pm 8. Kinuachdrach:Since the Honorable Member is HIV positive, it may be interesting to Google back to the George HW Bush Administration and the Clinton Administration. The Smart People then thought that HIV would explode and destroy an entire generation — unless we all took the threat seriously (and paid lots of taxes).
Of course, the HIV health crisis did not expand outside a small circle of homosexuals. Yet the Smart People have never apologized. Instead, they switched their attention to alarmism about alleged anthropogenic global warming. It seems that also will be terribly serious — unless we all pay lots of taxes.
Now that the scientific evidence against alleged anthropogenic global warming alarmism is piling up, the Smart People will presumably move on to some other danger — Peak Oil? Trade imbalances?
The only things which seem certain are that the solution to the next problem will involve paying lots of taxes, and that the Smart People will never be held accountable for crying wolf.
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:55 pm 9. wretchard:Please be do not cross the line into threatening people, whether implicitly or not. I know it’s a subject which touches on emotions. But we should all respect the groundrules that Pajamas Media has set.
Let’s talk about how politics can be used to change things. Politics is the way the system is worked. Maybe one day it will break for reasons beyond anyone’s control. But until that day we must work within its confines.
Nov 15, 2009 - 4:59 pm 10. Lazar:Richard,
That’s the ‘Times of India’ citing the ‘Daily Telegraph’ who cite Marc Morano, a PR guy who is known for promoting non-science, as the source of a claim which appears to nothing more than hearsay.
The Telegraph (Nick Allen, Nov. 3rd 2009);
Google for “Silicon valley investment management firm Al Gore” reveals the firm is Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (wiki page for KPCB)…
The San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 13th 2007, Zachary Coile…
Press release, Generation Investment Management, Nov. 11th 2007…
NYT, Nov. 2nd 2009, John M. Broder…
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:02 pm 11. Lifeofthemind:If your nose runs and your feet smell then you are built upside down.
- Wisdom from the 2nd grade.
Voltaire was right about this. The greatest threat in the world is Enthusiasm.
Now if Finsbury can only convince everyone that he is convinced himself that he is a not only a gay, HIV positive socialist aristocrat but in his heart a Pakistani Islamist transgendered gay HIV positive aristocrat then he might take power in a coup as the next Queen of England.
The English call this Brass. Obama called this the Audacity of Hope. In New York we call it Chutzpah.
The logical results of a policy in which people are assigned consumption credits by head count and face confiscatory taxation for consumption of earned income above the authorized level will be threefold.
1. Artificially increasing the reported number of consumers per household.
So what if Grandma is dead?
Hide her in the attic and keep collecting that Social Security check and those Carbon Credits.
2. If you are poor breed like rabbits.
3. More income will be moved off the books, to impede taxation at that end, and consumption will also move
into the inefficient cash or barter grey market to impede accounting at that end.
The predictable government response to fraud and evasion will be increased coercion from Revenue Agents,
enforced contraception and abortion, and intrusive home “Health Care” to verify and deal with Granny.
The parts of the Obamist jig-saw puzzle fit together.
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:10 pm 12. Lazar:Richard,
Of course if you define what GW ‘is about’ by what you have chosen to read, that is true. But have you read this, or this? There’s plenty to read, of science, by scientists, so why are you paying attention to “an English sculptor”?
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:10 pm 13. Joe Hill:What do you think Lucifer’s carbon footprint must look like. Think of the brokerage fees ManBearPig could collect in hell
Of course I would be more in favor of a stupid, idiotic, collectivist idea ration book that entitles you to present 2 stupid and despotic ideas a decade and after that if you have more such ideas you have to purchase moronic idea credits on an exchange where the currency is frontal lobes. Four bad ideas in one decade and you spend the rest of your life drooling down your chin with a Kennedy sister.
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:14 pm 14. gerard j robinson:This is not a comment on this article. I have been reading your blog and its comments for years. You are my second stop of the day right after ‘The Drudge Report’. Recently you ran a poll to name the most popular commenter to your blogs. I believe a blogger identified as “L13″ was named #1. At the time I couldn’t ever remember seeing comments by him(her) and haven’t seen any since then either. Where am I going wrong here?
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:25 pm 15. wretchard:I’ve actually paid some attention to the science and have attended some of the seminars given on the subject by climatologists here in Australia. My own conclusion which I’ve written about in a number of previous posts, is that AGW is not proved.
It may be true, but it’s not proved. And the default in such circumstances is to do nothing. In order to impose a program of this magnitude there ought to be a compelling public interest in so doing. There is no such proved interest. To be skeptical is in fact our duty in the absence of compelling evidence. Nobody is betting Lord’s Finsbury’s money on anything, nor the sculptor’s. Nor Gore’s.
But on the other hand, Al Gore wants to bet real money AGW. Real jobs. Not just in the US, but all over the world. Lord Finsbury wants to do something. He’s in a position of power and as a bureaucrat in the UK is able to put forward rules which may compel people to act in certain ways. They’re doing the selling. I’m just not buying.
The fact that I cite these individuals is not an indictment of my thought processes, I don’t think. The burden of proof is on them. In fact, we could sit here silent as stones because they are the prosecution and must carry the case.
It is not the case that that my disbelief in AGW is based on the testimony of a few artists. And it is not the case that the burden of proof is mine. It’s Finsbury’s. It is Gore’s. That’s the basic situation.
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:36 pm 16. Lifeofthemind:Just because, Frank and Bing in High Society, Well Did You Evah?.
gerard j robinson,
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:41 pm 17. Langley:L3 = Leo Linbeck III
Finsbury, who is the chairman of Britain’s Environmental Agency, “is a British Labour politician, and a former Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister. He was the UK’s first openly gay MP, coming out in 1984 and, in 2005, the first MP to acknowledge that he is HIV positive.”
This is a manifestation of what Pope John-Paul called “The Culture of Death.”
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:50 pm 18. elby:Off topic, and I’m not sure if anyone has already linked this, but this is absolutely inspiring. I got chills just watching it. Born again American: http://www.bornagainamerican.org/index.html
Okay, in doing a little more research I see this a Norman Lear production. Nevertheless, it is inspiring. But it could be an attempt to hijack the TEA party movement, since it hits all the same buttons: and emphasis on the Declaration of Independence, and the Bible. Who knows, maybe old Norm has come to his senses.
If anyone has more info on this “Born Again American” organization, I would love to hear it. Gotta run to pick up my kids from youth group.
Nov 15, 2009 - 5:57 pm 19. Joe Hill:Speaking of Satan I wonder why he never bought any of those “Get out of Hell and pass Go” indulgences the Pope was selling back when Martin Luther was hammering indignant remonstrances on cathedra doors? Or maybe he did and just waited to cash them in. It could explain why we haven’t seen Obama’s birth certificate = exact place of birth some sulphur pit beyond the bottom of one of the big island vulcanos just the other side of the river Styx.
In a way those indugences were the carbon offsets of their day, and like todays they didn’t actually solve any worldly problem except the Pope’s need for more marble, purple dye, and child support payments.
Nov 15, 2009 - 6:11 pm 20. BooreyPith:BooreyPith
15 Wretchard
Beware of the Precautionary Principle and the Environmentalists in government. My thoughts.
Nov 15, 2009 - 6:29 pm 21. RichardM308:Joe @ 19: “environmental indulgences”
I mentioned just that in a law school class, calling carbon credits “environmental indulgences. The professor refused to address the underlying similarities, and responded that what I had just said was “deeply offensive to any Catholics in the class.” So much for intellectual rigor…
Nov 15, 2009 - 6:31 pm 22. Walt:We have all known for some time that former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Albert Gore has made millions through his venture capital firm by investing green, and that he stands to make hundreds of millions more if the carbon cap and trade heist gets passed by the Dems in the dead of night. Mr. Gore has denied he has used his green credentials to make money, saying, via satellite phone from his private jet on its way to his Swiss chalet, that his interest is solely in saving the planet from the horrors of global warming, or climate change as it is now called since it was found the planet was cooling, not warming. No one begrudges Mr. Gore making money, or getting fat off his ill-gotten gains, but we can hope that he would please spare us the boring lectures about how greedy we all are in wanting to continue living the good life, especially since both we and Al know that the global warming crisis is a fraud and a scam designed to strangle the economy of the United States while enriching the likes of Al Gore.
I know it’s often pointed out
Nov 15, 2009 - 6:40 pm 23. dkite:The sun doth rise each morn
And fill the world with light and heat
E’er since the earth was born
We know a little bit just how
The sun doth get its glow
It’s hydrogen and helium
For those who’re in the know
Unlike our Al who seems to think
The sun has naught to do
With temperature on this fair earth
He thinks it’s me and you
Who cause the temps to fluctuate
But always up, not down
And since it’s always up he claims
The world will shortly drown
As ice caps melt and seas do rise
And coastal cities flood
And mountain sides and fertile lands
Get covered up in mud
A Nobel Prize is what he got
For nonsense such as this
And now he’s sitting pretty in
A monetary bliss
Just thinking of the why and how
His life had turned out thus
From riding shotgun from back seat
Of Billy Clinton’s bus
To losing to the hated Bush
To making people sweat
He smiles a smile and wonders how
Much better can it get
I live in an area where the major industry is underground and illegal.
The industry that I work in has a very large under the table non certified sector.
Almost everyone I talk to in business faces serious competition from those who don’t pay the costs that are required by government.
The government agencies focus their enforcement efforts on those who fill out the forms, pay the fees. Literally.
I don’t know what world this guy is living in, but these schemes only raise the cost of compliance with the law. Crime already pays better, and with this type of idiocy, compliance will be too expensive for almost everyone.
I prefer a reasonable level of government control, with broad support from most of the population. It has benefits for everyone.
When the support is gone or just plain too onerous, then the threat is to the social cohesion of the countries. Many western nations are already almost failed states. This would make it worse.
Derek
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:01 pm 24. wretchard:The sheer absurdity of it is the point. It’s like Gessler’s hat. The really satisfying thing about absolute authoritarianism isn’t the power to compel the necessary. It is the ability to compel the caprice. When a government’s actions are matched to circumstances, no acts however forceful are oppressive. In time of war people will accept restrictions because they know they are necessary. When an emperor tells you to worship his horse or a bailiff wants you to bow to his hat, the bow to the hat itself or the prayers offered up to the horse are scarcely what anything is about. It’s the fact that they can make you do it that is of uttermost importance.
Political correctness will not have achieved its goal until the public can swallow the most ludicrous propositions unhesitatingly. When you are asked to jump, just ask how high. The propositions themselves don’t matter a jot. What matters is obedience.
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:08 pm 25. dkite:Further, this stuff has nothing to do with AWG. It is about trying to control or structure society in a way that someone thinks is best.
There was an interesting comment the other day regarding one specific environmental issue where there are suitable solutions, but the regulatory structures are so rigid they prevent implementation.
Derek
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:12 pm 26. Fat Man:I don’t understand why everybody is so excited about this guy wanting folks to walk around without socks and shoes so that we can connect with our mother, Gaia. It seems to me that barefoot is less than half-measure. The next step is clear, bare-@$$ naked.
You ain’t seen nothing until you have seen the Fat Man as god made him.
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:18 pm 27. sequestered:How would Princess Palin fare on a Let them go barefoot platform vs. Priestess Pelosi?
Thought so.
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:24 pm 28. Raoul Ortega:deeply offensive to any Catholics in the class
Another one of those tactics the Left likes to indulge in. Claim to speak for others when you are really speaking for yourselves. Usually they chose the inarticulate, like baby seals or whales or trees. In this case, the professor didn’t want to see his favorite cause compared to some of the least defensible excesses of the Church (and one of the direct causes of the Reformation). Besides, why suddenly be worried about Catholic sensitivities? I thought we were supposed to expose all the past evils of Christianity, like the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Jesuit enslavement of natives in South America? It’s not like those Papists are going to behead anyone who insults their religion (at least not yet…)
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:29 pm 29. Delia:24. wretchard:
The propositions themselves don’t matter a jot. What matters is obedience.
Indeed. -And, what comes after obedience? Subservience? After that? Slavery?
Will carbon-credits be priced on an economic sliding-scale per household income? Will welfare recipients get a set amount of carbon-credits for ‘free’? Will there sprout an underground carbon-credit black-market?
This is all so ludicrous.
Al Gore should just sell tickets for people to line up and kick him in the ass if he wants more filthy ‘money’.
I don’t want to visualize an ejaculating sculpture on ANY waterfront, tyvm.
WTF are these people smoking? Yaknow, hubby and I befriended [quite by accident] some pot-head Lefties about eight years ago [one a lawyer, the other an author] and they really dreamed up some idiotic, weird ‘artsy’ things but at least they kept that crap in the privacy of their own home for unsuspecting ‘guests’ like us poor unfortunate souls to deal with [and later burst out laughing at when my husband and I got home].
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:40 pm 30. Lazar:Richard,
Excellent. Which climatologists?
‘Proof’ ‘with certainty’ is the game of formal math. Nothing in science is ‘proven’ ‘with certainty’. There are confidence intervals.
What level of risk are you willing to take?
It is not *the* default, it is your default.
Defining ‘AGW’, and then discussing why you find the evidence for ‘AGW’ to be uncompelling, would make far more interesting blog posts than some artist’s opinion of walking barefoot or Morano innuendo.
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:53 pm 31. Joe Hill:RichardM308 @21 – As a Roman Catholic born and raised with 12 solid years of a rigorous catholic indoctrination under my belt I can assure you that your prof not only lacked intellectual rigor but was mistaken on the facts of this case. The selling of indulgences is dimly viewed by most catholics and officially frowned upon by the Pope though of course his marble demands aren’t what they once were and purple dye has seen marked price deflation.
Trying to tax consumption when you don’t control the supply or the exchange were the goods are traded is very difficult. With carbon being a coponent virtuall everything good luck.
I suspect Gaia is warm blooded and will maintaim relative homeostasis but even if she were to catch a fever for a while that wouldn’t necessarily be bad for mankind as a whole. Sure Australia might become even more unbearable in the winter but a longer Canadian and Siberian growing season would have some definite pluses not to mention a Northwest passage would become a reality. I would hate to lose New Orleans and Venice but the Seychelles I can live without.
So there are three burdens of proof that must be answered before I start throwing folks out of work with carbon offsets. First is it man caused? Two is it preventable or reverseable? And three is it really worse than the status quo ante.
Nov 15, 2009 - 7:58 pm 32. checkers:Really? Issue everyone in the world a “number” and without it they can not buy or sell or participate in the marketplace?
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:00 pm 33. Aristartle:Sounds vaguely familiar?
Who gets the number 666 ?
There once were progre$$ive ‘Crat$
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:05 pm 34. RWE:Who fanta$ized di$a$ter in ga$eou$ stat$
$o they proceeded to tax
Flatulence from u$ and yak$
Al$o CO2 emi$$ion$ from non-vegan, fur-$porting cat$.
I think we are going to be seeing a lot more proposals of this kind related to AGW because of the economic downturn.
The bursting of the real estate bubble and the related financial bubble has left many unemployed financial analysts, real estate experts, salesmen, permitting experts, title searchers, lawyers, loan officers, and other hangers on. They know how to do nothing really useful and will be looking for revenue streams in which to insert themselves. But figuring out a new derivative scam or convincing people that the house they don’t need and can’t afford will triple in value in a couple of years is no longer going to be a viable option.
So more and more ways to make money off of AGW will be devised. Even skilled tradesmen will increasingly get into putting in solar arrays and the like. A friend of mine, a meteorologist, recently quit his job with the space program to work on installing wind power generators.
Completely aside from the political aspects, there will be momentum to keep these people employed and the jobs growing – even when AGW turns out to be a hoax. An AGW-Industrial-Financial Complex is being devised that will rival the fabled Military Industrial Complex.
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:07 pm 35. Unsk:Lazar,
You seem to be such an expert Lazar. Oh please give us a lecture as to why apparently, ( at least for us the uneducated) the earth has cooled since 1998. Plus for extra credit, explain why AGW has not achieved the global warming so feared by you and Uncle Al. Didn’t Uncle Al say in his book that the environmental damage would be beyond repair in ten years? Aren’t we out seven to eight years already? Time ’s must be a wastin.
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:14 pm 36. steeple:Perhaps many of you know this, but it bears repeating. In addition to the onerous controls and cost burden that will fall onto industry in Western nations, there is also an enormous wealth transfer component going to “developing nations” from the West. The EU has allowed a portion of an emitter’s compliance burden to be met by “offsets” from other parts of the world. So if a refrigerant plant in China is closed, then the owner of that plant can sell credit for the foregone emissions to a European coal-fired electricity generator in order to help that company comply, for example.
One might be surprised to find that Russia and the Ukraine are next after China on this list of countries with surplus credits to sell. As Europe has been going thru their first stage of Carbon regulation where credits sourced from these other countries count toward compliance, these three countries have been some of the biggest recipients of Carbon related funds from the EU.
One could make the case that China is actually reducing GHG emissions by shutting down old inefficient plants, although they likely would be shut down anyway eventually due to lack of competitiveness. What is stunning though is that the credits that Russia and the Ukraine are selling are largely based on industry that closed in the early 90s after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They might as well be selling their old worn out shoestrings to the Europeans, as these industries are dead and gone but have been resurrected in spirit to help assuage the guilt of the Emissions wrought Euros.
So like most programs administered by the UN, the bulk of the countries supporting Carbon regulation also have their hands out. Apologies if this is repetitive to you all, but it is critical that everyone engaged in this debate understand this.
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:15 pm 37. Lazar:Unsk,
I’m not.
You might be a bit worried that I appear that way.
Not my job.
You won’t gain an education by asking an anonymous person on a blog.
Statistics tells you that the data does not support your claim… for practical applications and intuitive understanding, this is an excellent intro.
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:40 pm 38. Marty:steeple @ 36 is onto the game.
By “everyone,” Finsbury must mean “EVERYONE,” worldwide, or this would just move emissions “offshore.” So, the Western person whose consumption entails production of, say, 6X the world average, runs out of carbon credits in 2 months and then has to buy from someone who emits much less. And since virtually everything one does entails energy use either directly or indirectly, Within months, hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, yen are going EACH MONTH from the developed to the underdeveloped world… and oh, just incidentally, if the total of issued carbon permits is less than what otherwise would be emitted, and it can all be enforced, the world might emit less CO2.
But you wouldn’t even notice that, what with all the revolutions going on all over the developed world as people refuse to pay most of their incomes for carbon credits and governments try to enforce it.
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:49 pm 39. Lifeofthemind:I did a Google™ search on “follow al gore’s travels track temperature.”
No one site popped up, which surprised me, but there seems to be a cottage industry in tracing the Worldly One’s (he is almost larger at the equator than the poles) movements and noting that snowstorms follow his path. Gore could make serious money as a Rain or at least a Snow Maker. We could send him to Libya and make the desert bloom.
Anyone should be welcome to ask once and in good faith add to the conversation but when it repeatedly quacks like a troll why not tell it to go rent it’s own hall?
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:55 pm 40. Marty:RichardM308 and others,
Maybe your prof just dropped in from the year 1510 and missed out on everything since.
Agree with RaoulOrtgea, if the prof REALLY cared about offending Catholics, he would ask if there are any Catholics in the room who are offended, and invite them to leave without prejudice if this conversation bothers them, then let it proceed. Clearly he had a different purpose
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:56 pm 41. Alaska Paul:China and India are just going to tell Lord Smith of Finley to FOAD. And that will be the end of it. Pay yer indulgences my @$$. We may be dumb, but we are not stupid.
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:56 pm 42. twobyfour:Ah, religion, my favorite topic! Minister of Gaia, Lazar, will set us finally on the righteous course!
I hope he has a link where I can buy some indulgences.
“There are lies, damn lies and statistics”
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:56 pm 43. Marty:LOTM @ 39
Tim Blair follows that very closely
Nov 15, 2009 - 8:58 pm 44. wretchard:The problem is rather simple. They AGW people are selling a model and the asking price for fixing the problem they’ve posited is trillions of dollars. So can they predict what the global temperatures are going to be over the next ten years?
It’s a testable proposition.
If they can predict what these are going to be according to their model then they know something. If they can’t predict anything meaningful then they don’t know anything. It’s a straightforward proposition. The salesman makes the predictions. He shows his stain cleaner can remove the spots. He shows that his product can whiten teeth or clean windows. Or no sale. Salesmen have no business demanding that the customer — the taxpayer — prove anything.
Nov 15, 2009 - 9:04 pm 45. twobyfour:The world without sin
Nov 15, 2009 - 9:05 pm 46. Marty:wretchard @ 44 gets it right (of course).. the issue isn’t really AGW as Lazar wants to make it, it’s whether Finsbury’s proposal is sane, or more precisely, under what circumstances would it be sane.
My field is public policy, so I often have to get up to speed on a field where I’m not a lifelong expert, and advise policy people based on incomplete information, uncertain futures, etc.
I don’t claim to be a climate scientist but I do have a decent BS detector. And I’ve done enough large-scale computer modelling (multimodal urban transportation systems) to have sense of what models can and can’t do, how dependent they are on good data, how they have to be validated, and how to jigger the results to fit my goals.
I’m an AGW skeptic but willing to be convinced… but even if I accept the most dire scenarios coming out of IPCC, Finsbury’s proposal is still incredibly bad public policy. It is essentially Cap-and-trade at the demand rather than supply level, and even James Hansen at NASA, the original AGW proponent, sees through Cap-and-trade.
If you really believe we face imminent disaster, you follow the model of war mobilization from WW1 and WW2–clamp down on gross emitters with regulations, force technological conversion with an iron hand, and maybe tax the hell out of fossil fuel to pay for it… you don’t pussyfoot around with permits and hidden cross-subsidies and black markets and all the rest, to save less than 1/2 degree Celsius in 50 years, like Kyoto.
So, if you believe AGW is an imminent threat, Finsbury’s plan makes no sense.
And if you don’t, it is unneeded and hugely destructive of liberty and the world economy, shifting vast resources from more productive areas and uses to less productive. It still makes no sense.
End of story.
Nov 15, 2009 - 9:21 pm 47. Delia:Of course the eugenicist commie bastids want to kill us off (how dare the sheeple breathe in and out and uh…fart) and the elitist pigs will get rich while they do it! HA!
(4. sirius_sir), yeppers, plants love CO2 and clean the air too…a cycle of perfection. A green-thumbed gentleman owns a fenced lot next to a Burger King in our home town where he grows and sells plants that thrive beautifully off of the fast-food consumer’s car exhaust. lol
Another leetle inconvenient truth:
Warmer Days and Longer Lives
Nov 15, 2009 - 9:29 pm 48. Voltimand:29. Delia
24. wretchard
I think you are right: the “environment” = the realities around you. The things around them the enviro-types want to control are not the birds and the bees and the grass and the trees. What they want to control is OPs–other people. It’s all a power play, and like dhimmi who have been terrorized by terrorists into capitulating, these people are victims of their own fears.
Total control is driven by total fear, and we shouldn’t forget that the true patron saint of the environmental movement is the Unabomber. Driving that guy was an ideology that was a mish-mash of primitivism (civilization is evil, simplicity is best), nature worship (the planet is best when not disturbed by man-made actions–therefore let us kill people), and fear of famine (people eat up the planet, get rid of people).
It’s amazing, when you think about it, how much liberalism’s pet concerns all come down to the notion that “everyone is my enemy because everyone has the power to do me harm.”
The defender against “everyone” is of course government–people who are in the business of controlling everyone else in order to avoid people doing harm . . .
Much of what we’re seeing here is a slowly-maturing fit of mass hysteria.
Nov 15, 2009 - 9:43 pm 49. E. Nigma:New Update!
Al Gore appeared on the Larry King Live show tonight (CNN) and it DID NOT SNOW in the studio.
However, Al Gore is still a rather insufferable bore.
Carry on.
Nov 15, 2009 - 10:00 pm 50. rumcrook®:2. john lynch:
So this is effectively a 100% tax on consumption above a certain level. So, people would find other things to do with their earnings. Probably nothing good.
what will happen is ordinary people with a lick of common sense will use and start a secondary economy or black market. and they will get everything they need without paying insane taxes.
the downside is the destruction of our honorable way of life in favor of the kind of pay to play society based on bribery and institutionalized theft graft and the movement of goods and services without regard to who was hurt in the process.
these scumbag leftists will destroy the foundations of our society.
its sad but that is what ordinary people will do to continue to live ordinary lives.
Nov 15, 2009 - 10:06 pm 51. wretchard:I’m an AGW skeptic but willing to be convinced…
I think this is the correct attitude to take. This is an empirical question. Why are we convinced that physics works? Because it models reality correctly. It predicts the orbits of planets or correctly estimates the size of effects. The AGW model correlates climate with certain variables, such as carbon. It doesn’t say that earth will warm (or cool) depending on solar activity; it doesn’t say the seas will rise depending on cosmic rays. It says it will rise depending on a specific thing. And therefore it proposes to control that thing.
It should be obvious from first principles that if the model is wrong then not only might we be doing something useless and horribly expensive, we may actually be making things worse. We are all familiar with diseases. The climate is on the order of complexity of the human body, if not more so. We just can’t swallow untested drugs on the basis of the argument that we have to swallow something. We are all familiar with the fact that medicines are poisons in the wrong doses or applied in the wrong situations. All of us are familiar with the fact that some interventions are iatrogenic.
Just as there are clinical trials to determine whether drug X cures disease Y, it stands to reason that in this matter, where we all share the same planet, it is only prudent to say, ‘we can prove that the model works because it predicts’ before ingesting the trillion dollar climate drug. If the prediction is consistently and significantly correct, then the carbon model has predictive power. And then we can go about modeling effects.
Policies such as those proposed by Al Gore are not cost-free. They involve trade offs in job creation, employment, population policy, energy policy etc. Humanity compensates for imposed constraints. In the Third World, people react to job loss by going back to the land. If you want to manually clear forest, you often resort to slash and burn to get yourself room to plant subsistence root crops. Take walking barefoot. Does it really make sense to dis-employ workers in Thailand who make shoes? Remember that in the Third World, people are much more sensitive to reductions in income than British artists. Fifty bucks may be the difference between life and death in Thailand. And if the shoe-workers go back to the land, are we much further ahead if they clear the forest with a machete and a box of matches?
Do we know the answer? Has someone modeled it and tested it?
So the carbon control policies can themselves have significant environmental effects besides the human costs. All of these stand in the way of a “sale”. The best way to sell carbon driven AGW theories this is to create an open source, inspectable model based on verifiable data to predict a data series. And then let’s see how it works out. If it can predict the climate then everyone, including the skeptics, will have to accept it.
Steve McIntyre has been trying to duplicate the “hockey stick” series and has run into serious problems. Unfortunately, this subject has become so politicized that the emphasis is now not on improving the models but pushing one position over the other.
So to repeat, carbon-driven AGW may or may not be true. If its proponents are convinced it’s true then predict. If you can’t predict, go back to the drawing board until you can predict.
Nov 15, 2009 - 10:07 pm 52. twobyfour:Delia, CO2 is plant food, there is no dispute about that. Note that plants are a sink of CO2, albeit somewhat seasonal.
The problem With the AGW hypothesis is two-fold.
1. Correlation does not equal to causation.
It is known that the natural release of CO2 follows about 800 years after mean increase in temps. Thus, I would expect an increase of CO2 content in the atmosphere about now, to account for the Medieval Optimum, which, BTW, was about 1 deg C warmer than now. The Holocene Optimum, between 8.5kya and 5kya was even warmer, by about more than half a degree C, so almost about 2 degrees C, than today.
Yes, strange as it seems, for 3500 years the climate was warmer by mean 2 degrees C and yet it was not the end of life as we know it. What’s so different now? Why we are facing a catastrophe of biblical proportion? Anyone? Bueller?
2. It is difficult to calculate the actual human contribution to CO2 levels. With increased production of CO2 comes increased sinking (plant growth), so the math is rather fuzzy as we don’t have yet reliable methods to gauge what is actual unsinkable excess. Furthermore, we don’t have any idea how this excess scales within the global climatic patterns. The research is fairly recent and prone to outlandish hypotheses based on reductionist approach to modeling of chaotic systems. I predict we will not have a clue for another 100 years or more.
As already noted, cap-n-trade (aka carbon credits) seems to be rather a nifty wealth redistribution scheme than something that would have any influence on climate whatsoever.
BTW, you’d read on the web that there never has been more than 280 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere during the last 600ky. Not true.
The optimal value lies somewhere around 1500 ppm CO2 (plants growth and due to more O2 released, more diversity and volume of fauna as well). We haven’t had that since tertiary as we are in the grip of an ice age. Current climate is just a short interglacial that won’t last for long, probably 3ky at most. The previous interglacials did have similar levels of CO2 as those today, the median level was about 400 ppm. Our current ice age climate is a 1 million years long anomaly.
Nov 15, 2009 - 10:25 pm 53. Marty:wretchard @ 51, very kind to say McIntyre has run into serious problems… more like he and others have proved both the statistics and the underlying data were flawed to the point of incompetence, academic malfeasance, or both.
Put all the real, unfudged data into a model, set the base data and climate at 1900, and NONE OF THEM come anywhere near predicting the next 100 years, which have already happened–without a lot of exogenous parameters (fudge factors), just based on embodying well-proven science in the algorithms (Al Gore-ithms? never mind). THAT is how you calibrate a model. Until they can do that and the results are independently duplicated and verified, talk about spending trillions of dollars/euros/quadrillions of yen on this “problem” is irresponsible, to put it mildly.
Nov 15, 2009 - 10:28 pm 54. twobyfour:Ron B. Hubbard made once a bet that he can establish a new religion and become a millionaire.
I suspect that Goracle knew about this and made a bet to beat him–to establish new religion and become a billionaire. He’s doing purdy good. He just needs a few more years of AGW sin to peddle his indulgences scheme and he’ll make it.
Nov 15, 2009 - 10:34 pm 55. twobyfour:Marty/53
The same problem is with cosmology. In order for our current paradigm to work (galactic scales and above), the esteemed Brahmins of academia became fudge lovers. I call their renormalizations epicycles. I think it is an apt term. Even as smaller scales go (solar systems and ontogenesis of stars) there are numerous problems indicating that the predictions in our current theory set have a lot to be desired. Google “astronomy scientists were puzzled”. They seem to be far more puzzled that what may be a solid theory allowance.
A decade ago, it has been presumed that with the decoding of human genome, we’ll become almost gods and everyone would have designer children from that point on (or that powers that be would endow a Gattaca type of society, a world without sin). Well, we have the genome and a conundrum. The 30k genes library can account for encoding proteins, but not much beyond that and it is apparent that we are not just sacks of proteins. We placed out foot in the door of human genetics and realized that what we don’t know is infinitely greater than what we do know so far.
Do you know what our sin is? Pride.
Nov 15, 2009 - 11:01 pm 56. Leo Linbeck III:(= arrogance and hubris)
gerard j robinson,
I’ve been a less active on BC of late due to a variety of family, work, teaching, and community commitments.
Reports of my non-existence are somewhat exaggerated.
Cheers,
Nov 15, 2009 - 11:11 pm 57. twobyfour:L3
twobyfour/54
“That would be Ron L Hubbard”
“Yea, I know. May have been a freudian slip. B like ‘Bullshit’”.
Nov 15, 2009 - 11:12 pm 58. RagnarD:Lazar: Here is real climate data.
ding dong the stick is dead
O/T – Man is the sun quiet. Still. Gonna be a long cold winter, me thinks.
Nov 15, 2009 - 11:27 pm 59. Marty:twobyfour @ 55–
Agree on all points, and I like the comparison to epicycles, very apt.
And about pride. I often find myself trying to remind people how little we really know, how our predecessors weren’t all idiots just because their decisions didn’t work out to our liking decades later, etc., and we are likely no smarter or better-intentioned than were those who came before. If we know more it’s mostly because we learned from their honest mistakes.
Usually just gets me a funny look; sometimes an irritated one.
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:50 am 60. cfbleachers:Please be do not cross the line into threatening people, whether implicitly or not. I know it’s a subject which touches on emotions. But we should all respect the groundrules that Pajamas Media has set.
Let’s talk about how politics can be used to change things. Politics is the way the system is worked. Maybe one day it will break for reasons beyond anyone’s control. But until that day we must work within its confines.
I went back and read the comments and could not immediately identify the offender that prompted this mild, but serious rebuke.
The two that came immediately before it were mine and a response to mine.
I asked the younger generation to make sure that my epitaph did not read that I died of bureaucratic red tape, filled with good intentions. (or, perhaps by bureaucrats that were masking good intentions, and actually had political expediency in mind)
A health condition + being older in this country is not a combination plate you want to order…from the menu of options available in the new Alice’s Restaurant.
A commenter followed with a “first, let’s get rid of all the lawyers” type comment to mine.
Not sure which prompted the rebuke…or if there was another one I missed. In all the hundreds of comments made on PJM by me or about mine…not once has a threat raised or been raised as far as I know…so, perhaps I missed it elsewhere.
One never knows, however…if a word or phrase is read in a manner wholly unintended as written.
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:56 am 61. twobyfour:RagnarD/58
Thanx muchly. An interesting reading… the broken stick.
Hopefully, people would not take it as science = scam, but whenever someone says “science is settled”, they would turn 90 degrees, make few steps back, to see if there is a natural fiber material at about the level of their eyes.
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:40 am 62. ledger:The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) may not have been proven scientifically but, it has been proven financially – to enrich certain politician and climatologist. In short, it’s another scam.
Lord Finsbury under close inspection just could be benefiting financially from this promotion of “carbon credits.” It will take a little digging but I would suspect Finsbury is in it for the money.
Next, I know that Obama favors carbon credits and so does his buddy George Soros. They will most certainly benefit from imposing a “carbon tax” on us.
On the Sell out front, it appears that the Big 0 is about to negotiate directly with Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines. I am not sure how dangerous this is but I would suspect that on balance it is very dangerous (but, our host would know more about it than I).
[Asia Pacific News]
“Manila – US President Barack Obama has sent a letter to the leader of the main Muslim rebel group in the Philippines, a guerrilla official said Saturday.”
“The letter to Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chairman Murad Ibrahim was delivered to rebel peace negotiators by Deputy Assistant State Secretary Scot Marciel,according to Muhammad Ameen, chairman of the MILF secretariat.”
http://tinyurl.com/yjesk6k
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:53 am 63. tehag:“everyone should be given a ration coupon corresponding to a carbon allowance.”
Europe is slow learner, having learned nothing from the failures of Nazism, Communism, and Socialism. My opinion: “Go, Europe, go!” I hope every Green limitation on freedom and economics is enforced in the EU. Couldn’t happen to nicer people.
I want the EU to become totalizingly Green, the EU wants to become totalizingly Green. I get to enjoy their destruction at their own hands; they get to feel morally superior. It’s a win-win situation.
Nov 16, 2009 - 5:06 am 64. michaelhoskins:As always, those with the grand(est) schemes fail to think through the unintended consequences. Examples:
1. How do we manage all the horse droppings? Our current sewage treatment facilities are overloaded as is.
2. What is the impact on the health care system from the increased illness rate from water/ waste born diseases? How will this impact O’care?
3. WHO WILL BE ENSLAVED TO REPLACE MACHINES WITH MUSCLE POWER? Surely not the leftist elite. I guess we use illegals.
And this is only some of the low hanging fruit.
Finally, how can this sort of clap trap come from supposedly educated people? Where is the ‘critical’ thought so loadly touted? Somewhere there is a view of the world that envisions a few, an elite few, who desire to rule over vast green estates, fed by a noble peasantry under their 100% control. To do this they must depopulate and dumb down the middle, to recreate the peasantry, the little people, dependent upon the few.
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:08 am 65. programmer:The few, the “I know”, the betters, now replace God…having denied His existance, and all is well.
And Satan wins.
Actually, I think carbon credits work out nicely for the US of A. We are outsourcing all our smoke stack industry, so that should be a net inflow of cash re our unused carbon credits, nicht wahr?
Edit: Can we outsource lawyers and politicians? Think of the savings in CO2 emissions!
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:36 am 66. peterike:For those of you that like your Cole Porter served with rock, the Iggy Pop/Deborah Harry version of the song is fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjejqJVUYOU
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:46 am 67. buddy larsen:–don’t let me step on Ledger’s exigent news with this blast from the past, but did anyone anywhere ever hear a word about this story? Al Gore –while Vice President of the USA –involved in pump-and-dump racketeering with Maurice Strong –waving the Holy Green Cross in order to bilk both the American taxpayer as well as global stock investors?
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:06 am 68. Marzouq the Redneck Muslim:RagnarD #58,
Thanks! I had to read the simplified version (simple me) to get it.
Salaam!
m
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:19 am 69. Lifeofthemind:peterike,
You can see the WTC behind them around 1:50.
cfbleachers,
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:30 am 70. Jim Stegman:I think there was a run on earlier threads.
It is well known that an increase in CO2 will increase plant growth. But how much and what is the upper limit?
Back in 1996 the Forest Service published the Container Tree Nursery Manual. This manual is used by folks who grow seedling trees in greenhouses. CO2 can be depleted within a sealed greenhouse within a few hours, which halts the growth of the trees. In fact, CO2 concentrations in a greenhouse are often the limiting factor for growth. It is considered beneficial to supplement CO2 up to 1,000 ppm, with declining returns beyond that point. Above 2,500 ppm detrimental effects begin to show up. Humans begin to exhibit symptoms of headache and listlessness above 5,000.
Anyway, if you want to learn more about this research, you can download chapter 4 from volume 3 entitled, “Atmospheric Environment”. Here is the link: http://www.rngr.net/Publications/ctnm/Folder.2003-05-16.1922
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:31 am 71. anton:If for a second, and only for a second, I allow for the plausiblity of AGW I am always struck by the neo-colonial aspect of all the Carbon-Credit business. Think about it; FatAlGore can buy credits (i.e. pays some poor Third-Worlder to live in a mud hut without light or heat) so that he can fly from mansion to mansion where the lights/heat/a-c/pool heater are always on full blast. The ego astounds me. Further we are to be lead to believe that the denizens of the rest of the world will continue to sit upon their new-found wealth and wish to do nothing with it.
Remember what happened in Baghdad after the fall of Hussien? Everybody and his brother got an a/c unit and began to run it at full-blast, power consumption skyrocketed. Do we really think that this won’t happen elsewhere? Are the “primitive peoples” of the world so noble-minded that they will happily sweat it out so the the Gaia-Priest can live in comfort?
I’m not buying it.
On the other hand I am comforted by the total failure of governments to stop the drug and arms trade. I am sure they will have better success with one of the most universal elements on the planet.
BTW has anybody else noticed that the people pushing AGW the hardest all live in air-conditioned splendor and travel the world endlessly by jet? Do as I say, not as I do?
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:49 am 72. starling:Ragnar, yes the hockey stick dead but even if not, it’s not clear the American public gives a damn. “Pew: Global Warming Dead Last Among Public Priorities”
http://scienceblogs.com/framing-science/2009/01/pew_global_warming_dead_last_a.php
But then again why should the high priorities like “Strengthening nation’s economy”, “Improving the job situation” and “Defending the US against terrorism” matter when, as Wretchard points out, there are people who already know what it is that we need?
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:11 am 73. Habu:O/T but wirthy con oermiso.
I believe we have all learned a great deal from our host on his site. He has helped me understand many things and I believe that is true of many of us.
As we head into the holiday season, or really any season remember the Tip jar.
Think how much you pay for other entertainment, little of which provides you with the quality of not only W but the top contributors on this site.
So drop a tip to a man who has set the standard, always been a gentleman, and has been a gracious and fair moderator.
No one asked me to do this but I truly believe he has earned every tip he’ll ever receive.
Habu
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:14 am 74. Lazar:Richard,
It’s also the wrong proposition.
The expression of variability on different timescales is about the first thing taught in atmospheric physics 101.
About the second thing is the dominance of stochasticity on global average temperature at interannual timescales.
About the third thing is that, for typical changes in forcing, a minimum of thirty years of data is necessary to detect a forced signal with high confidence.
By the way, we are nine years aways from a thirty-year projection by an old model. Note that Scenario B forcing most closely matches the actual forcing, and that…
I often ask of those who express ’skepticism’, what they have read. Why do they believe what they believe?
Richard, what books have you read, textbooks, pop science intros, what papers, what summaries? You say “paid some attention to the science”…
What a mess…
The “Yamal dataset” is not “monthly global surface temperature data” and is not the dataset referred to in the Nature article.
Alleged by whom?
Why is that dataset “more reliable” — you understand that a chronology which shows lower correlation with regional temperatures is less reliable as a regional temperature proxy, right?
What do you mean by “clean”?
Why do you believe that McIntyre is telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Have you read this and followed the links?
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:22 am 75. Kinuachdrach:“So to repeat, carbon-driven AGW may or may not be true.”
Wretchard, you are being too kind. Even the blind-them-with-science types will acknowledge that the additional global warming from presumed anthropogenic CO2 is small beer. The killer in their models is the unsupported assumption that Gaia has a positive feedback loop involving water vapor — which (they claim) dangerously amplifies the original small theoretical anthropogenic warming.
But water vapor is already responsible for about 97% of the entirely natural global warming that makes life on earth possible. Without water vapor, the average temperature of the Earth would be about 0 deg F — straightforward black body radiation theory.
Since water vapor has naturally raised the average temperature of the planet by about 60 deg F, surely if the water vapor feedback mechanism were positive the temperature would simply have kept on rising, without any anthropogenic input at all?
Realistically, the water vapor feedback loop has reached a net negative phase — clouds form, and reflect the sun’s heat back into space, which mitigates the original warming. Hence, alleged anthropogenic global warming has no scientifically-supportable theoretical basis.
But let’s leave science behind (the Alarmists did long ago) and simply notice that lots of northern Europeans now have summer homes in Turkey. Their behavior suggests they want a warmer planet. Why does Al Gore want to deny them this simple pleasure?
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:31 am 76. Lazar:twobyfour,
You realize that you’ve thrown out modern science from astrophysics through materials science, biology, medicine, as well as engineering and industry?
Perhaps you are unaware “statistics” has several meanings.
Maybe you’re better off with…
You’ll have to look elsewhere tho for…
… as it ain’t my job.
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:32 am 77. Lazar:RagnarD
Ding dong you’re wrong.
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:34 am 78. anton:77. Lazar: I find it interesting that the number of trees in sample for the most recent years, i.e. the data easiest to obtain and collate, drops to zero in the graph presented by Briffa et al just as the the growth spikes. Even the writer in your link suggests using said data carefully.
To my mind wrecking the world’s economy, and submitting to a World Government, is not a careful use of the data.
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:51 am 79. SpeakEasy:This could truly be the “tea tax” that ushers in the next rebellion, hopefully non-violent. If I had to offer a prediction, I would predict people would simply find a way around it all or just not comply. It boggles the mind that one could see this as anything other than a get-rich-quick scheme.
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:59 am 80. Don Rodrigo:What Finsbury and Gormley have in common is that they Know.
What they also have in common is that they are rank degenerates. We have defined deviancy so far down that we allow such human pustules to lord it over us.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:01 am 81. boiled cabbage:What Miss Smith really wants is for the rich bankers to be pulling the buses in teams of twelve.
Pol Pot wasnt rational either of course. The vision of social apocalypse, real or imagined, is a powerful driver.
The UK needs a revolution, and if not the 2010 election, of course it will be violent eventually.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:01 am 82. anton:I can see this type of control slipping from the government’s hands into an organized crime model. Prohibtion failed to comtrol alcohol, which functions nicely as a fuel. There are tons of other fuels that are not consumable by people that can be used for heat/light etc.
Heck, is AlGore (or one of his toadies) going to show up at my cabin and check to see what my chimney output is when I burn the firewood I cut on my own land? He had better bring a proper search warrant.
The hearth-tax was one of the things that drove the peasents to revolt under the Bourbons.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:06 am 83. SpeakEasy:Lazar, You seem to be the lone supporter of AGW on this thread, which is fine. You also seem to know a great deal about the science end of the theory. Would you mind, in the interest of full disclosure, telling us what job you hold and if you in any way profit from the continuous study of climate? You seem to have an axe to grind. Of course you could simply be a true believer, which is fine by me also- misguided, but fine.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:13 am 84. SpeakEasy:If my last post seemed rude, I apologize. I simply seem to notice those who are the most vested in AGW being “true” have the most to gain finanacially in it being so. Al Gore being #1 of course.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:17 am 85. starling:@ Lazar (77): “Ding dong you’re wrong.”
You provide a link to this site: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/
The author’s state “We would normally aim to present our work in the peer-reviewed literature. We intend to submit some of this material for publication as part of a wider discussion updating our interpretation of Yamal and other published chronologies.”
That means it’s an unpublished working paper to which you have directed our attention. I have no issue with working papers–not even ones with just seven references–but until it’s been peer reviewed and published in a reputable journal, why should you or anyone else accept its reported results? Unless and until that gold standard has been met, what makes you able assert that the opposing position is “wrong”?
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:24 am 86. E. Nigma:Green plants and plankton in the oceans only consume CO2 and produce oxygen in the presence of light-photosynthesis.
During darkness, they consume oxygen and produce CO2; this is called respiration.
Many of the Europeans (France especially) did a variety of things in the last 30 years to curb their importation of oil from the Middle East because they thought it was bad business-an economic problem.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:27 am 87. Don Rodrigo:France in particular went “all nuclear” in hopes of getting off the imported hydrocarbon requirement. This was and is an economic virtue, but something they paid a price for in higher gas taxes, etc.
They have now gone to the point of creating a vast amount of propaganda to turn an economic virtue into a moral virtue, AGW, to justify the taxes, IMHO. Perhaps the greatest danger to us all is that many now actually believe this propaganda. Oops!
Lazar:
You sound reasonable, but here’s the problem: Reasonable discourse on AGW or climate change has been shoved aside, and NOT primarily by the skeptics, but rather, by the loudest, most strident and most alarmist voices among the believers. It is Finbury and ‘Barefoot Boy’ who get the press, along with Al Gore and his innacuracy-infested movie that we hear constantly. It is corrupt politicians and their giant money-sucking schemes that are front and center in the whole climate debate. Reasonable, non-alarmist scientists who are convinced of AGW, or even of a warming trend, man-induced or not, suffer from a couple of degrees of separation from the general public; it is the alarmist activists and politicians with their agendas who are the cause of this chasm, not the more vocal of the ‘deniers.’
What matters to a disgruntled, suspicious public is perception. If it snows in May or October somewhere for the first time in a generation, that perception matters much more to the man-on-the-street than a slowly warming general climate. Since we’ve been bombarded and nagged and legislated for two decades now about “Global Warming,” you can’t blame regular folks for expecting to see palm trees on Park Avenue by now. Since Cenral Park is not yet a rainforest, ordinary people smell a rat. Are they scientifically wrong? Perhaps, but they are NOT wrong in sensing that the whole AGW/climate change issue has been hijacked by demagogues and oppostunists. If you don’t believe me, than I should point out that eminent scientists who believe in AGW have recently spoken out, pleading for the non-scientist activists/politicians (and also media-whore scientists) to shut the hell up, and to stop equating normal, cyclical weather and climate events as ‘proof’ of catastrophic warming necessitating onerous rules and taxes.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:28 am 88. Lazar:anton,
A reasonable comment.
My take…
Briffa(2000) and Briffa(2008) (Fig. A) show a century-scale approximately linear growth trend starting around 1900 and extending throughout the 20th century. Superimposed are shorter timescale (~ 5 year) ’spikes’; there’s one at circa 1995, one at ~ 1980, ~1965, ~1955, ~1945, ~1930, and ~1920; all are of comparable magnitude. Core counts do not drop off considerably (below ~25) until ~ 1950. In the latest reconstruction (Fig. G) the results are almost identical but now the core counts do not drop below 50 until circa 1988.
Yup, they’re scientists.
You don’t expect me to disagree…
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:39 am 89. Lazar:SpeakEasy,
No problem.
I would mind.
Ha. The answer to that is no.
I sometimes despair at the actions of fellow conservatives. I wish they would read more (or even any) of the science they criticize, and be more skeptical of *all* pov. But… it’s their choice.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:52 am 90. E. Nigma:There are several categories of AGW believers:
1) Scientifically educated and knowledgeable people, who have read the science, made the science and/or accepted it. Relatively few in number.
2) Those that have read minimally and have a cursory knowledge and believe it because they wish to believe it. It confirms the subconscious “Calvinist” instincts in many that we are a flawed people that have strayed and this is punishment and reducing greenhouse gases will be redemption. The teeming masses that follow this. Some smart, some stupid, most just average folks.
3) Those that stand to profit by acceptance of AGW. Few but incredibly dangerous. Maurice Strong, George Soros, Al Gore, the nomenklatura of the UN. There is also non-monetary profitability, i.e., the academic and professional standing of the leaders of AGW; think of Robert Hansen.
The science is interesting but conflicting. Computer models are not as believable as many would seem to think. In the scale of alarming things that may happen in the next 50 years, I have trouble placing AGW. To persuade more people, the scientific advocates (categroy 1) need to uncouple themselves from the category (3) people and accept honest criticism and skepticism of the research and models. At present, there are big bucks floating around to research people to support more “research”. From my limited experiences in science, modern big-time research follows the money. It also introduces a lot of mediocrity into research, as the funded scientists are often those who write the best grant proposals, not who is actually the better scientist.
We should all be somewhat skeptical of “what we believe”. I am skeptical of AGW because I don’t think that the models and research are inclusive enough of phenonmenon that we do not fully understand. Having said that, man-made and natural greenhouse gases may be affecting the climate in ways that we still do not fully understand and control.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:52 am 91. Sergey:Honest skepticism is always a hallmark of good scientific thinking. The science surrounding AGW is not settled, regardless of what Al Gore says, he being in the above “category 3″, and should not be trusted in this matter.
When you impose 100% confiscating tax on consumption you will with 100% certainty get a huge black market ruled by Mafia. This will be worse than Prohibition. A huge part of economics would become underground, criminalized activity, and atop of all this, sits a tyranny interfering in any aspect of everyday life of everybody.
Nov 16, 2009 - 10:53 am 92. Lazar:I need not imagine such society: I lived in it for many decades in Soviet Union. Everything of value or of quality above a miserable government-prescribed standard can be bought at black market, and all non-sanctioned by State economic activity was a crime. You know what happened with this society: it imploded and revealed an all-pervasive corruption reaching to the highest ranks of government. This is nice prospect to contemplate.
starling,
Normally I would agree, however I linked to it as a response to unpublished, non peer-reviewed claims that were bought to my attention by “RagnarD”. Normally, such claims will (rightly) not be met with responses in the peer-reviewed literature.
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:00 am 93. SpeakEasy:Sergey, couple the prohibition with a failing economy and it seems like a no-brainer, no? Maybe I can become the next Joe Kennedy…….
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:03 am 94. Habu:73. Habu
I know you are right. W has an outstanding job and deserves more than just an opinionated audince of intellectually superior contributors Thanks for the reminder that nothing is free and that Wretchard is in the vanguard of protecting our rights.
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:08 am 95. SpeakEasy:“I sometimes despair at the actions of fellow conservatives.”
I always despair at the actions of false-conservatives when they become advocates of policies that are in no way conservative. Well, only the ones holding public office.
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:08 am 96. steeple:E. Nigma 90, that was an eloquent synopsis of how many of us in the non-convinced camp feel.
From my perspective, there is no more complex modelling challenge that I have run across (within the confines of this planet) than trying to model weather in the short run or climate in the long run. Far too many variables and their degree of dependency/interdependency appears to be highly conditional.
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:11 am 97. Agoraphobic Plumber:cfbleachers@60:
When Wretch has to issue a warning for content on this site, you can usually bank on it being either an annoying troll or Whiskey getting overexcited.
In this case, I believe the culprit would be Whiskey@7:
“The reason this happens is lack of fear. Lack of fear of White majorities retaliating. The best way to put a stop to Finsbury and the shoe-less guy is to punish them. Hard. In every way legally and morally possible. Lawsuits a plenty (the Sarah Palin ethics charges treatment). Dig into every nasty bit of personal life of themselves, their families, their friends, etc. Call it the Joe the Plumber or Bristol/Trig Palin treatment. And so on”
Actually, by Whiskey’s standards this is pretty mild stuff, but I’m very prepared to defer to Wretch’s judgment in such things. It’s his house, after all. I’m just a cat that occasionally comes by and hangs on the screen door to enjoy the proceedings inside.
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:20 am 98. geoffgo:If we are to have a modicum of success in rescuing US in 2010, those we support-elect will need a strong, easy to understand, uncontestable/apolitical mandate.
One rallying crys, like “stop spending” don’t carry enough threat. At the Denver statehouse tea-party, the pols in session didn’t even interupt their session to come out to welcome US, needlesstosay nor to discuss issues.
We at the tea-party-level must develop that mandate, so our newly elected conservative reps can use it, and act accordingly. Job creation? That’s not a (-D)(-R) party issue folks, it’s national survival(-C). Should appeal to every voter we can ever expect to get.
Thinking about our host’s call to action, while enjoying the superior commentary here at BC, and it occurs to me that the value of the thinking here is contageous weaponry.
Help me out here, but if our cadre were to volunteer to comment on the blogs of pols we support, we could contribute far more than our monetary resources allow. Just musing, but one hour a week, from our Top 25 commenterians, devoted to the commentary on the pols’ blogs…networked by subject matter expertise. A great comment/retort could serve hundreds of individual politico’s blogs.
Add the expertise of hundreds more from other conservative blogs, and we’d have amassed a confederacy, manning all the sites of our pols, 24/7. Today, each person running for office is burdened by the chores and expenses involved with blogging. Let’s aggregate…get inside the Left’s OODA loop.
The best comments here (including Richard’s) are worth sharing; in realtime. Imagine the impact of real-time, trollfree, conservatively targeted commentary, available on the blogs of every Conservative running for office.
Distributing intelligence to the edge is the logical approach to eliminating centralization.
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:30 am 99. Sergey:It seems too few people realize that “climate” is a statistical concept, and it follows that any statement about climate is a statistical assertion with all these messy things attached like probability distribution, mean and median values, confidence interval, confidence level, etc. Statistics is inherently messy stuff, but it becomes a wild jungle when applied to real-world systems where nobody can be sure that this or that sample are drawn from the same universe; there always present doubts about homogeneity of data, about statistical stability of the system which is underlying assumption of the most statistical methods, but the one which can not be verified for a system existing in only one exemplar and which can not manipulated in a laboratory. I was trained to be a rocket scientist, have master degree in fluid dynamics and physicochemical thermodynamics (official name of my specialization), and also in pure and applied mathematics. By reviewing and translating scientific papers on climate change for 5 years for a popular journal (my present job), I came to the conclusion that climatology is not a rocket science: it is much worse.
Nov 16, 2009 - 11:44 am 100. Konyok:LoTM@11
Thought you might like this:
http://blogs.ajc.com/mike-luckovich/2009/11/12/nov-13-cartoon/
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:03 pm 101. peterike:For those interested, a study now taking place at CERN to verfiy the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation. This could upset the entire AGW apple cart (if you don’t already think it’s been tossed over).
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/16/cern_cloud_experiment/
Another fun article from the same mag reports from an AGW skeptic’s conference. The reporting on the BBC propagandist there and his subsequent comments is priceless.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/30/climate_fools_day/
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:11 pm 102. anton:99. Sergey: Hey! You might be the guy to confirm or deny something I heard from a friend a little while ago. He stated to me that the “greenhouse gas” effect of CO2 isn’t a linear function, he stated that it varied as an inverse square function (I’m just a dumb cop so I might have gotten that bit wrong) Essentially you would not see a doubling of the thermal effect until you had squared the amount of gas in the atmospheric layer that the greenhouse effect occurred in.
I hope I expressed that correctly. If that is true it would seem to say we are getting all worked up over nothing.
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:21 pm 103. Enscout:I’m beginning to think that the reason the left is so bereft of wisdom is that they have no skin in the game.
And the game is life. The “modern Left”, you see is just as much a death cult as the poor, deceived jihadists. The gay lifestyle is generational suicide.
Trouble is, they insist on taking everybody else down with them.
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:23 pm 104. Enscout:I’m beginning to think that the reason the left is so bereft of wisdom is that they have no skin in the game.
And the game is life.
The “modern Left” is just as much a death cult as the poor, deceived jihadists. The gay lifestyle, for example, is generational suicide. Mandates parcelled out for straw men like global warming and the crisis de jour take away our ability to make choices and “choice” is a gift from Yahwey, the creator of life.
They insist on taking everybody else down with them.
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:25 pm 105. michaelhoskins:Sergey @ 99. Yes.
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:28 pm 106. Lifeofthemind:Konyok,
If only this was all part of a brilliant scheme to terrify our enemies with the thought that if they offend the US they will be conquered and occupied by an army of gay female apostates. We could send them Lord Finsbury.
Imagine if you attack America we will make your children sing the Barney song!
Bwaaaahahaha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8-Y9pz14aU
(Goes with the next thread too.)
——-
Looking down, How many trees in the Yamal dataset?
Many years ago I worked for a man who got the Nobel in Economics. We used to joke about “massaging a dataset” by removing outliers. Never in our wildest dreams would we have tried to get away with anything like the 12 tree study. Not even as an internal joke.
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:30 pm 107. joe buzz:How many trees in the Yamal dataset?
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:32 pm 108. E. Nigma:Sergey,
That is very on point. In a broad based statistical analysis, how do you separate the “signal” from the “noise”?
When a discipline or study is very focused and controlled, knowledge can be extrapolated and applied.
Contrary, in such a broad system as the planet’s meteorology, where do we draw the bounds of what is a proper input?
Dust? greenhouse gases? Volcanic debris and dust? Cosmic rays? Solar Wind? Sun spots? Geologic activity that could be warming the ocean locally, or even planet wide (think of the Ring of Fire in the Pacific)? The flapping of butterfly wings (OK, that’s just silly)? The flapping of my gums (sillier still)?
So many inputs, so little control. Greenhouse warming may be affected by man-made chemicals, but it seems so hard to separate out effects and weight them carefully. CO2 is implicated in global warming, but atmospheric water vapor is a stronger “greenhouse gas” than CO2. Should we then control water vapor?
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:33 pm 109. anton:107. joe buzz:
Nov 16, 2009 - 12:35 pm 110. Sergey:If my memory serves right there were thousands in the dataset, only a very few (twelve, again, if memory serves) were used in the study….odd, eh?
#102 anton:
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:04 pm 111. Konyok:Actual situation is worse. It is impossible now to quantify greenhouse effect of CO2 alone even approximately. This is excerpt from a new article of a leading Russian astrophysicist:
“Atmosphere issues outgoing radiation at altitudes 9–12 km, where troposphere turns into stratosphere; here ambient temperature is equal to radiation temperature. The difference between surface and radiation temperature rises with concentration of greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, precise calculation of greenhouse effect is not possible now. Quantum transitions spectra for all mentioned molecules are known, they are formed by multitude of narrow spectrum lines. Because of frequent collisions with other air molecules the energies of these transitions became fuzzy due uncertainty principle, and this stockade of lines coalesce into absorption bands. For gases at constant pressure and temperature absorption spectra are calculated using complex programs [2], but the complete problem of radiation heat transfer in real atmosphere is not solved yet. This fact gives to a number of educated and not so much educated people an excuse to deny it altogether. But experimental measurements of absorption prove significance of greenhouse effect unambiguously.”
As you see, he is not a denialist or even a sceptic: he believes into AGW. But he asserts that as a physical problem the sensitivity of greenhouse effect to CO2 concentrations at present is beyond reach of the current methods of calculation. It can be negligable, it can be catastrophic or anything in between. As for measurments, they do not give us CO2 contribution separately, only combined effect of all greenhouse gases: water vapor, methane and CO2. This makes impossible to use it in the models, because nobody knows how this effect will change for bigger CO2 values. The value of sensitivity used in IPCC models is a “guestimate” from a thin air.
Lazar@30
“Excellent. Which climatologists?”
This is just the kind of “appeal to authority” logical fallacy that non-technical believers in AGW almost always resort to when faced with skepticism. It is remiscent of the philosopical scholasticism – debating how many angels can dance on a pin according to *approved* references from Aristotle and the bible.
Lazar@74
There is a lot of confusion about models. Mann’s hocky stick and other paleoclimate reconstructions are one class of model, General Circulation Models (GCM) are quite another.
The problem with reconstructions is basic: it is necessary to cobble together extremely heterogenous data. First, there is the problem of instrument error of recorded temperature data with only a brief time series available, the oldest records being the least reliable. Then, to extend the time series into the past it is necessary to resort to proxy data. By definition, tree rings record EITHER temperature or precipitation. Dendrochronologists make every effort to calibrate their data by environment, species, etc. But, the inevitable “but,” it is nearly impossible to assign robust confidence intervals to their estimates because there are too many degrees of freedom. To achieve a CI of 95 the spot estimates must have an unwieldy granularity of a magnitude similar to the temperature variance the model attempts to detect. (We just haven’t had enough time to empirically match multi decade recorded temperatures with tree growth of selected species at selected locales.) Other temperature proxies, oxygen isotope ratios, varve deposits, etc. share the granularity problem.
This isn’t to say that the effort is misplaced or should be ignored. It’s just that we ought to keep it perspective. It might not be prudent to reorder the world’s economy on purely stochastic analysis.
You are quite right that the current apparent planetary “cold spell” is not sufficient to define a trend. (Bowdlerized Nyquist theorem: three data points define a trend.) However, why three decades? I suspect that the decade is the temporal unit of choice because it’s a nice even number appealing to humans, not because it has any particular significance in planetary cycles. Why not the 11 year sun spot cycle?
As to GCMs, this is another worthy line of inquiry that suffers from the “CSI syndrome.” Onlookers demand an impossible precision, AGW believers and skeptics alike.
I have worked extensively with Petroleum Systems models – 2d cross-sections and 3d models attempting to simulate the thermal generation of hydrocarbons from source rock and then the migration and accumulation of fluids through a time series. I am exquisitely aware of the problems and paradoxes of complex spatial modeling. Granularity, again, is a paramount obstacle to reliability. Both spatial and temporal granularity pose great problems – although we all want to work in a perfect data rich model universe, we can’t. Computer capacity is increasing exponentially, but creating a finite element world and attributing each element with the necessary physical characteristics, coding special rules for special elements (Question: Do GCMs have a spherical geometry or are they flat maps? Consider the role of map projection on the model.), defining intitial conditions and boundary conditions and weighing the input coefficients all conspire to make building and running a model an awesome challenge.
An embarrassing truth is that the more complicated a numeric model the less reliable it is. Each component of the model has a confidence interval that it contributes to the model. The more components the greater the error cascade. (Two components with CI of 95% yield a model with a CI of 90.25% = 0.95 * 0.95.) Because the CI of each component must be factored into the reliabity of the model, and ideally ought to be weighted, an exercise that adds its own error factor, a complex numeric model necessarily has an embarrassing low CI that nobody, but nobody wants to advertise. The ultimate paradox is that a model that we know must be stochastic must be deterministic because it is nearly impossible to track error.
So, we are left with impressive computer graphics and authoritative tabular results. Unfortunately, climate modelers have developed an opaque culture about their models and their product. (I know personally, I have attempted to communicate with climate modelers hoping to learn from them. Once they see the word “petroleum” they usually get quite rude.)
I share Wretchard’s position – AGW is neither proven nor disproven.
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:04 pm 112. twobyfour:76. Lazar/79
“There are lies, damn lies and statistics”
You realize that you’ve thrown out modern science from astrophysics through materials science, biology, medicine, as well as engineering and industry?
No I did not. It seems that someone else tries, though.
Hansen used sets with errors in data. After correction by someone that did check the data, the plot looks unlike the original. Or should have, but it has been “renormalized” since to retrofit the models. The same applies to Briffa as well and his methodology. From a statistician’s POV, it can’t be construed as anything else than cherry-picking. His rebuttal is unsatisfactory.
Perhaps you are unaware “statistics” has several meanings.
Perfectly aware. The meaning is clear, though I should have perhaps emphasize it or put in quotes.
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:09 pm 113. Konyok:Everybody,
This question of the geometry of climate models is really, really important. I have been unable to ascertain whether they model a spherical earth or a projected earth. All of the output that I have seen is projected as a lat-long grid, ie. polar regions are HUGE relative to the tropics. The model must be grid based, it simpy is not possible to model continuous data continuously – remember your differential calculus.
I can’t get a straight answer from anybody. How do they model the poles? How do they model circumpolar influences? Do they run multiple models at different map projections and then integrate the results?
Anybody know anything about this?
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:21 pm 114. Habu:98. geoffgo
I think that is a great idea. It’s called leadership, and in word and in deed I would be willing to bet that the contributors on this site have all at one time been in a leadership position.
Supporting good candidates and dropping in on the opposition occasionally to ask, in the Socratic method, questions that will force then to at least be introduced to honesty, integrity, and what this republic stands for.
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:26 pm 115. A Nobody:Great idea!
All those stats are fine and dandy, but what about the source data? If the source data is no good, then all the manipulations in the world will tell you nothing, other than that someone wrote a neat-o program.
From Anthony Watt’s report “Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?”, we get the following:
“In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations – nearly 9 of every 10 – fail to meet the National Weather Service’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source.
In other words, 9 of every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited. It gets worse. We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also has caused them to report a false warming trend.”
See the Surfacestations website for a bit more info:
http://www.surfacestations.org/
Next, let’s see those climate models as they currently stand be set to a period in the past (say, 1940), and then see how closely they map the real climate as it unfolded.
Finally, I have no small experience with governments and the way that governments fund institutions, and how funds are allocated. This creates in me a very healthy skepticism when I hear things like “creating new structures to combat (insert cause du jour)”.
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:36 pm 116. Paul Milenkovic:Getting back to the original post regarding the sale of carbon offsets and advocacy of lifestyle changes, and given remarks coming from the British Isles, I am reminded of some government functionary explaining that a long jet plane trip to one of those conferences was “carbon neutral on account of the purchase of carbon offsets.” It was further explained that the carbon offsets were in the form of Third World villagers eschewing the use of Diesel oil to run water pumps, and that the villagers would revert to foot operated pumps for their water needs.
We all have these images of the height of British Colonialism and the “natives” being called into various forms of menial labor for the benefit of the “Sahib.” Picture the modern version, some Cabinet Minister being propelled to some far corner of the globe, but that the plumes of kerosene exhaust from the engines (hundred of pounds of kerosene per passenger) are offset by some ill-fed children operating a water pump with their feet.
In the Hollywood image of Victorean decedance, we had some Britisher borne on a chair on poles on the shoulders of the colonial subjects. Today, the “carbon offsets” model has that high-born Britisher carried aloft by Legions of Third World children operating foot pedals to get clean water.
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:50 pm 117. twobyfour:Konyok, gaussian grid using a sphere, as the best approximation of earth, is usually used as the geometry is concerned. Meaning that the grid is rectangular, with a set number of orthogonal coordinates, usually latitude and longitude.
The gridpoints along the longitudes are equally spaced, while they are unequally spaced along the latitudes and defined by their Gaussian quadrature. There are no grid points at the poles. The resolution varies in different models.
There are two types of grids. In a regular Gaussian grid, the number of gridpoints along the longitudes is constant, usually double the number along the latitudes. In a reduced (or thinned) Gaussian grid, the number of gridpoints in the rows decreases towards the poles, thus keeping the gridpoint separation approximately constant across the sphere.
Of course, when the results are plotted on a non-spherical surfaces, you get a distortion, but that is only presentational distortion, not a distortion within the model. That being said, the model are necessarily reductionist endeavor and can’t have much of a predictive value. There are simply too many variables that we don’t have yet any certainty how they influence systemic processes.
Nov 16, 2009 - 1:54 pm 118. Annoy Mouse:The carbon credit scheme is like a negative economy. Can’t steal the world’s wealth? No problem, devise the negative dollar. This is nearly certain to bring out the best in people too. Hey, I am a barefoot vegetarian, how come he gets the same amount of credits as I do? Let’s just say that I offed a few heavy carbon users… does that go against my total? and, can I be absolutely sure that that the fascists in India are as honest as our fascist troll? Gee, I hope so!
Climatologists need to explain why the polar cap of Mars has been melting.
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:05 pm 119. Sergey:#108 E.Nigma: “In a broad based statistical analysis, how do you separate the “signal” from the “noise”?”
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:06 pm 120. buckets:Thit is the main problem haunting climatology. Theoretically, “signal” is time and space averages, while actually measurable variables are “noise”: they fluctuate wildly from year to year, from season to season, etc. Change of climate is the change of these averages, and it is always order of magnitude less than the “noise”. That is, we need to detect a weak signal on a background of a much more stronger noise. Not a problem, if you can make as many runs as you wish of the same system. But here you have only one run, and if the sample size is inadequate, you can not repeat experiment or observation. You can prolong period of observation to have more data points, but the system can change and the new data set will become incomparable with the old one – apples and oranges, or inhomogeneity of a sample. What is worse, climatology had to use data collected for quite another purposes: wheather forecast, calibration of C14 chronology, etc., for which “signal” is the “noise”, and “noise” is the “signal”, and where sample size requirements can be radically less demanding. Thus, Yamal tree-rings data were collected by dendrochronologists. They need a few trees with maximal year-to-year variation to identify dates of each ring. But dendroclimatology needs something directly opposite: many trees with very small interannular variation. For these purposes, Yamal is a statistical nightmare: growth season duration varies wildly, all depends on when Obskaya Guba cleared from ice. This is exactly why this location was choosen by dendrochronologists: all tree-rings are different, with an unique unrepeated sequence to compare and identify. Decent climatologist would have reject such sample as inadequate; but they had no another, more useful sample.
Programmer @ 65
Unfortunately (or fortunately), with the economic collapse the legal industry has come pretty close to implosion. Attorneys are out of work, jobs are scarce, and indeed, there are many legal tasks that are being outsourced to countries like India. “Document review,” in particular, is largely being handled not by new lawyers but by firms overseas who “review” the documents based on the criteria specified. Wave of the future.
Starling @ 85
Great point. However, Lazar won’t break out the “big guns” in support of his position until he’s presented with something in a peer-reviewed journal that has been in existence for at least 50 years and publishes solely on the topic of climate change.
And you might ask – “Why can’t we just see the real stuff, Mann’s work, the IPCC analysis?”
How dare you question him, you peasant!
And I find it annoying that an interloper feels justified in attacking Wretchard for a lack of due diligence after said interloper has read one blog post. That’s like attacking an author after only reading one chapter in a book. This is not the first post regarding AGW, and the curriculum vitae will not be spelled out simply to appease the Druids.
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:14 pm 121. willy:Speaking of model granularity, I am currently working with UN IPCC global temperature data that is used in their modeling. This data is avaiable as grid cells 1 deg by 1 deg lat/lon and cover the entire globe. Data attached to cells has average temperature since 1900. This data is generalized based on closest measuring station, so for Alaska, there is one point with actual data that is generalized for the entire state. There is no way to model climate change with the current levels of precision in the models.
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:33 pm 122. peterike:Hmmm. Carbon credits. Well as a guy who’s had a vascectomy, and as a member of the high-carbon producing decadent exploiter class of Amerikkka, I think I ought to be entitled to extra credits given the fact that I can no longer be responsible for the creation of future carbon producers. Hell, my inability to produce any new Amerikkkan carbon Orcs ought to at least equal a good half-dozen hungry little African kids busily planting carbon offset trees for Al Gore instead of food crops.
I want my carbon credits and I want them now.
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:51 pm 123. Konyok:twobyfour,
I’m not sure that I completely buy it. Each ring of gaussian grid elements, stepping poleward, would have to be attributed with special rules for insolation, albedo, thermal conductivity, etc. It IS doable, but damned difficult to avoid artifacts and error propagation.
Of course, my perspective is biased. I’m accustomed to multi-layered model spaces where the earth’s curvature is not an important consideration. I can almost accept the possibility of modeling with a gaussian grid as long as it is only one layer thick – treating the atmosphere of the earth as a single surface. Spatial models by necessity rely upon a moving window of neighborhood functions – a grid element is evaluated with its neighbors, the window moves on and evaluates the next element with its neighbors and then feeds back to the previous element iteratively. Pretty straightforward on a 2d surface, the gaussian grid would require special rules for how the window’s algorithms treats each element, but, it is doable. However, when the model has more than one layer, the window must evaluate 3d neighborhoods adding incredibly complex considerations of how to treat the different kinds of boundaries between elements.
How to calibrate all of this complexity?
Nov 16, 2009 - 2:53 pm 124. Tcobb:Much of the rhetoric on the subject of AGW deflects from a very real and central question–is global warming bad? The world has been warmer. Within historic times you could grow cereal crops in Greenland. You can’t anymore.
And we don’t really need computer models to tell us the ecological effects of having a higher average global temperature. The evidence is in the ground and the historical records. Mass extinctions, islands sinking beneath the rising seas, etc. If this really happened, the evidence is out there. One would think, if global warming was the evil that it is supposed to be, that such evidence would have been found. And amazingly enough the polar bears and the penguins survived through that warmer time as well.
The whole AGW scam is built upon the logical fallacy of assuming as a fact that which is unknown. We do have, or can get, actual data about what it is to have a world that is warmer than it is now. Maybe we ought to be focusing on that rather than computer models which seem to have all the predictive powers of a Ouija Board.
But then again, most of the AGW rhetoric is just a scam to be used against the naive and the ignorant for purposes which have nothing to do with saving Mother Earth. Its mostly for empowering and enriching Scum. Al Whore comes to mind… whoops…sorry–another bad typo and my backspace key isn’t working again. I meant to say Al Gore.
Nov 16, 2009 - 3:14 pm 125. Annoy Mouse:I am very impressed with the science of AGW. I have spent much of my career trying to predict what the temperature will be inside of a box. I am going through that exercise right now and have my PhD boss as a mentor and an outside PhD/PE to come up with independent conclusions (blind corollaries). We are struggling to determine the exact temperature under specific conditions inside the box. How grand it is that our trusted global scientists who have predicted everything else in the universe without flaw have so perfectly predicted all of the temperatures outside my box. It is humbling.
Nov 16, 2009 - 3:17 pm 126. Annoy Mouse:“Pretty straightforward on a 2d surface, the gaussian grid would require special rules for how the window’s algorithms treats each element, but, it is doable.”
Hey shouldn’t a circular surface be modeled with tetrahedons or hexahedral elements? mathmatical models could be preserved by merging one node of your Cartesian grid making it a three node element. The transformation can be made using an Algorythm instead of an AlGore-ithym.
Anybody who does not fully understand astrophysics should be made to pay an astroid tax. Who ya gonna call sucka? Al Gore?
Nov 16, 2009 - 3:27 pm 127. Konyok:Sergey@119
Molodyets!
You make a vital point with strength and precision.
I understand the need that global climate reconstructers have to scavange for data. It is impossible to avoid using heterogenous data, but, one must still be humble despite the grand scale of the project.
Another problem is the concept of “global climate.” We can precisely describe local and even regional climates. To some degree their definition relies upon their difference with other climats. Usually, hard geographic barriers define their boundaries and control their characteristics. (Hmmm. Irregular grid elements based on the earth’s own climatic zonation rather than arbitrary graticules?) A “global climate?” It’s intuitive and sounds real good, but what does it mean? It’s only boundary would be temporal – “global climate” today vs yesterday.
We know that global conditions vary grossly through deep time. It is becoming common in sequence stratigraphy to think in terms of greenhouse and icehouse periods, defined in ten thousand year increments. A geologist feels little compulsion to consider the current interpluvial holocene to be a *normal* baseline. With temperatures halfway between the hot, previously longterm *normal* miocene and the depths of the pleistocene, our current temperate zone climatic norm seems a precarious anomaly.
Still, what is global about climate? The question seems silly, but I think that it’s fundamental. We know that local and regional events can have global effects. We think that we know that cosmic events have global climatic effects – I think it reasonable to deduce that changes in the sun’s output will effect global climates, though we have not observed a correlation. There is good reason to deduce that atmospheric changes might also produce global climatic effects. We know that CO2 concentrations are increasing, we also know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. What we don’t know is what global effects are caused by changes in CO2 concentration and how to weigh those effects.
GCMs are wonderful scenario generators, mindful of their limitations, to look for possible causations. But, no more useful in determining economic policy than studying the entrails of a goat.
Nov 16, 2009 - 3:33 pm 128. SpeakEasy:Paul Milenkovic, but the question remains, who got the money? Did they pay the offsets to the local war lord who simply took the diesel fuel for his own use (as he would have anyway) forcing the serfs to pump by foot? Oh, wait, probably Al Gore set up an energy company in the area, paid the money to himself, kept the diesel fuel and gets to jet around at his leisure. Any way you slice it, it is STUPID! Only rubes could buy into such a transparently rigged scam, even if they take AGW seriously.
Nov 16, 2009 - 3:48 pm 129. Josh:I have not tried to make an independent evaluation of the technical reports on AGW. I’m old enough to remember Paul Erlich, and clearly everything he predicted circa 1970 – has turned out 1000% dead wrong, I mean, not even close, not anywhere, nohow. So simply on the once-bitten twice-shy basis, I take new assertions of panic with a large grain of sea salt.
Not to mention older Malthusian predictions of disaster.
Doesn’t mean there were never problems, just that hey, there were also solutions. Go figure.
But I have happened to have been studying some philosophy of science, and you start to develop some fairly in-depth analysis of the way that science is done, the attitudes with which it is expressed – and the fact that it is very often done very poorly indeed. With an educated skepticism to all, I expect any scientific result to address that skepticism almost before presenting purported results. And clearly, the AGW stuff tends to grotesque errors, hyperbolic claims, unproven solutions, … it just smells bad, all of it. Yes, some of the anti-AGW stuff smells even worse, but that just balances it out and leaves one needing to evaluate even more skeptically, before concluding anything at all.
I presume there is some small anthropogenic warming effect, but I also presume there are some nice Gaian equilibrium restorers (if only the entire radiating area of the Earth!), and I am not at all convinced that raising the average temperature of the planet a few degrees, might not be a good thing.
The only real “dangers” would be if any of the hockey-stick projections had any supporting evidence, and those are pretty much out of style among people who have actual college degrees in anything at all.
My two cents, in gold, at today’s prices, amounting to about one tiny flake.
ps – also, that clearly fossil hydrocarbons will become more expensive and run out over the next century or three, so long term we *do* have to do something, which will be either controlled fusion, or orbital solar, or both. And we could probably squeak by with a lot of fission power, for another century or three, if necessary. And, that it’s *fun* to at least try to do windmills and carbon-cycle and stuff. And that the Chinese are polluting the hell out of the Earth and ought to clean up their acts, as of yesterday. And a few more things, so I’m not totally upset at a lot of “green” projects, just don’t see any reason to panic.
Nov 16, 2009 - 3:52 pm 130. SpeakEasy:Just as the “healthcare reform” legislation is more about governmental control than actual healthcare reform (and it was always supposed to be about insurance wasn’t it?), AGW legislation is about propping up failed ideologies. The third world economies are faling and instead of letting them die off, like the Dodo, we are artificially propping up the local dictators. So how in the modern age do civilizations learn to evolve? Everything going to seed is connected by the manner in which it is being artificially kept “alive.” Housing market? Bail it out. Banks going under? Bail them out. Unions kill industry? Bail them out. California going bust? Bail them out. Too much credit card debt? Bail them out. etc, etc, etc.
We are seeing the end of RESPONSIBILITY. Enjoy the ride but watch out for the sudden drop at the end.
Nov 16, 2009 - 3:57 pm 131. Josh:SpeakEasy, I think it’s much worse than that, it’s not the end of moral responsibility, but the end of rational cost/benefit analysis. If it might be nice, we ought to have it, and cost is just a capitalist pig sort of reasoning, eliminate the profit and nothing can stop us!
Obama said as much several times during the campaign – just set a goal, and our scientists will reach it, no problem. No science, no math, no return on investment, just hope and change, on his candy-stripped unicorn. Good golly. I wish it were just a moral issue.
The point being, they see no reason why NOT to bail out everything and everybody! They don’t see there is any issue of responsibility at all!
OK, maybe you meant that, or allowed for it, or something. Just sayin’.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:03 pm 132. Fletcher Christian:The world already operates a rather efficient carbon credit scheme. The credits are called dollars.
Approximately 40% of the world’s supply of oil comes from the Middle East, almost entirely inhabited by Muslims. Oil is just about entirely fungible. So every time you fill your gas-guzzler’s tank, approximately 40% of the money is going to someone who wants to make you a slave or failing that a corpse. Have a nice day.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:07 pm 133. twobyfour:Konyok, I were just answering your question about geometry. One additional note, the grid is 3-d, of course.
I agree with you that is is nearly impossible to account for each and every variable and their mutual relationships and interactions that are in their nature non-linear. Different data densities are used for different slices of the grid cell (there is not enough sensors to get data higher up, so these data are extrapolated with coarser resolution) and the results are then amalgamated for grid cell clusters and so on and recalibrated then by a top-down model of climate. It does not require much of an imagination to presume a cascading degree of errors or biases that would appear in the model at each stage of merging of elements, let alone the initial recalibration bias.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:10 pm 134. peterike:As soon as Gore and cronies started to say “the science is settled” or “the consensus is in” anyone with a shred of horse sense could smell a dirty, oily rat. Oh, so when studying one of the most complex systems that we know of, we’re just going to say “the science is over”? And we’re expected to accept this without question?
Really, once they said that, you knew they knew nothing.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:13 pm 135. SpeakEasy:Precisely my point. And no one wants to question where my paying for someone else’s upkeep through my labor, confiscated by the government and given away to the lazy (or even the less competent for that matter) while they sit on the couch watching Dancing with the Stars and complaining is anything more than SLAVERY. I certainly do not have a choice. Well I suppose I could refuse to work also.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:13 pm 136. Geeze Louise:Global Warming is less about science than Getting It.
Semi-Tough (1977) starring Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, and Jill Clayburgh as the three-way love triangle and Bert Convy as the leader of B.E.A.T., a self awareness program that parodied the EST movement. All three take the program but only Shake Tiller (Kristofferson) “gets it”. Barbara Jean is worried that her pending marriage to Shake will be jeopardized because she didn’t “get it.” Billy Clyde (Reynolds) is the only one who really “gets it.”
/end movie synopsis/
Be careful what you ask for.
I am so tired of having this subject shoved down my throat. How stupid do they think we are?
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:21 pm 137. twobyfour:Konyok, I presume that the merging of cells is done along the climatic geographical regions. At least that would be a logical process, but I can’t say that is true. Don’t know.
Despite the dire predictions, earth is still absorbing CO2 the same as yesterday.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:32 pm 138. Lazar:anton,
Re your questions to Sergey,
As a first approximation, the change in temperature due to a change in CO2 is proportional to the logarithm of the ratio of CO2 concentrations. Without knowing the constant of proportionality that does not tell you the size of the temperature change, but it does tell you;
– any doubling of CO2 concentrations will produce the (*) same increase in temperature regardless whether it is from 300ppmv to 600ppmv or 1200ppmv to 2400ppmv.
– if CO2 concentration increases exponentially with time, temperature will increase linearly.
(*) This assumes that the feedback factor is independent of temperature and therefore of CO2 concentration, which of course is not true, as a gross example, if all the ice has melted there is no ice-albedo feedback. Hence it is a first approximation.
Sergey makes two points in his reply.
That is true. You cannot give a value for the “greenhouse effect” of CO2 *alone*, i.e. a value that is independent of the presence of other gases, because the value itself is a function of atmospheric composition. That of course does not preclude calculating the effect of increasing CO2 concentrations in a given atmosphere, as we can calculate radiative transfer for a mixture of gases (by multiplying their transmissivities, or equivalently, by adding their optical depths).
This is simply not true. Atmospheric radiative transfer for non-grey atmospheres was comprehensively studied and solved during the first half of the 20th century, by luminaries such as Eddington, Milne, and Chandrasekhar. The solution to the radiative transfer equation and its derivation can be found in numerous textbooks devoted to the subject. Here are a few references…
Thomas & Stamnes, Radiative Transfer in the Atmosphere and Ocean
Liou, K.N., An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:43 pm 139. Konyok:Apologies to all for being a bit C/O on this topic.
I get pretty worked up at the smugness. I’d be a lot more peaceable if our friends were just a bit more humble.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:45 pm 140. twobyfour:Went back eyeballing these 12 samples and… funny thing… the whole hockey stick is actually produced by ONE SOLE SAMPLE. The YAD061. Must have been a cherry tree, no other explanation is possible! It’s magic, I tellz ya!
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:48 pm 141. Don Rodrigo:#129 Josh:
I have not tried to make an independent evaluation of the technical reports on AGW. I’m old enough to remember Paul Erlich, and clearly everything he predicted circa 1970 – has turned out 1000% dead wrong, I mean, not even close, not anywhere, nohow. So simply on the once-bitten twice-shy basis, I take new assertions of panic with a large grain of sea salt.
Lazar: Again, you’re busying yourself with elegant arguments, but you miss what is the real point (whereas Josh gets it): A public that has grown suspicious and hostile to an elite that has increasingly been showing that they do not have the best interest of the general public at heart. Time and time and time and time again we have been bombarded with “crises” that turn out to be mere brushfires, and not the conflagrations the powers-that-be with their hidden agendas claim them to be. We. Are. Fed. Up. It is just too bad if some actual global warming or climate change (which has occured repeatedly in recorded history without discernible catastrophe) is dismissed by a disgruntled public. It’s really not the people’s fault. The alarmists have overplayed their hand one time too many.
Like I said above, until Central Park is like the Amazon, people won’t be all that concerned.
Nov 16, 2009 - 4:57 pm 142. Ann:“A public that has grown suspicious and hostile to an elite that has increasingly been showing that they do not have the best interest of the general public at heart. ”
Annoy Mouse Says -
Nov 16, 2009 - 5:07 pm 143. twobyfour:I can speak to this. Arrogant a$$holes have a tendency to change peoples opinions. Kind of like Jehovah’s Witnesses do; to the negative. The first sign of an a/h is the Fisking (parsing) technique but the dripping with superiority and the general demeanor of “you do not read me therefore you are a dumbf____” certainly make it obvious. And I like the compulsory I am a “conservative” bs. No sir, you are a combative moonbat, and please do not feign moral slight when you come into a calm discussion bearing a baseball bat. You have changed my opinion of you perfectly well. First I didn’t know of you nor did I care. Now I think you’re a POS. Why don’t you take it up with Scientific American and forward your published results when you’re done.
Don Rodrigo/141
until Central Park is like the Amazon, people won’t be all that concerned
And who knows, even if concerned, they may actually like it.
Warmer periods, like 8kya-3kya or Roman Warm Optimum or MWO resulted in better crop yields, more nutrition, healthier population and longer lifespan and population expansion.
Nov 16, 2009 - 5:07 pm 144. Eggplant:Peterike #101 said:
“For those interested, a study now taking place at CERN to verfiy the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation. This could upset the entire AGW apple cart (if you don’t already think it’s been tossed over).”
The latest copy of “EOS”, Vol. 90, No. 44, 3 Nov 2009 by the American Geophysical Union has as it front page article: “The Terrestrial Cosmic Ray Flux: Its Importance for Climate” by M. Ram, M.R. Stolz and B.A. Tinsley. The article makes compiling arguments for cosmic radiation being a driver for the Earth’s climate based upon data from Greenland ice cores.
The physical mechanism is interesting. Cosmic radiation comes from outside the Solar System. When the Sun is extremely active with sun spots and prominences then there is a significant increase in the flux of particles emitted by the Sun into space. Particles emitted by the Sun have a shielding effect against cosmic radiation and thereby reduce the amount of cosmic radiation reaching the Earth’s atmosphere. Cosmic radiation causes cloud formation in the Earth’s atmosphere which in turn reflects away the Sun’s light. This in turn causes a drop in average temperature on the ground. It is interesting to note that the Sun has been extremely quiet lately with almost no sun spots. This maybe the root cause for why the weather has been cooler for the last couple of years.
It’s funny but the global warming guys might actually be “right”, i.e. increased CO2 is increasing the Earth’s temperature. However this effect has been cancelled out by reduction in the Sun’s activity. If we did not have the increase in CO2, it’s quite possible that we might have gone into a mini-ice age such as happened between 1300-1800.
Of course this is all speculation. Climate modeling is very complicated and people really don’t know what’s going on. Socialists have seized upon global warming as a means towards pursuing their political agenda. However to make global warming the basis for major economic decisions is not rational.
Nov 16, 2009 - 5:08 pm 145. Annoy Mouse:In case there is any confusion the previous post under “Ann” was me.
Nov 16, 2009 - 5:12 pm 146. GerryP:OT – but the History Channel is having an all-day and all-night series on WWII right now.
Nov 16, 2009 - 5:14 pm 147. Lifeofthemind:To repeat, while anyone should be welcome to add to the conversation and challenge prejudices with facts, we need to know when we are being played and stop cooperating. It was obvious by the 3rd iteration that we were being trolled. The false claim of conservatism, the reams of cut and paste references, the threatening demands for credentials, the concurrent claim of modest amateur standing, the ridiculing of opposing data while at the same time comparing it to other data that does not meet the standards demanded from Doubters. The effort to steer the conversation to a reliance on the most technical and abstruse equations and terminology, despite the inconsistency of such a position with the claimed amateur standing. The refusal to engage appropriate citations by other commentators of prior fraudulent abuses of science by alarmists seeking power. The determination to ignore any mention or concern about the corrupt background, dangerous totalitarian associations, and unethical business practices of those promoting this theory. All these were readily obvious and justified my observation that we should have told the polemicist, or shill if you will, to hire his own hall and post a link to it for any that care to consider his clippings.
To be blogged under the title “On A Breath of Hot Air.”
Nov 16, 2009 - 5:43 pm 148. Lazar:Konyok,
The rest of your comments are measured and thoughtful, but this is nonsense. If someone makes a statement without citing a source for their belief or directly providing evidence, no one knows why they believe what they believe, it cannot be learnt from nor corrected, in which case it’s just ’some guy on a blog says’ and the world shrugs. That is why I ask for sources.
Agreed. I was going to make a similar point to Richard when he was talking of “the AGW model”, that AGW is a prediction resulting from multiple models, both statistical and physical.
Generally I have no problem with your comments re proxy reconstructions… yes, there are problems, yup including defining CIs, resolution, record sizes etc.
It’s science. There are always problems.
They can respond to both.
We know roughly the magnitudes of trends we’re looking for and the magnitude of interannual variability.
Not sure of your meaning… if you were looking for an oscillation of period eleven years, you would not be measuring thirty-year trends, right?
Some are spherical.
What is a CI for ‘a model as a whole’… you have CIs for given model outputs, right? And the CIs can’t be multiplied when component effects are not independent. More generally, how does one cascade errors through complex non-linear dynamical models? Is that possible? Model output is usually assessed by comparison with observations, with other models, and by varying components.
AGW is the best available explanation. Nothing in science is ‘proven’ ‘with certainty’.
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:02 pm 149. Lazar:buckets,
You know how to use google, right?
Oh dear, I’ve upset the apple cart.
The community for reinforcing dearly held beliefs.
The infinite loop of Chinese whispers.
Do grow up. I’m not “attacking” him.
Wrong again.
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:12 pm 150. Lazar:Lifeofthemind,
My what a nice piece of work you are.
Counting the obvious lies in your missive…
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:22 pm 151. herb:I asked before:
If the increase in “Global Average Temperature” is X, what is the standard deviation off that average? What is the confidence level wrt the input data particularly as related to data over 150 years old?
All this fails on the casual inspection of an untrained observer. You cannot rationally model a planet’s atmosphere as complex as this one in a stupid computer. There are too many continuous variables constantly interacting with each other in ways we cannot even begin to understand. AGW is a con game, driven by government cash and supported by the fascists to advance the State.
I have a goal of making my personal carbon footprint as large as possible since carbon footprints are directly (and provably) correlated with money.
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:33 pm 152. Annoy Mouse:Hey if this is all because you are HIV positive, sorry. We should be more sensitive.
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:33 pm 153. herb:Dont feed the troll
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:34 pm 154. Unsk:AGW is the best available explanation. Nothing in science is ‘proven’ ‘with certainty’.
AGW is clearly not the best available explanation. The “Sunspot” theory has been a much more reliable predictor of long term weather patterns. The lack of sunspots has correlated strongly with cooler temperatures since telescopes were invented in the early 1600’s and sunspots have been studied. The Maunder minimum and the Dalton minimum were both times of few sunspots and lower temperatures. The inverse has also been true, as the number of sunspots grew so has global temperature.
Carbon emissions have grown tremendously over the last ten years, and yet the climate has not grown demonstrably warmer, as was loudly and forcefully predicted by the AGW crowd. Arguably, the climate has grown cooler. There has been no proven strong long term correlation between climate change and carbon emissions. Some scientists have even said that carbon emissions have a low insulating value and could not possibly generate the long term climate change attributed to them. All we’ve had is cherry picked fraudulent data from James Hansen, Al Gore and others used to justify radical environmental initiatives that will surely ruin of millions of people’s lives, and severely affect the worldwide economy.
AGW may yet be proven to a have an effect on the climate, but so far that effect must be considered based on the evidence to be slight at best , and not worthy of the drastic measures called for by Finsbury and Al Gore.
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:37 pm 155. Eggplant:Ditto Herb: Don’t feed the troll.
Unsk said:
“Carbon emissions have grown tremendously over the last ten years, and yet the climate has not grown demonstrably warmer, as was loudly and forcefully predicted by the AGW crowd.”
I’m sceptical about the whole AGW argument. Many of the people promoting it are known liars and have obvious political agendas. However I’m concerned about the elevation in atmospheric carbon dioxide for another reason, i.e. its effect upon ocean pH. It’s my understanding that increased CO2 is making the ocean more acidic. The ocean is already under stress due to overfishing and agricultural run-off. How long can we continue to abuse the ocean before something breaks?
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:41 pm 156. JFSanders031:Somebody should have really cracked chicken little’s egg. This would all be a moot point.
Wretchard, Did you see where MILF is going to get recognition and negotiation talks?
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:45 pm 157. Lazar:Annoy Mouse,
My what a nice piece of work you are.
You must be friends with Lifeofthemind, you repeat the same lies.
Fortunately, I care not a whit what you think. When I have initiated communication it has been with Richard alone, because he’s smart, creative, and has responsibilities to his readers… the world beyond this community of commentators. When others have addressed me, I have responded out of politeness.
Now go back to stamping your feet.
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:52 pm 158. MarkJ:Tomorrow’s headline….today:
“FINSBURY: OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EASTASIA”
Nov 16, 2009 - 6:53 pm 159. twobyfour:The October 2009 average temperature for the contiguous United States was the third coolest on record based on data going back to 1895.
The average October temperature of 50.8 degrees F was 4.0 degrees F below the 20th Century average. Preliminary data also reveals this was the wettest October on record with average precipitation across the contiguous United States reaching 4.15 inches, 2.04 inches above the 1901-2000 average. Linky
Sooo balmy.
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:12 pm 160. Mongoose:Wretchard, Clean up in Aisle Lazar: self important nitwit imploding.
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:16 pm 161. Mongoose:Habu@114 : I bet you are right about that. I have often thought that about the people here. No doubt about it.
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:25 pm 162. twobyfour:Eggplant, even most dire predictions don’t make oceans acidic, just less basic (all the models have pH value well above 7 which is the neutral value of water). There is probably some effect on the oceanic flora/fauna, but I think that it tends to be exaggerated, especially as a buttress of AGW con. CO2 levels were higher in tertiary (>1000 ppm) and thus the pH value of oceans must have been lower, yet there seems to be no sign of a wholesale extinctions of oceanic critters during that period.
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:30 pm 163. Lazar:Mongoose,
Yadayadayada.
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:38 pm 164. peterike:I wouldn’t quite classify Lazar as a troll, not like some anyway. He does at least try, though he’s getting testy for sure and his troll hairs are growing longer.
Anyway, I have a question for Lazar, that I think will be telling. Ok Lazar, let’s grant you the entire argument. CO2 is the culprit. AGW is a real and present danger. What would you have us do?
I don’t want vague proscriptions of cutting carbon creation. I want policy. I want specific governmental, regulatory actions. I’m making you the AGW Czar, starting today. What are your first actions?
Speak, or forever hold your peace.
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:58 pm 165. A Nobody:To Lazar:
John Cross, is that you?
Nov 16, 2009 - 7:58 pm 166. Konyok:Lazar,
No, I don’t think that you’re a troll …
The standard decade time step strikes me as arbitrary. It’s an even number that is satisfying to human sensibilities, and looks tidy on a time series, but, to quote Jefferson Airplane, the human name doesn’t mean sh*t to a tree. A more appropriate time step ought to be derived from natural cycles.
If the task is to isolate the signal from the noise, in this case CO2 forcing from natural oscillations, it is helpful to dampen cyclic noise by harmonizing with its frequency.
I suggest that the 11 year sunspot cycle is one candidate. Another might be ENSO. Granted, these cycles aren’t perfectly regular – they’re fractal, after all. But, it seems to me that if we’re stuck with a flat metric like average annual temperature we should be comparing them from one sunspot cycle, or one ENSO, to the next.
Your point is well taken that nothing in science is ever *proven.* But, the question of AGW has become more than a scientific controversy. The stakes are too high.
Consider the case of human origins. The bones tend to support a theory of evolution in place across Eurasia. Mitochondrial DNA suggests an African origin of modern man. Although the Out of Africa is prevalent today, heated argument breaks out again periodically. This is a debate with profound philosophical questions about the relevance of race to human evolution. To date, no prominent politicians have championed one side or the other. Science is proceeding as it should. There is no forced “consensus.”
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:03 pm 167. Josh:I don’t see Lazar’s position stated on this thread, and I haven’t really noted it from the past. I gather it’s that (a) AGW is real, (b) most especially including the “A” part, (c) there is sufficient hard science to conclude (a) and (b), (d) this is generally because of CO2, (e) this is a bad thing, and (f) we need to take steps however large to “fix” it.
I cannot grok even from the hints if he also believes (g) hockey stick in progress.
In the absence of (g), I wonder if any of the preceeding matter.
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:21 pm 168. Insufficiently Sensitive:It’s time for the updated Reformation of the Catholic Church of Political Correctitude.
On the door of every one of its branches – in academia, media, public employment – we must nail 95 Theses of common sense.
These theses will mercilessly expose the corrupt indulgences which so-called ‘victims’ have extorted from society in the form of the muzzling of discussion of relevant facts – not to mention preferences, percs and undeserved promotions
Big heavy loud hammers, big ugly rough nails, and immediate video productions of these nailings straight on to YouTube.
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:29 pm 169. Lazar:Konyok,
Agreed.
That’s interesting. You’d want a long enough span, so multiples of the period, maybe thirty-three years! ENSO has a reasonably tight power spectrum peaking around 3.5 years, but amplitude varies wildly.
Generally agreed that influence of politicians on science is not good (for science).
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:31 pm 170. Lazar:peterike,
You’re asking someone who is not a policy person to speak out of their depth… be that as it may…
What I would actually do; ask policy guys, economists, energy advisors, industry, and engineers. But that’s not the answer you want, so, since you insist, with aforementioned caveat that my knowledge is *inadequate*; I’d spend around 1% of GDP on replacing fossil fuels, nationwide cap and trade, *no* offsets, replace all existing fossil capacity with 80-90% nuclear and 10-20% renewables, fund battery technology, forge agreements with willing nations, tax imports and apply diplomatic pressure on others, hope for the best.
That was painful.
Suffice?
An unacceptable condition
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:46 pm 171. Annoy Mouse:“replace all existing fossil capacity with 80-90% nuclear and 10-20% renewables”
That sounds sensible to me. Resumes stamping feet.
Nov 16, 2009 - 8:52 pm 172. Eggplant:twobyfour #162:
“even most dire predictions don’t make oceans acidic, just less basic (all the models have pH value well above 7 which is the neutral value of water). There is probably some effect on the oceanic flora/fauna, but I think that it tends to be exaggerated, especially as a buttress of AGW con.”
I had conversations with a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab who claimed that measurable change in ocean pH has been caused by increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. This same scientist also claimed that coral reefs have been impacted by this change in ocean pH. However I did not ask the scientist for any refereed literature to backup his claim.
twobyfour also said:
“CO2 levels were higher in tertiary (>1000 ppm) and thus the pH value of oceans must have been lower, yet there seems to be no sign of a wholesale extinctions of oceanic critters during that period.”
Certainly CO2 levels have been wildly different over the age of the Earth. Also there have been multiple mass extinctions of creatures in the ocean. Some of the largest animals that ever lived were oceanic reptiles (I am so GLAD those creatures are extinct). What caused those mass oceanic extinctions is a mystery to me. Actually, I’m puzzled by the whole dinosaur extinction thing with regard to plant life. For example, the rain forests of Australia have vegetation that predate the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, e.g. Antarctic beech trees, bunya pines, etc. There should be dinosaurs walking around in the Australian rain forests. Of course, one could argue that emus and cassowaries are dinosaurs. However, there were no emus or cassowaries prior to the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction but there were Antarctic beech trees, bunya pines, ginkgos, magnolias, ferns, horsetails, etc. Why were the extinction event(s) so selective?
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:10 pm 173. Eggplant:A random observation about the cosmic ray global warming theory: I have been informed that the solar wind is mainly in the Sun’s ecliptic plane. If one could see the solar wind, it would look vaguely like a spiral galaxy. As I mentioned earlier, the Sun has had very little sunspot activity over the last few years. The implication is that the cosmic ray shielding function of the solar wind would tend to have greater impact in the equator regions of the Earth and less so in the polar regions. It has been observed that the equatorial and temperate regions of the Earth have grown colder over the last few years while the polar regions have continued to grow warmer. I see this as further evidence that cosmic radiation has a stronger impact on the Earth’s climate versus the increase in carbon dioxide.
Nov 16, 2009 - 9:23 pm 174. Gaia:We all have an expiration date including mother earth. All of the carbon credits and fear mongering in the world will not save us when the end comes. The end could be now, tomorrow or a trillion lifetimes from now.
I, for one, am going to eat some pie.
Death is inevitable.
Appreciate life while you can.
Nov 17, 2009 - 12:13 am 175. twobyfour:Eggplant/172
During the last 200 years, the average pH level of oceans decreased from 8.179 to 8.104 (a change of −0.075). We have no prior data. Of course, there are regions where the decreased alcalinity is more pronounced and others where no so much. But I object to the loosely used “acidity” label. The most hair raising prediction of doom puts the average pH level to 7.5.
There is impact on some coral refs, but again, it has regional variability. The chemistry associated with CO2 absorption is not a simple pH negative process. Dissolved CO2 forms a balance of ionic and non-ionic chemical compounds–carbonic acid (H2CO3), bicarbonate (HCO3-) and carbonate (CO3-). These compounds further react with calcium, forming CaCO3 ions that precipitate and form deposits on continental shelves. The calcified structures may be partially vulnerable to dissolution until the seawater contains saturating quantity of carbonate ions. The process has been always present and it is a part of natural cycle of renewal. One may be concerned that the cycle frequency increases with increase of dissolved CO2, creating a temporary imbalance and impacting the calcifying fauna, but there is an opposite impact on the flora that tends to expand and thrive, which then provides food supply for the higher food chain order.
Again, this is a natural process, as the degree of CO2 absorption and dissolution varies with seasons and other factors like oceanic currents and saturation horizons.
We are at the beginning of understanding this aspect of ocean cycle and result from different studies vary substantially.
Extinctions… we don’t know. But with exception of the above mentioned critters, we have rarely preserved fossilized remains. Naturally there is not much what would preserve and organism beyond its skeleton (exo or endo) and even that is not certain. After several ky, the skeletal remain tend to crumble into dust, unless they are located in an environment that contains enough fossilizing minerals that eventually replace the original structure.
Burgess shale fossils are preserved in their entirety, including the soft tissues. That means the putrefaction did not have time to take a place. The burial was sudden and terminal.
Other types of extinctions roughly follow the same pattern. The dinosaur extinction is a bit different, because it seems there were several extinctions rather than one. We have well preserved remains similar in character to those from Burgess shale, Then purely skeletal burials that may have been a fairly gradual process. And last, some late dinosaurs experienced thickening of the egg shell which may have contributed to their demise.
The holocene extinction is different. Although it seems to be rather sudden and very violent, it has multiple characteristics. The dating is uncertain, generally the extinction is dated at about 12kya-14kya. It is also possible that there were several of them rather than one major extinction.
There are 3 distinct types of remains burial from holocene extinction.
1. Bones fragmented into pieces often no larger than a toothpick and filling up crevices and fissures in rocks.
2. Permafrost burials in temperate or tundraic northern regions
3. Bone islands above polar circle.
All three are rather problematic. The first type usually contains remains of known modern local fauna. Rabbit, fox, jackal, bear, deer, raindeer, bison, moose and other typical modern animals, as far as the bones could have been identified. In North America, also camel an horse bone fragments have been found. It is as if something smashed these animals by such a force that their bones were shattered to smithereens. Not fragmented as would be the case when you throw a dead bone against he rock, but splintered, indicating a live bone at he time of the incident.
2. The fauna differs from the first type. Mostly mammoth, rhino, but also tiger and larger land mammals. The animals are flash frozen and buried in ice, mud and sand deposits that froze immediately, in what would become permafrost regions.
3. It is possible that this type is related to 2, but a different mechanism was taking place. There are several islands (5 to 15 km2) composed entirely from bones and tusks of large land animals (again predominantly mammoth), cemented together by sand, frozen mud and ice. The bedrock is about between 10 ft to 30 ft below sea level, but he bones are heaped to the height of 10 ft to 15 ft in some places.
What happened is difficult to ascertain, but the alleged extinction of mammoth by human hunters is likely a myth.
Nov 17, 2009 - 12:43 am 176. twobyfour:Why were the extinction event(s) so selective?
Location, location, location.
Dinos probably were at their evolutionary end (thickening egg shell), so they did not survive, except a handful of species that were then thinned by the new mammalian overlords.
Nov 17, 2009 - 1:18 am 177. Sergey:To Lazar:”Atmospheric radiative transfer for non-grey atmospheres was comprehensively studied and solved during the first half of the 20th century, by luminaries such as Eddington, Milne, and Chandrasekhar.”
Nov 17, 2009 - 2:00 am 178. Sergey:But not in the REAL atmosphere with changing water content, convection, evaporation, condensation, etc. Up to the top of troposphere, most of the heat transfer is not radiative but convective, with a large contribution of H2O phase transition. Solving radiation balance equation for stratified, static, homogenous atmosphere useless for calculation of greenhouse effect in real atmosphere.
#175 tobyfour:
Nov 17, 2009 - 2:41 am 179. blogstrop:KT extinction irrelevant to the topic, but Holocene extinction is relevant. It was not global and spanned over only Northern Hemisphere. All megafauna get extinct, around 34 species: camels, horses, mammoth, rhino, sloths, and big predators. Probably, a comet impact 12.9 ky over North America ice sheet. This was an air blast high above, like Tunguska meteorit, but hundred times bigger. Mass conflagration of grasslands, and soot, ash, comet dust blocked sunlight and stopped photosyntesis for a couple of years. Quite enough to kill large herbivorous and predators depending on them. Small mammals could survive in burrows. There was an article in “Science” this year making the case for this explanation. It also explains the Yanger Dryas – a thousand years cold spell just before Holocene warming. When glacier lake poured into Atlantic through St.Lawrence River, it stopped termohaline circulation for 1000 years.
Since hearing about the UK plan (now under review!) to make it illegal for friends – and relatives – to mind kids unless they are registered child-minders, I am finding it hard to believe that any worthy political ideas emanate from that country any more. A once proud and admirable sovereign entity teeters on the brink of irrelevance, assisted in their handcart ride by political correctness and EU me-tooism.
Nov 17, 2009 - 2:47 am 180. Mongoose:Peterike, Oh come on now, he is most definitely a troll. I cannot imagine why anyone here is giving him the time of day. He has not even basic rhetorical skills, not to mention capacity for critical thinking. His “arguments” are shot full of fallacies, rationalizations, dodges and misinformation. He is masking the standard AGW rubbish in a cloak of middle-brow “reasonableness”, with a strong mixture of just risible high self-regard. This is a slightly more artful regurgitation of the usual vomit; he is just a better thespian than most trolls. The intent is surely a as vile as any of them. No one should be taken in by this, and I am rather surprised that some here do not see through the game.
Several folks are doing a good job of ripping him apart, and not only does he not see it, he does not even address their arguments. Intellectually (and morally) he is way out of place here. It is comic. He is not even a mediocrity and he most certainly does not mean well. A petulant, passive aggressive buffoon is what he is.
This “piece of work” nonsense is the tell. What a tedious waste of time.
I can only hope that some here wish to use him as a foil to further expose the incredible lunacy–and vicious assault on our nation, civilization, and liberties–that is AGW. These people are out to destroy us, and it does not matter if they are conspirators or useful idiots. Let us get clear about this.
Lazar is best ignored at this point. He is too vile of character to be educated, corrected or humiliated.
Nov 17, 2009 - 3:08 am 181. twobyfour:Mongoose, tell us how you really feel!
Nov 17, 2009 - 3:16 am 182. twobyfour:Sergey, what’s your opinion on the CAM modeling software? Linky
I haven’t tried it, skimmed it… the basic description that is. Of course, despite having quite a few bells and whistles, it is just a crude model and may have some serious flaws and biases. They have a single grid column version for parametrization, maybe it would be a good idea starting with that, to find holes.
Re Holocene ELE… I was a bit concise as the scope is concerned. There were other species represented in finds, from regions further south, though the representation was scaled down further south you go. Crocks and alligators, antelopes, giraffes, hippos, lions, etc. Thus it seems that though the event was centered on the Northern hemisphere, it must have been really a bang to remember, if you survived. I suspect we do remember it, but time clothed the event in many overlays.
Also, based on the flora that is present in stomachs of the preserved mammoths and also found in situ, the current permafrost region of northern Sibiria belonged to a more temperate climatic band-savannah type. I think that this event happened not at the Holocene boundary, but a bit later, when the NA ice sheet already receded, as there are burial sites on the continent too (northwestern BC and Alaska–mangled and dismembered animals, mixed up with broken trees).
Also, there seem to be later, probably somewhat localized events. One approximately at 3.5 kya boundary and another at about 2.7 kya. They are a bit more remembered, though there is a discernable incorporation of some older tradition.
Nov 17, 2009 - 4:08 am 183. Sergey:Since stratosphere dusting was global, all biosphere suffered from “asteroid winter”, but Norhern part suffered most because of direct impact of the air blast and more vulnerable polar ecosystems. Tropical forests and all their inhabitants were almoust unscathed. Camels and horses survived in Asia, but not in America. There was a gradient of the number of extinct species: the farther to the south, the less damage; and epicenter was somewhere to the north of Great Lakes; some comet fragments achieved Carolina and formed “Carolina Bays”, oval depressions, whose long axes indicate azimuth of epicenter. The timing of extinction is marked by fall of mesolithic Clovis culture. And NA ice sheet already receded by this time. Younger Dryas delayed Holocene warming for a while, but did not prevent it.
Nov 17, 2009 - 5:03 am 184. Sergey:As for 3.5ky event, it is mentioned in the Bible: Exodus, splitting the waters of Red Sea. The sea receded, and Israelites crossed it; but Pharaon with all his army drowned when a wall of water smashed them. Looks like tsunami in Red Sea after asteroid impact in Indian Ocean. And “outer darkness” in Egypt in the same book is what can be expected after asteroid impact.
Nov 17, 2009 - 5:29 am 185. twobyfour:Eggplant/173
A random observation about the cosmic ray global warming theory: I have been informed that the solar wind is mainly in the Sun’s ecliptic plane. If one could see the solar wind, it would look vaguely like a spiral galaxy.
One, the solar wind label is quite inappropriate and misleading. If you look at Sol from the polar view and if you had eyes that were not only calibrated for visible wavelengths, presuming that you’d be located several AU above the pole, what you would see is something akin to a toroid, a faint sheath that would reach beyond the Neptune-Pluto orbital boundary, fainter at the periphery. This sheath represents the solar plasma, which behaves not as a process related to fluid dynamics but is based on solar electromagnetic field. Just so we are clear, the EMF is not something that pops out of thin air, but it is a property related to electric currents.
The expelled plasma follows the equatorial plane of flow because that is where the EMF toroid provides the best route of escape-the sheath is weaker there and the toroid functions a bit like a magnetic chamber. When you look at the protuberances, they tend to loop towards equator or detach close to it and follow the path of largest potential that is at the equatorial plane, that is because the toroidal folding of the EMF is a form of double layer in 3d spatial context. You would discern a kind of double layering in the discharge as well and then a tendency to form a corkscrew shape. But also, there would be bending of it that would remind of a galactic arm pattern, though this would be discernable only at a considerable distance.
You would also notice that the planets have similar sheaths and that those planets that have their poles roughly perpendicular to the solar equatorial plane do have sheaths that almost reach to their next neighbor. The part of the toroidal sheath that is facing sun is distorted and squished, the other side is elongated. Mercury does not seem to have a sheath, but that may be because of its proximity to sun, it is comparatively weak and thus hidden. So, Venus’ sheath reaches to Earth, and Earth sheath reaches to Mars. Mars sheath reaches not to Jupiter but to the asteroid belt. If the sheaths’ termination (or rather dissipation) is somehow related to Bode’s Law, then the asteroid belt may represent a location of a planet that was once there.
As I mentioned earlier, the Sun has had very little sunspot activity over the last few years. The implication is that the cosmic ray shielding function of the solar wind would tend to have greater impact in the equator regions of the Earth and less so in the polar regions. It has been observed that the equatorial and temperate regions of the Earth have grown colder over the last few years while the polar regions have continued to grow warmer. I see this as further evidence that cosmic radiation has a stronger impact on the Earth’s climate versus the increase in carbon dioxide.
The solar plasma sheath functions as a shielding. It simply drags less energetic particles of cosmic radiation along where the layer has a higher density. The same applies to Earth’s sheath. The density decreases in polar regions, so the cosmic radiation would be more pronounced there. On the side facing the sun (day side), there would also be less cosmic radiation, while on the opposite side (night side) there would be more of it incoming as the sheath is less dense.
However, the cosmic radiation does not have a warming effect, necessarily.
Increased solar activity acts directly on the Earth with a small increase in radiation, a small heating effect and an associated increase in evaporation. This same increase in activity suppresses cosmic ray penetration of Earth’s atmosphere, thus reducing available low cloud condensation nuclei. This sequence of events increases clear sky and incoming radiation while increasing the already dominant clear sky greenhouse effect from gaseous water vapor.
The reverse effect of a less active sun reduces direct solar warming and, by permitting the penetration of cosmic rays, facilitates low cloud formation, which increases reflection of already reduced solar radiation, reduces clear sky, reduces evaporation and simultaneously reduces the availability of the most important greenhouse gas, water vapor, through condensation and precipitation.
Thus solar activity has associated positive feedback when more active and negative feedback when less active, dramatically magnifying Earth’s thermal response to changes in solar activity and explaining how fractions of Wm-2 change in direct solar radiation translate to many Wm-2 effect between positive and negative phases of relative solar activity.
Good cloud data is in short supply and covers only the recent decades but we can derive cosmic ray intensity and deduce there has been a general reduction in cloud cover during the 20th Century. While hesitant to extrapolate from a very short data series it is entirely plausible that reduction in low cloud over the period could conservatively be estimated to have increased heating at Earth’s surface by 5-10 Wm-2, an amount more than sufficient to account for all the estimated warming over the period in question.
Nov 17, 2009 - 5:32 am 186. twobyfour:Sergey/183
I see it differently. Remember, these flash frozen mammoths?
What has likely taken place is that whatever the initial impetus was, it caused a rapid evaporation due to heat. The evaporated water formed clouds and precipitated back. In the more moderate climatic zones, or closer to equator, that would be reflected in torrential rains, while more towards north pole this would be expressed in a high pressure air moving rapidly upward while low pressure air moving in the opposite direction freezing whatever it touched in its path.
Seems a bit counter intuitive but it is perfectly logical and and explains the exhibit (the frozen mammoth still with a flower hanging from its mouth, or rather many mammoths that have been reported in similar conditions). Then your scenario takes place and the cloud cover continues in less pronounced manner, precipitating in polar regions as snow and contributing to the increase of sheet cover. I’d suspect that the period was a bit shorter, say some 15 years of winter with a low return to normal conditions in about 40 years.
Nov 17, 2009 - 5:48 am 187. buddy larsen:Well, i popped up at 5 ayem in order to get a leg up on the day –and then sat here like a bump on a log and read this entire thread. It’s now 6:30 ayem, or as that feller in the video would say, “hof pahst six” –and my get up and go has got up and went. However.
Did IPCC ever reply, or note in any fashion whatsoever, the reports on the massive 80% or so was it –of the critical, ball=o=wax temperature readings having come from official rule book mal-placed thermometers?
If not, did not that put the whole AGW affair on queer street (to use a boxing term for the rubber legs induced by a shot to the chin)?
Other thing, the IPCC panel was dreamt up and ramrodded by its very first chairman and mission-keeper, one Maurice Strong, in the year of our lord nineteen hundred and eighty eight iirc.
That’s enuff said, as far as i’m concerned, as clearly –as with all things that deliberately oppose our free movement forward in this mysterious-purpose-feeling journey thru spacetime –that mission was to contrive the conclusion (”AGW!”) and THEN derive the method. An un natural bass ackwardism that amounts to evidence of no evidence, and allows such as Gore to truthfully claim he “has the science and the consensus, and the debate is settled”.
Yes indeed all that is true, but opposite the way he wants us to see it.
He is a ‘performance’ and any performance can begin at the end and end at the beginning and still entertain if it is dramatic enough, and if the incoherence is shrugged off as typical Gore bathos and pathos flop-sweating through an attempt to be just the opposite, the Ground Control to Major Tom.
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:03 am 188. netsailer:title of the post should be:
Gay, but not happy
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:15 am 189. twobyfour:Sergey/184
As for 3.5ky event, it is mentioned in the Bible: Exodus, splitting the waters of Red Sea.
You’ve noticed the timing, eh?
Yea, that is the period.
I am not entirely sure if there was an impact involved though. You may get a similar effect by a very massive body (say a smallish planet), in a close proximity. The likelihood that planet sized bodies would bump into each other is very small. Despite gravity that would tend to attract them together, their electric fields would keep them at a distance and the exchange of electric potentials may be what would take a place. That may be perceived as a relatively stationary bright pillar–an arc that would behave just like an arc, but scaled to a biblical proportion, sputtering and exchanging matter between two bodies. If there is a bright pillar somewhere in the story then I may be right.
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:19 am 190. buddy larsen:The result would be darkness due to dust formed as the arc grinds the rock here ant there, clouds forming much lower than usual (the sky is falling!), and possible decade of reflected solar radiation inhibiting the plant growth, yet because of the particulate cover in the air, whatever solar radiation reaches down below would be trapped, creating a greenhouse effect, so thought it may be chilly, it won’t be that severe. You my be even lucky and the other body may have substantial amount of carbohydrates in its atmosphere, so you get some. They would precipitate when evaporating make the air fragrant and dissolve in water so it would have somewhat milky appearance, and on the land they may coagulate into yellowish dew, sweet tasting and reminiscent of honey. You become a gatherer and when the conditions change, you’d be always looking for a land flowing with milk and honey, from that time on.
Shades of the Naked Archaeologist !
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:48 am 191. twobyfour:buddy larsen/187
In 1984, Maurice was desperately looking for something. He always knew that some form of socialism was desirable (to him, try to find a better racket!), but couldn’t nail it, so he created some pilot projects like alternative barter currency and such, but that was really not flying well. There was simply not that much incentives present in his schemes, the sheep did not think it was the best thing after sliced bread, the ingrates!
And then, in the year 1988, a flash of brilliance! He remembered the 70’s Ice Age doomsday fad, but that was not suitable for many reasons, one of them was that is was a fad and they knew it. Also, cashing on it was somewhat problematic. But warming, that is entirely different cup-o-coffee. Margaret over there in UK actually did a pilot project, as if for him, she started using the CO2 scare to break up unions that held the kingdom in a grip, pushing the nuclear clean energy. Marvelous, how she was able to manipulate her foes. So, the task was how to apply a similar paradigm to his goal, expressed in the maxims that some animals are more equal than others and you don’t have to be a king to rule. So, who had the best racket during the past 1000 or so years? And there it was: global warming and indulgences, for trading in CO2 footprints. Of course, he and whoever would step in as a proxy would hold the bag of indulgences dispensation. Some initial investment was necessary as his cashola was a bit depleted temporarily due to people simply not buying it, whatever that it was, so he needed to find someone that would grease the way, because as they say every man, woman and child has their price. He knew George already, but not that close. However, he knew George was like minded spirit. So, George got an overview and truly, Maurice was not mistaken, George was his twin! (There were some mutual disputes who is the eviler twin, but that was settled by the notion that they both are evilest of all twins)
Money were flowing through Tide in tides, smoothing paths where necessary, providing almost a lifelong security to some VSEs (very special experts) and the whole thing got rolling, and it took practically a decade to establish the consensual and settled mindf***k. Now a front man was needed, someone with a bristling ego, and well developed vanity, well established in political circles and in a situation of a mild despair after some unappreciation of his inherent brilliance. And they found him! Al Goracle!
Well, and you already know the rest of the story.
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:58 am 192. buddy larsen:…and we thought Ian Fleming was making those guys up….
Nov 17, 2009 - 7:17 am 193. Sergey:#186 Twobyfour
Nov 17, 2009 - 7:26 am 194. herb:Quite possible. At Tunguska site the trees were carbonized at the surfaces looking to the epicenter and felled, but there was no forest fire: minutes after the blast a torrent rain poured and extinguished the fire. But this was in a warmer zone, not in a frozen tundra. Ravines resulting from this flood were found. Water was estimated to be a meter deep in some places, and if such thing occured at -30C everything on the ground would be covered by a thick ice crust in minutes.
This is truly the most amazing place.
2X4 has explained the mystery of why some animals got fossilized (and in piles, yet) while everything now rots in the sunshine.
Another puzzle about this GW thing and CO2: If the burning of fossil fuels warms the planet by releasing carbon into the atmosphere, where did the CO2 come from before it was fossil fuel?
I did want to pick a pointy nit on the acidity issue. 2X4 notes a value for oceanic pH of 8.179 from 200 years back and 8.104 at present. Im just wondering about the 200 YO data. How reliable or useful is it? They didnt have the equipt.to measure that precisely. If the water was stored was it contaminated? And I further presume that the present value is some sort of average. If the 200 YO sample was from some area with a lot of limestone it would be more basic, yes? Or near a swamp, more acidic.
This is the trap that these “historical” data points carry with them. This “warming” issue is a question that simply cannot be answered.
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:01 am 195. geoffgo:Sergey & TwoXFour,
I’ve heard similar hypothocies about Noah and the Great Flood. It’s the foreknowledge part I don’t get. Could the NA blast have precipitated the flooding of what was the Med vally? Slowly enough to allow for preparation? What’s an Ark?
Herb: I agree. Amazingly enlightening commentary.
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:03 am 196. Brett:Will such taxes “save the planet?”
No.
Will they empower tyranny?
Yes.
Who’s so smart?
No one.
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:16 am 197. David Boggs:OT, but…Last week the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that they are helping the KIPP Houston schools to obtain $300 million in financing to build more schools. For more details go to PRNewsWire.com.
Leo Linbeck III is one of the main backers of KIPP Houston. This may explain why he hasn’t been posting recently. Congratulations to KIPP Houston and LIII.
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:23 am 198. joe buzz:YOU Go LEO!!
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:35 am 199. Lifeofthemind:buddy larsen twobyfour Eggplant,
Concur, well done. We must be open to new information and welcome different views, frequently mine. We must not allow ourselves to be trolled or rolled.
Are Soros & Strong principals or agents? Maurice lives in Beijing. Wish Murdoch didn’t have is business tied up with that regime.
On bbery forgive typos please.
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:59 am 200. Voltimand:A quick search of this thread discloses that there is no mention of Ted Kacynski. So I thought I would put in a word for him.
The relevance here, I should think, is relatively obvious: invent a way of controlling “les autres” (OP’s: Sartre’s “other people” whose presence is what makes hell hell) while shrugging one’s shoulders and saying “it’s the way of nature, there’s no help for it. The machine age has encroached too far, so obviously I must start killing people.” This what the “Unabomber Manifesto” comes down to, a threat message Ted insisted on being published after the fact, as it were.
The link here is an age-old (at least in western cult) itch called “primitivism”: the belief that “nature” (whatever that is) is better without the presence of people than with it (cf. Sartre above: this is because “people” are “unnatural”).
What gets me is the sheer blithering cowardice of it all: environmentalists are people who haven’t got the guts to say all the above–even if they were conscious of it which of course they’re not because lack of consciousness of what you’re “really doing” is what makes “being a environmentalist” possible–so that they can go blithely on their way in all self-righteousness (you think Ted Kacynski thought killing people was “evil”??)–while in effect managing to control les autres through the mediation of an impersonal agency aka the federal government.
What we need is a direct rhetoric–nothing like the above–by which in one sentence or slogan environmentalists can be flattened every time all the time in public, till they run away, which is not impossible to anticipate because “environmentalists are cowards who want to, etc. etc.”
I suggest some epigrammatically-honed version of the following: “Every time an environmenalist breathes she creates CO2. Environmentalists to be consistent must stop breathing.”
Nov 17, 2009 - 9:10 am 201. Hatman:I have a better idea. Sin forgivness coupons. The church doles out one coupon per person per week. Additional coupons are on sale at the church or from my web site. Each sin forgivness coupon is worth one lie. Adultry is covered by one hundred coupons. Murder by one thousand coupons. Believers in carbon credits can be forgiven for one million coupons.
Nov 17, 2009 - 9:14 am 202. Marty:Trying to get this thread back on topic—
Lazar @ 170
If I accept your premise of imminent disaster due to anthropogenic GW, what you suggest for policy is not unreasonable. So, going back to wretchard’s post, what do you think of Finsbury’s idea? (my opinion is up @ 46 and not much different from yours… again, if I accept the premise)
Nov 17, 2009 - 9:14 am 203. Josh:Article linked from Drudge this morning, Europe speaks:
Obama Has Failed the World on Climate Change
…
If the rest of the world were to follow the US example in their approach to fossil fuels, the oceans would not only heat up, but would probably soon begin to boil.
…
If hyperbole can heat the planet, we’re in trouble.
(ps – why does blockquote increase the font size? should decrease it, if anything. heck, I’ll just use italics here)
Nov 17, 2009 - 9:15 am 204. Marie Claude:many calcaerous stones of the same veins as those that were used to build our cathedrals and Loire castels have some petrified insects and shells from Crétacé and or jurassic eras. Different levels of seas were there, hmm, when the Cromagnons were still virtual bacteries
http://www.ac-grenoble.fr/svt/SITE/eleves/prodelev/sarcenas_peyrard/paleogeo.htm
Nov 17, 2009 - 9:51 am 205. Mark Razak:All BC’ers need to thank Josh (#203) for the link. I strongly encourage all to read this short article as it is the model of European anti-Americanism. The article begins, of course, with an attack on George Bush, but the author is so consumed by hatred of everything and anything American can not restrain himself and goes after Americans themselves. Some money quotes,
“For most Americans, the world beyond the US’s borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance. For this reason, arguments based on appeals about drowning Bangladeshis, starving Africans and flooded islands in Indonesia have little effect.”
Note how Americans are both ignorant AND evil.
And there’s this,
“Obama has proven himself to be unable to put an end to the lies that modern American society is based on. He is unable to overcome the entrenched lobbyists of the oil and coal industries and make the reality clear to his compatriots: They are the worst energy wasters on the planet — and are thus, indirectly, a major threat to world peace in the 21st century.”
Evil Amerika, that ever present threat to all of the world’s people. I remember British historian Paul Johnson once stated that Americans will become the new Jews. I wonder how long it would be before we heard of “final solution to the problem of America.”
Nov 17, 2009 - 10:36 am 206. Lazar:Sergey,
The formal solution of the radiative transfer equation is the same regardless of whether a model includes or does not include convection. Of course convection changes the atmospheric profile which is input to the radiative transfer equation, which changes the output. Similarly the radiative transfer equation changes the atmospheric temperature profile, which in turn is input to whatever convection model is used.
Probably the first radiative-convective equilibrium model, by Manabe and Wetherald…
Manabe, S., and R. T. Wetherald (1967), Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, 24(3), 241-259, doi:10.1175/1520-0469(1967)0242.0.CO;2.
Nov 17, 2009 - 10:43 am 207. Lazar:Mongoose,
Ideologues of all political stripes
Nov 17, 2009 - 10:53 am 208. Lazar:Do so look alike
In another nation under other stars
Mongoose would make a Comissar
Mongoose,
They are possbily much smarter than you.
Nov 17, 2009 - 10:58 am 209. Konyok:Maurice Strong — hissssss!
1992 was the year of change for me. The LA riots, er rebellion had me in a funk – Marxist revolution yay! looting and racial murder no! (As hard as I tried I just couldn’t view the Korean shopkeepers as THE MAN.) So, the world gathered at Rio to finally get global about the environment. Watching C-SPAN, I was quite impressed at how *reasonable* the Bush negotiating position was. Gro Harlem Brundt, the striking redheaded English fluent Socialist prime minister of Norway would have nothing of it. The United States was selfish and greedy, only caring about its own economic well being. (Me: huh? what does this have to do with saving the rainforest?) Imagine my surprise when two weeks later the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries announced the resumption of whaling. Greenpeace: crickets. CNN: crickets.
Meanwhile, General Secretary of the Rio Summit, one Maurice Strong was attempting an epic water grab in sweet home Colorado – 1 million acre feet of water from the San Luis valley aquifer. Originally proposed as a brewery advertised to bring several hundred jobs to one of the country’s poorest counties; the plan expanded in December, 1992 to selling water to Colorado Springs and other front range cities.
So, Ms. Brundt is today the Secretary General of the World Health Organization, Mr. Strong is in quasi hiding after his implication in the Iraq food for oil scandal. Little Konyok long ago cancelled his Greenpeace membership …
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:00 am 210. Don Rodrigo:“For most Americans, the world beyond the US’s borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance. For this reason, arguments based on appeals about drowning Bangladeshis, starving Africans and flooded islands in Indonesia have little effect.”
Uh huh. So . . . . the next time there’s one of those ginormous, deadly Tsunamis out that way, the world can beg for help from the Chinese and Russian navies.
(Crickets . . . .)
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:19 am 211. Sergey:#207 Lazar
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:33 am 212. peterike:Of course, if atmospheric temperature profile AND humidity distribution could be considered “given”, it is possible (theoretically) calculate radiation balance. But they could not. They interact through inherently instable mechanism of convection, and here is the problem. Convective currents flow field can not be calculated due its instability. You can measure it, here and now, but such measurement would not tell us how it will change with shifting thermal balance and changed evaporation. We do not know the feedback and even its sign. That is why instead we use an arbitrary parametrization in models and do not model temperature and humidity distributions at all.
Goodness knows I’m no expert either, but Lazar (at 170) your policy ideas ain’t going to fly.
I’d spend around 1% of GDP on replacing fossil fuels
What with? Magic sauce? Are you talking about doing research? This is what private enterprise is for.
nationwide cap and trade, *no* offsets
Shell game.
replace all existing fossil capacity with 80-90% nuclear and 10-20% renewables
If you’re talking about electricity, I would agree with the nuclear. The “renewables” is a pipe dream, for the moment. Though we’d probably be well on our way to this if the enviro-kooks hadn’t derailed American nuclear power efforts (where, I keep wondering, are the mea culpas from the green crowd on this policy disaster).
But when it comes to oil, the issue isn’t electricity, it’s planes, trains and automobiles. What are we going to run our cars on? Electricity? Fail. Way too many cars to replace, no distribution model, and the current grid couldn’t handle it. It will take decades to get off oil-based fuels for transportation.
fund battery technology
The private sector can do this quite nicely, thank you, without my tax dollars. With the added benefit that they won’t pursue a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas that have no connection to reality. Such ideas being favored by government bean counters who hand out checks.
forge agreements with willing nations
Agreements to do what? Oh never mind, I don’t care.
tax imports and apply diplomatic pressure on others
What, because gas isn’t taxed now? Imports of what? Diplomatic pressure to do what? Nevermind, I still don’t care.
hope for the best
Nowhere do you seem to want to actually use the resources we have right in the ground here in the USA. All the vast quantities of natural gas and oil that we could easily access, to get us over the unavoidable reality of needing good old gas and oil for the next few decades, at least. Even if we can make cars run on pixie dust tomorrow, well everyone then has to get a new Pixie-mobile, we have to establish countless thousands of distribution points, and on it goes.
Another factor on our CO2 output that nobody wants to speak about. Immigration. We continue to take millions of low-CO2 producing third worlders and bring them to high-CO2 producing America. That’s the least of my worries about immigration, but if it can convince a Liberal or two to cut back on the unwashed hordes, then I’m all for it.
Finally, there are a thousand very good reasons to reduce our energy consumption and move away from fossil fuels at a steady, sensible rate. It’s just that global warming isn’t one of them.
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:36 am 213. Kinuachdrach:Lazar wrote: “Nothing in science is ‘proven’ ‘with certainty’.”
Lazar, this comes straight from Al Gore — you are out the Alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming Club. Turn in your secret ID card immediately, and never darken our doors again!
Big Al can tolerate all sorts of Trotskyite deviations from the True Marxist Faith. But it has long been established that, as far as Alleged Anthropogenic Global Warming is concerned, ‘The Science Is Settled’. Always has been. Always will be. World Without End. Amen.
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:40 am 214. RagnarD:Gaia @ 174:
What kinda pie? Me, I favor Pecan. With hard sauce. MMMMM.
Makes as much sense as those above.
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:44 am 215. Geeze Louise:Lazar is the Howard Dean of AGW.***
I can’t recall if Dean appeared on Kudlow, but he’s made numerous appearances on CNBC’s early show, Squawk Box, where he is now officially a network contributor. He defends, of course, the Democratic health care/insurance reform, with especial vigor directed at the public option. I don’t intend to “wade into the weeds” of the last thread (although it’s not a swampy a landscape as presented) other than to note that there were/are several reasonably simple reform measures – available to both Repubs and Dems under Bush and Obama – but those options have been abandoned in favor of more visceral reforms.
In other words the middle ground to reform was eviscerated.
Next is regulatory reform and Cap and Trade legislation, the latter being the end-point subject of this post. The public “debate” will be Howard Dean Part II. Somebody posting as Lazar stops by loaded for bear with the assumption that all right-wing radicals, especially those at this site, “do not believe in GW” (the subtext being they’re imprisoned by the Luddite chains of anti-progressive thinking).
Whereas, if one is keeping up, the opponents to AGW – who can no longer be separated from ideology, which is exculpatory in itself – are questioning the abasement of the technique and the politicization of the results – different in tone and substance from the accusations of the Howard Dean bots.
Even Bjorn Lomborg now thinks that the warming trend has been validated by credible scientific technique, but (last I heard) he was skeptical of the anthropogenic cause. I would venture to extrapolate that this is exactly where middle America sits on this subject.
My question is why are people like Lazar “going technical” on us as some sort of selling technique? The scientific community was properly chastised by Lomborg et al. The rebuttal position usually comes from technicians like Lazar with their logarithmic scales of concentrations yadda yadda yadda. That stuff belongs in the QA/QC circles of the scientific community.
Last point. If this country decides to go nuclear on the energy front, that’s fine. In fact, I support it. But if it does so on the basis of some carbon footprint theory than I become an opponent. This country site on 25% of the world coal supplies – deposits that will remain in the ground because their carbon footprint is like Bigfoot. Even Cramer has been converted to the “no such thing as clean coal” campaign. The h^ll there isn’t.
But I’m not waiting for the next round of debates to make much more rational sense than health care. It’s the Howard Dean Turtles all the way down.
***Howard Dean has been front and center in building the media campaign for presenting critical Democratic issues (I know – I got the Form Letter). The “tell” is the barely subdued hint of condescension that subliminally equates the intellectual grasp of a rabid wingnut with that of a three year old child.
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:47 am 216. Lifeofthemind:The problem with being a Patrician is that occasionally you have to act like one.
Cicero to Caesar I believe, was it in Spartacus?
Our genial host’s initial entry raised two topics. First, the AGW money pump. Second, the sad state of what passes for elites these days. Both are tangled forests where monsters lurk. Both rest on roots as solid as Birnam Forest that comes to Dunsinane.
Elites are natural and necessary for a species that supports a complex social organization. There are many privileges for members of the Elite. What is demanded of then in return?
Historically there were two routes to power over those who work. You could belong to those who fight or those who pray.
The potential cost for those who fight is obviously the risk of death in combat. Those who pray appear to have a better deal. Vows of chastity and poverty may have been invented to impose compensating costs. What we have now are elites who not only are useless and wrong headed, that to be fair is neither new nor intolerable, but who are unwilling to demonstrate even the slightest pretense of sacrifice for the greater good.
Can anybody envision Lord Finsbury leading th troops into battle? The Aztec Priest who ripped your heart out to feed the Sun was more useful.
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:52 am 217. Sergey:Models are fine for artificial objects, but only because we can compare their predictions with actual performance and correct models until they adequately describe reality. Jet fighter construction includes a lot of mathematical modelling AND testing in aerodynamic tunnel. And then thousand hours of test flying. Without these testing we never would trust these calculations.
Nov 17, 2009 - 12:02 pm 218. peterike:Q: Who are the most heavy users of statistics, modelling and expert opinion?
A: Insurance companies, banks, financial analists, weather forecasters.
Q: How successful they are in their predictions?
A: AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fanny and Freddy… need I continue?
Why should I trust climate models more than these genuises of market prognostication? And why consensus of experts that told us all two years ago that the best investment is to buy a house, since upward pricing trend is obvious like Mann’s hockey stick graph, is less reliable than consensus of expert climatologists? Why I should invest more trust into IPCC than in Bernie Maddoff hedge fund?
One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you’re obliged to act like one.
Crassus, as played fabulously by Lawrence Olivier, to the character of Marcus Publius Glabrus, portrayed as something of a Roman doofus by John Dall. Glabrus has just told Crassus he will be leading six cohorts of troops to take on Spartacus. Glabus is summarily defeated and sent back to Rome in humiliation.
This occurs just after one of those great, witty moments in the script. When Crassus hears of the plan to pursue Spartacus, he shouts:
Great merciful bloodstained gods! Your pardon. I always address heaven in moments of triumph.
Ahhhh, you hadda be there.
Nov 17, 2009 - 12:21 pm 219. Eggplant:twobyfour,
Thank you for your commentary! Very interesting. Unfortunately there was more information than I could absorb in one reading. Could you please provide a reference that shows a visualization of the solar plasma over several AU? Also I would like to read more about the mass extinction events that you described in #175. Do you do paleontology for a living?
Fascinating stuff!
Concerning the solar plasma: I’m currently going through a learning experience modeling the atmosphere of Venus. I’m coding up the Venus International Reference Atmosphere (VIRA) based upon the Venus-GRAM model. One of the cool things about this model is it describes the atomic and molecular species of the Venusian atmosphere as a function of altitude. What suprised me was the atmosphere of Venus changed from a carbon dioxide / nitrogen dominant atmosphere at an altitude of 98 km to an atomic hydrogen / helium dominant atmosphere at 156 km. I believe what I’m seeing is the transition from a Venusian atmosphere to a solar “atmosphere”. This solar “atmosphere” is a free molecular gas extending from the Sun’s photosphere to the outer Solar System. At first I was confused that the dominant species was atomic hydrogen rather than molecular hydrogen. Then I thought about it some more: This solar gas at 156 km altitude is actually behind a shock wave formed by Venus traveling at orbital velocity through the solar “atmosphere”. This solar gas is in permanent nonequilibrium due to this shock wave. However what makes it even more funky, is the cold upper atmospheric Venusian gas mixing with the super heated solar gas. Because it’s a free molecular nonequilibrium gas, each species has its own temperature so there are carbon dioxide species at 200 K mixing with atomic hydrogen species at 1000 k. Again, it all makes sense but because it’s a learning experience, I’m sort of going “Oh wow!”.
Nov 17, 2009 - 12:58 pm 220. Lifeofthemind:peterike,
Nov 17, 2009 - 12:58 pm 221. twobyfour:Thank you. Crassus out of the bath, heh?. When I get home and copy the post to my blog I would like to append your correction. I couldn’t improve on it.
Lifeofthemind/199
Are Soros & Strong principals or agents?
Of course weaving of the AGW web has been paid for by many nations, Soros just found nifty ways how to redistribute the hoard to a noble cause. Both Strong and Soros are at the inception of the new creed. The pie holders had to be expanded a bit, to pull it all off and also to set up a whole net of faux connections and fronts and backs, put in place to obfuscate the obvious linkage and to get some fresh ideas when things get sidetracked from the righteous course. They, as would vampires, are shy in the full light. Both fans of kabuki. Enough disciples to do the works out there, and many even not aware of the strings that are tied to their limbs. One has to admit, it is one of the best executed conspiracies of the 20th century. Ron L Hubbard was an amateur.
Why was Soros involved in these colorful “revolutions”? As he would put it, “cuz I can”. He loves chess and the global grid is his chessboard.
Strong is more focused. Though, everything seems to run on the autopilot, so not much input is needed now.
Maurice lives in Beijing.
Yes. He also has his cell phone with him. He does not put all the eggs in one basket, always looking for nifty projects that provide exercise for his dexterity.
Nov 17, 2009 - 1:43 pm 222. twobyfour:Eggplant/219
Could you please provide a reference that shows a visualization of the solar plasma over several AU?
I am not aware whether it is available somewhere, though chances are it is somewhere, as it is based on known set of params. I’ll see if I can find something. If not, I’ll render it, but that may take some time.
Also I would like to read more about the mass extinction events that you described in #175.
Hope you are not in a hurry. I’ll have some reading put together prolly by summer.
Do you do paleontology for a living?
Nope. I’d be standing a trial for a heresy pronto. I like the idea that science is never settled and that consensus is a slow strangulation. Does not mesh with the academe ideas. They do pay a lip service to the above, but in reality they fall under the same laws as bureaucracy does.
Concerning the solar plasma: I’m currently going through a learning experience modeling the atmosphere of Venus. I’m coding up the Venus International Reference Atmosphere (VIRA) based upon the Venus-GRAM model. One of the cool things about this model is it describes the atomic and molecular species of the Venusian atmosphere as a function of altitude. What suprised me was the atmosphere of Venus changed from a carbon dioxide / nitrogen dominant atmosphere at an altitude of 98 km to an atomic hydrogen / helium dominant atmosphere at 156 km. I believe what I’m seeing is the transition from a Venusian atmosphere to a solar “atmosphere”. This solar “atmosphere” is a free molecular gas extending from the Sun’s photosphere to the outer Solar System. [snip]
Don’t be hasty!
Nov 17, 2009 - 3:24 pm 223. steeple:There is no “solar gas”. The plasma and solar plasma is governed by other rules than fluid dynamics. Using terms that are related to fluid dynamics leads you to conclusions that may be quite a bit off from what is really out there.
I don’t have the time elaborate, but you can shoot me an email and I’ll give you some leads as time permits.
If nothing else, I have a greater appreciation for the technical knowledge of twobyfour, konyok, josh, sergey and eggplant after this dialogue. Good job all.
And seconding the congrats to L3; well done.
Nov 17, 2009 - 3:45 pm 224. Eggplant:Earlier Eggplant said:
“This solar “atmosphere” is a free molecular gas extending from the Sun’s photosphere to the outer Solar System.”
Twobyfour responded:
“Don’t be hasty!
There is no “solar gas”. The plasma and solar plasma is governed by other rules than fluid dynamics. Using terms that are related to fluid dynamics leads you to conclusions that may be quite a bit off from what is really out there.”
Yes, I understand this is a plasma (ionized quasi-neutral gas) in the Sun’s magnetic field. There is a J X B term and MHD considerations. I’m modeling the Venusian atmosphere so I can simulate the trajectory of a spacecraft. The effects due to J X B are insignificant compared to the modeling errors in the entry vehicle’s aerodynamics and the atmosphere’s free stream density. I can ignore J X B. However the fact that there are two different atmospheres transitioning from 98 km to 156 km altitude is interesting not only from a scientific “gee whiz” perspective but also in how it impacts the heating on the spacecraft’s thermal protection system, i.e. radiative heat flux.
Nov 17, 2009 - 3:49 pm 225. Eggplant:peterike said:
“Finally, there are a thousand very good reasons to reduce our energy consumption and move away from fossil fuels at a steady, sensible rate. It’s just that global warming isn’t one of them.”
There it is in a nutshell. I agree totally.
In my humble opinion the whole AGW discussion is bogus because within two decades, a gallon of gasoline will cost $30 due to fossil fuel depletion, i.e. Peak Oil. We’re all going to be walking, riding bicycles or electric cars not because Al Gore was right but because fossil fuels became too expensive.
Nov 17, 2009 - 4:30 pm 226. Lazar:peterike,
I made it abundantly clear that my policy knowledge is inadequate and my opinions were given reluctantly, in good faith, to humor your demands to have ‘my opinion’. As your criticisms do not move beyond assertion it is possible that you have no better idea than I… in which case you are better served asking questions of a policy guy than trying to rip me.
Fool me once…
Nov 17, 2009 - 5:00 pm 227. Lazar:Marty,
On the surface it seems reasonable, but as stated, my opinion on this ain’t worth squat.
If I may respond directly to #46…
Apart from those (interesting) points about implementation, is there anything else intrinsic to “Finsbury’s plan” that might make it less efficient/successful?
Nov 17, 2009 - 5:21 pm 228. Lazar:Sergey,
If I may rephrase that as; We can calculate radiative transfer for any given atmospheric profile to some accuracy, but errors in the atmospheric profile itself such as may be caused by discrepancies in representations of convective flows of heat and moisture, mean that the radiative flux, though accurate for the given profile, is to a lesser degree representative of the ‘real world’ which has a different atmospheric profile.
Do you mean the cloud feedback? Scientists are unsure of the sign partly because the magnitude is close to zero, relatively small in magnitude compared to the water vapor and lapse-rate feedbacks.
Parameterizations are constrained by knowledge; by observations and theory. Are you claiming a parameterization is completely unconstrained, and if so, which one?
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:11 pm 229. Lifeofthemind:Sergey,
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:17 pm 230. Lazar:On the ship we all envied the Weather Guesser. That was a great job, he could be wrong 8 days a week and still had job security.
Geeze Louise,
Does this game end when someone calls me Hitler?
I made no such assumption. I also did not make the statement you put in quotes.
I’m not trying to sell. I don’t care if you believe in fairy dust, or disbelieve in planetary motion. My attention was directed toward encouraging Richard to up his game (as I believe he’s smart, decent, and he writes well). The subsequent fascination shown by some toward me is neither desired nor reciprocated.
Someone named ‘anton’ asked a question in an open forum. I knew the answer so I responded.
Nov 17, 2009 - 6:40 pm 231. rob:Nut
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:30 pm 232. twobyfour:Eggplant,
Yes, I understand this is a plasma (ionized quasi-neutral gas) in the Sun’s magnetic field.
Slightly revised def: Plasma = Ionized cloud in the sun’s electric current. The magnetic field is an expression of the current here, not vice versa.
The effects due to J X B are insignificant compared to the modeling errors in the entry vehicle’s aerodynamics and the atmosphere’s free stream density. I can ignore J X B.
Right.
However the fact that there are two different atmospheres transitioning from 98 km to 156 km altitude is interesting not only from a scientific “gee whiz” perspective but also in how it impacts the heating on the spacecraft’s thermal protection system, i.e. radiative heat flux.
The apparent temperature of the outer ionized band is not that relevant, it is simply a reflection of the electric current that passes through it. The density of the ionized cloud, the initial velocity and the trajectory of the spacecraft descent at the outer layer boundary reflects on the radiative heat flux. I presume you have some values to plug into your model to account for this.
Nov 17, 2009 - 8:59 pm 233. pharmaguy:AH models. I recently attended a keynote speech by a guy from the NSF whose job is to get better computer systems funded. During his talk he had a loop of slides showing all of the predictions of the course of hurricane Katrina. NONE of the models- I think there were at least a dozen- predicted that the hurricane would hit the MS/LA coast when Katrina was passing over southern Florida, and even after it crossed into the Gulf of Mexico it took some time before the predictions started to center on where Katrina made landfall. Ok so Katrina was 2004 or 2005. Fast forward to summer 2009, when TS “Danny” is dancing up the east coast. Early predictions had it heading right smack into NYC, and here in RI the Red Cross and Emergency Services are doing their “what ifs”. Danny got subsumed into another front, never amounted to much of anything but some good surf. Much treasure has been spent on hurricane track modeling in the past 5 years, and quite frankly, the models still cannot predict the course of these storms well. So to for global warming predictions, I think.
Nov 17, 2009 - 11:34 pmSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.