Recommended viewing is “The Great Global Warming Swindle” shown on UK TV last Thursday.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9005566792811497638&q=The+Great+Global+Warming+Swindle&hl=en
Posted by: David Archibald at March 11, 2007 12:09 PM
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And you can watch it from your computer via the above link.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Finished watching this morning in the early hours
Climatologists in action so to speak, with nothing to lose but their reps. Even people who helped write the UN IPCC report itself whose work was misconstrued.
Of course the died in the wool climate owners will say Big Oil or Big Coal.
But the main thing for me is their graphs work.
No cute and cuddly animals to protect.
The UN IPCC would keep the third world in darkness to protect unproven non global power sources.
I watched the entire film. It was interesting and accurate, unlike Al Gore’s Oscar winning PowerPoint presentation. People convinced by Gore should see this next.
The usual ad hominem attack, it’s all about a gravy train and greedy scientists who manufacture a conspiracy to line their pockets.
I would like to see actual evidence of this, for a start. I know a research scientist in this area. He could double his income by moving to private industry. He does this work because he is a scientist and he loves his job. If it was about money, he would have moved on years ago. They make a big show and dance about deniers being attacked, and shamelessly stick the boot in with barely the blink of an eye, with no evidence it is in any way true.
SJT,
I only watched the first few minutes, and in that time the specific issue of carbon dioxide levels following temperature was raised.
Al Gore suggests it is the other way around … that temperature has historically followed carbon dioxide.
Which is it?
A good doco. Covers much of what has been said on this blog about the Climate Cadres. But will we ever see it on “their ABC”?
The misrepresentation of the cooling from the 1940’s temperature is a classic. Just as there has been global warming, there has also been global dimming. The notion that we could be doing things that cool the earth as well as warm it should not be surprising.
The scientists that speak on this aspect ignore the science of global dimming. They say that CO2 could not be responsible for warming the earth, because the temperature cools when it should still be getting warmer. They ignore the possibility that there are competing forces at work.
Global dimming, which cools the earth by putting particle in the air, took off after 1940 because that was when the massive industrialisation started during WWII. It caused sulphates to be put in the atmosphere that cooled the earth. When the pollution from these sulphates became so bad that action had to be taken, the industries had to implement technology to remove them. These cooling agents are only short lived, and so the temperature went back to it’s previous course, dependent on the remaining forcing.
It is simple mendacity or ignorance to not mention this aspect of the argument. They may disagree with it, if they want, but to not present this argument beggars belief, when it is so well known by scientists. You will note that Christy and Lindzen do not state this. Their argument is with the temperature records in the troposphere.
SJT, there were at least three first hand accounts of leaders in their fields who resigned from the IPCC rather than be misquoted by the IPCC, only to find that their names had been left on the list of contributors to convey the impression that they agreed with the IPCC line.
Clearly, if the sickos did not have a climate crisis after the collapse of Communism then they would have needed to invent one. And that is exactly what they did.
Ian
my friend is not a commie sicko. Next.
Producers duped scientist to appear in the documentary in the belief that he would be offering a balanced scientific opinion. According to him, they have completely misrepresented what he thinks of the topic, and he is considering sueing them.
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2031457,00.html
“A Leading US climate scientist is considering legal action after he says he was duped into appearing in a Channel 4 documentary that claimed man-made global warming is a myth. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the film, The Great Global Warming Swindle, was ‘grossly distorted’ and ‘as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two’.
He says his comments in the film were taken out of context and that he would not have agreed to take part if he had known it would argue that man-made global warming was not a serious threat. ‘I thought they were trying to educate the public about the complexities of climate change,’ he said. ‘This seems like a deliberate attempt to exploit someone who is on the other side of the issue.’ He is considering a complaint to Ofcom, the broadcast regulator.”
Their evidence that Piers Corbyn is correct in his forecasting system? He won all these bets on the weather with the bookies. You really expect me to take the word of a gambler about his betting record? Good grief.
Jen – Al Gore simply didn’t address the lag issue. What he said was fine. Do your own mental global climate model Jen – what do you think would get things going again in the middle of an Ice Age. Would CO2 suddenly start a warming. Nope. Most likely an orbital change would start things off by a solar change. What do you think might happen then?
Maybe some of those guys should have resigned for stuffing up their MSU data analysis too. If they’re so expert how come they can’t even clean up their own data?
Did you see the doco stop the solar output trace conveniently before the current warming too.
Those guys know full well all the anti-arguments to what was presented – basically hoping that anyone viewing hasn’t ever read anything.
Thankyou for viewing the Great Global Warming Swindle. For your interest, viewers of this video also watched:
The great evolution swindle!
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-5585125669588896670&q=intelligent+design
The great 9-11 swindle!
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501&q=loose+change
The great moon landing swindle!
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-1138935117048624484&q=nasa+moon+landing
THe great quantum mechanics / self empowerment swindle!
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=8655881191636417153&q=what+the+bleep+do+we+know%3F
‘Apocalypse my arse’
Martin Durkin, director of The Great Global Warming Swindle, on green intolerance, soft censorship and his ‘dodgy’ Marxist background.
http://tinyurl.com/yo4n5v
The line about sulfates cooling the earth from 1940 to 1975 doesn’t stack up. For a start, there was no sudden upsurge in emissions from 1940 onwards, the upsurge began at the end of the great depression (the other one that didn’t include green morons).
And while the temperature graph may show a sudden change, the industrial activity kicked off in earnest in about 1933 in Europe, the USSR and Japan. At that time the USA was not such a major part of the global economy but the global dimming folks seem to be using US industrial activity as a surrogate for world sulfur emissions. Wrong.
And note as well that the change from cooling to warming again in 1975 is also a sharp change. Yet, we know that many high emission factories simply relocated, while those in the Eastern block went on well into the 1980’s.
So both of these events, if they did have an effect on temperatures, should have produced a much more gradual change in temperature.
It is one thing to offer this as a possible explanation but another altogether to get an explanation that actually fits the facts. This one doesn’t.
Notice SJT made no response to the Scientists who were left in the list after they resigned. Another sidestep?
And as for his imputation that a leader in the science of solar and cosmic radiology was nothing more than a mug punter. Give us a break, plodder.
And Luke, your explanation of the CO2 catch up to an initial warming due to orbital shift would only be the case if the lag disappeared later in the warming. It does not. In fact it even lags on the cooling side as well. It is an argument that sounds plausible to the gullible but you’ll need to do a lot better than that on this blog.
‘a leader in the science of solar and cosmic radiology’? In his own mind, Ian.
”
Sitting in his office in Elephant and Castle, a seedy suburb of south London, Piers Corbyn admits he prefers to do his calculations by hand. It’s not a matter of “religious opposition” to using computers; he simply gets a better feel for how his calculations are evolving.
….
To his critics, Corbyn’s a heretic, an unscientific crank, perhaps even a fraud. They point to the secret formula by which he prognosticates, for one. The 11 months’ worth of scribbled forecasts he shows me were made using a proprietary method he says correlates solar activity with weather on Earth. But to forecast that far ahead would mean foretelling the movement of inherently chaotic weather systems, and that, contend his detractors, defies the laws of physics.
Another sign he’s not your everyday weatherman: the conspicuously displayed photocopy of a check for £2,291 hanging on the wall. Unique among meteorologists, Corbyn bets on his forecasts. Unusual among bettors of any stripe, he wins regularly. The check on the wall is a payout from London bookmaker William Hill on one of their monthly bets. ”
A secret formula he works out with a pencil and paper. His proof of his correctness is a self-proclaimed, non-verified or evaluated betting record with bookies. This is one of the sources for this program. It shows how quickly they run out of experts and have to start asking the cranks for evidence.
Temperature vs Sunspot activity vs CO2 content.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg
Including the bit the producers left off that documentary. They are liars and deceivers.
Here is a Nasa chart of global temperature, overlaid on the one from that program. They don’t say where they got their chart.
http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t63/izzy_bizzy_photo/capture_giss.jpg
Why should the lag disappear in the warming? And would you not expect it to also lag on the cooling.
As for mug punters and plodders the extend the same courtesy to AGW scientists – don’t be selective. Remember your cosmo guy also believes in some AGW. Be careful who you lay with or get fleas.
Ian anecdotal raves about who had what factories are not aerosol concentrations. You have to simulate 3 forcings all working at once. I find it totally consistent with what you’d expect.
I’m afraid you’ll have to argue much more explicitly for your case on this blog.
Steve has done a blatant selective set of links to try to suggest that this video has some dubious travelling companions. But when I went to http://video.google.com/videoplay? I got all sorts of video stuff from Bill Clinton interviews to the Reverend Martin Luther Kings “I have a dream” speach at:
So tell us all about it, Steve? You are nothing but a sleazy propagandist, aren’t you?
For the record, Steve, none of us saw the videos you linked to and most of Britain saw “The Great Global Warming Swindle” on BBCTV.
You’re all mad. What’s the matter fellas? Easier to believe something that means you can continue to sit on your backsides than contemplate a problem that would require you to get off your behinds! Where did all the worker bees go?
Your food supplies are running down, your dams are getting lower, each and every day further evidence of fossil fuel supply problems emerges (http://www.energybulletin.net/27024.html) and Motty thinks the future of carbon sequestration could well lie in the furniture trade. My lord we are slumbering towards a very unfamiliar future.
Not to just be a doomsdayer I can offer you advice to make a better world – plant a sandalwood tree or even better plant five hundred thousand. You can even watch Landline in a couple of weeks and see why you need to do this …
SJT’s points nail it – the sunspot dodge is at 31:11 into the video clip. UTTERLY disgraceful – they’re have just cut off the inconvenient story part of the graph. I feel off my chair when I saw it. I don’t think I have any seen anything quite that blatant – what a bunch of scum as Motty would say. What flesh crawling hypocrisy. What shonkerati.
Surely even Motty would not stand for this sort of jiggery-pokery. Fair go !!
Will make diddly squat difference Aaron – don’t confuse busy work with real work. Gee was that an advert for your business again?
Sorry Like, SJT but have a look at the temp v sun spot activity v CO2 content link again and tell me that there is again a different 1940-1975 record. Thats 3 for this post in the last few hours.
I know that I’m harping but its all rubbish until there is an agreed methodology and custodian for climate data. Otherwise we just go around pointing to whatever chart or data set suits our argument and that gentlemen is getting us nowhere.
TGGWS is being screened again tonight at 10pm.
Here’s a letter from Carl Wunsch published in Nature debunking the ‘Gulf Stream scare’ that featured in Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’
“Sir – Your News story “Gulf Stream probed for early warnings of system failure” (Nature 427, 769 (2004)) discusses what the climate in the south of England would be like “without the Gulf Stream.” Sadly, this phrase has been seen far too often, usually in newspapers concerned with the unlikely possibility of a new ice age in Britain triggered by the loss of the Gulf Stream.
European readers should be reassured that the Gulf Stream’s existence is a consequence of the large-scale wind system over the North Atlantic Ocean, and of the nature of fluid motion on a rotating planet. The only way to produce an ocean circulation without a Gulf Stream is either to turn off the wind system, or to stop the Earth’s rotation, or both.
Real questions exist about conceivable changes in the ocean circulation and its climate consequences. However, such discussions are not helped by hyperbole and alarmism. The occurrence of a climate state without the Gulf Stream anytime soon – within tens of millions of years – has a probability of little more than zero.
Carl Wunsch
Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology” (Nature 428, 601, April 8, 2004)
The statements made by Wunsch in TGGWS were clear and unambiguous.
The fall in global temperatures from the 1940’s to the mid 1970’s was coincident with a fall in solar activity, followed by a small increase.
Professor Wunsch cautious answers are also reflected on the Royal society’s web site http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=4688&tip=1
where he starts off “People ask “is it clear that human activity is directly responsible for climate change?” The context for answering this question must be another question: to what extent can the climate change all by itself?
The answer to the alternative question is: “a very great deal.” Modern human beings appeared some time after about 50,000 years ago, and even then, anthropologists tell us that their numbers were very small until about 4000 years ago. Nonetheless, taking a cautious view, one might only examine climate change prior to 100,000 years ago.”
Comparing the web site and looking at the documentary it appears that his views from these two sources are reasonably similar!
Luke,
A clear impression from ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and much of the IPCC stuff is that temperature follows C02.
But I’ve printed off lots of graphs with both and got my ruler out, and it is clearly the other way around.
I am not saying this proves temperature won’t follow C02 this time around. But I’m interested that SJT and others don’t consider the issue worthy of discussion and you think its enough to say that Al Gore simply didn’t address the issue. So what is the issue?
Why does C02 follow temperature in the geological record?
Why doesn’t Al Gore acknowlege and explain this?
Why does Al Gore suggest it is the other way around?
And why is this highlighted in the first few minutes of the new movie as of great relevance by a skeptic?
Instead of retreating to corners, it would be good to have some informed discussion on one issue (at a time).
Cinders comment “to what extent can the climate change all by itself?” is a very good question. We’ll come back to it later.
I don’t know why Al Gore didn’t explain it. Probably didn’t suit him. Jen both documentaries gloss over lots of stuff, have dramatic music, ominous narratives and are propaganda pieces. Gore uses the disintegrating ice masses and overhyped the sea level stuff (without actually saying anything definite). So for me and other hopefully serious punters – the question is “How much did Gore get right – hope much did he mislead by omission or the way things are framed”. So being an evidence based blog we do need to get through the issue of framing.
To your question on CO2 follows temperature. Apart from truly massive global volcanic eruptions or human being liberating vast amounts of carbon the only way I can think that an ice age would be broken is a change in the solar forcing. SO yes CO2 does NOT drive the change initially.
But once the biosphere gets warming and CO2 starts to be liberated from biological activity and oceans degassing etc the CO2 would start to feedback and drive the warming. Warming gives you CO2, more CO2 gives more warming, more warming gives more CO2. So you would not expect to see anything but what the geological record shows. CO2 does not start off the warming. It’s a secondary feedback that starts to dominate as the solar warming nudges the planet out of icey slumber. 800 years ain’t much geologically speaking.
The difference with the present is that human beings are busy liberating millions of years of stored carbon in 100 to 200 years. Big difference and very sudden.
So we have to get over this it’s EITHER solar of CO2 business – it’s both sometimes together, sometimes separately. And aerosols may have a cooling influence too whether anthropogenic or volcanic. All these factors integrate to give us our climate. Currently however we don’t have a solar driver. It’s CO2 driving the current 30 year change. IMO !
RC says” So, in summary, the lag of CO2 behind temperature doesn’t tell us much about global warming. [But it may give us a very interesting clue about why CO2 rises at the ends of ice ages. The 800-year lag is about the amount of time required to flush out the deep ocean through natural ocean currents. So CO2 might be stored in the deep ocean during ice ages, and then get released when the climate warms.]”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13
So the whole issue doesn’t really inform us at all about global warming – it’s just a diversion !!
Paul
here is Carl Wunsch on how he feels he was misrepresented on that show.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#comment-27434
“I spent hours in the interview describing
many of the problems of understanding the ocean in climate change,
and the ways in which some of the more dramatic elements get
exaggerated in the media relative to more realistic, potentially
truly catastrophic issues, such as
the implications of the oncoming sea level rise. As I made clear, both in the
preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that
global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious
discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.
What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which
there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why
many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely
accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples,
it’s hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one:
a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only
a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to
infer that means it couldn’t really matter. But even a beginning
meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases
are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director
not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that
piece of disinformation.
An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context:
I am shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more
carbon dioxide than it absorbs — thus exacerbating the greenhouse
gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome. It
was used in the film, through its context, to imply
that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that
therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which
are literally what I said, comes close to fraud.
I have some experience in dealing with TV and print reporters
and do understand something of the ways in which one can be
misquoted, quoted out of context, or otherwise misinterpreted. Some
of that is inevitable in the press of time or space or in discussions of
complicated issues. Never before, however, have I had
an experience like this one. My appearance in the “Global Warming
Swindle” is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation
has been damaged. I was duped—an uncomfortable position in which to be.
At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly
with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to
its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something to Channel 4. I will be
taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal protest.
Sincerely,
Carl Wunsch
Cecil and Ida Green Professor of
Physical Oceanography
Massachusetts Institute of Technology”
How do Southern Hemisphere temperatures correlate with Northern Hemisphere cooling during the pre-1975 period attributed to aerosols. I would expect that the Southern Hemisphere would have had much less aerosol pollution compared to the NH. So if the temperature didn’t fall in the SH, then that would suggest aerosol cooling is probable.
As an aside does the lower rainfall in the first half of the 1900’s co-incide with these lower(?) temps.
Luke I am in the enviable position of producing profits by seeing your future and positioning a business at the foot of it. There is a saying:
‘The first to the future find the largest profits’ or another:
‘Behind every big problem lies big profits’
So sue me if you can take time away from your busy typing schedule. If you eat, you really ought to listen to me.
The only issue I see here is that given we are running out of time to get things right, you guys really ought to know by now who speaks the ‘inconvenient truths’ and more importantly who is walking the talk.
Give me a shovel and a tray of trees anyday over a computer keyboard …
Agriculture must get to perenniality and a legume base yesterday. Urea price now up 70% in just 6 months. And that is without natural gas prices going up!
Wunsch was perfectly clear in what he said – particularly about climate models. He will be ‘misrepresented’ again in the UK at 10pm. Clearly, he’s a worried man. I wonder why?
That said, his piece on the Royal Society website gives a fuller representation of his most welcome non-alarmist views.
It’s a great pity that RC don’t put any effort into questioning the CO2 warming hypothesis, or Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ science fiction film. My post about the inaccuracies in Gore’s movie was censored and didn’t find it’s way onto the RC website.
Jennifer
If you want to know exactly what Al Gore is doing and why, you would have to ask him.
Luke has it right. CO2 is a forcing in this case, because we are adding more of it to the atmosphere.
There is no ice age we are coming out of. So if you want the answer of what happens when we are coming out of an ice age, you are going to get a different answer. The CO2 seems to be acting as a positive feedback in that case. The warmer it gets, the more CO2 enters the carbon cycle, it then gets that bit more warmer. It’s like kick starting a motorbike. The engine is still and doing nothing, you kick it over, in ice age terms, the attitude of the earth changes or the sun’s radiation grows stronger, then a CO2 cycle starts, and then keeps on going. More warming, more CO2, more warming, in a feedback mechanism.
Where it stops appears to vary. The dinosaur era, the whole planet was covered in plant life, this time, it settled down in a different state, with a lot of the carbon from the previous time trapped under the ground. That carbon is now being released in a time that, in geological terms, is a blink of an eye. That in turn is going to bring about what is for the earth’s ecology, rapid climate change. Previous rapid changes in climate have lead to mass extinctions.
Paul
I will quote Wunsch again.
“What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples, it’s hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one: a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to infer that means it couldn’t really matter. But even a beginning meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that
piece of disinformation.”
Aaron – yes good points and for heaven sake don’t think that I’m not pro-agriculture and good luck to your venture. But you’re here on this thread typing on your keyboard with the rest of us. Lucky for you to have the land to work. Give Jen a guest post on the “new agricultural paradigms”.
I’m worried for Louis and Woody though – it appears that the documentary producer may be a bit of commo/marxist type radical. But how can this be when these guys according to our esteemed colleagues here are all pro-AGW? It’s all so confusing. http://www.climatedenial.org/
Luke there will need to be more than me and my ‘average age of 58’ peers working the land in the future. A tree change could likely be the best move for anyone looking to forge a sustainable future.
There is nothing confusing about it. I started to watch this Doco and first thing that stood out was quoting Dr.?? from ????. Some fat profits likely moving under the table for the anti AGW activists. Some of the individuals on this have dodging relationships with hydrocarbon businesses. If you believe in science and more importantly in scientific rigour, there is no question about the AGW issue.
I don’t post here regularly. But I regularly fight to build a sustainable future. Unfortunately that means politicking. I merely have a solution to one big problem and that is agricultures vulnerability to changing weather and hyperinflation in input costs. Just so happens this is everyones problem that likes to eat occassionally … Good luck
SJT – have you watched TGGWS? Perhaps Wunsch didn’t say anything and was ‘dubbed.’
Luke and SJT are still fudging the issue. If warming is initiated by orbital change and CO2 lags by up to 800 years then the eventual change to become a proper forcing agent MUST appear in the graphs as a steeper rise in CO2 than temperature to the point where the temperature then lags CO2. There is no evidence of this so the CO2/Temp records fail to indicate cause and effect.
And the fact that temperatures can then decline rapidly for a few centuries while CO2 remains high also brings the forcing theory into question.
And I never did get a retraction from Luke for his load of invective and derision of my so-called back of the envelope calculations on this blog that were subsequently confirmed by Wunch.
And still no response to why the temperature changes are rapid ones in 1940 and 1975, and indeed, why the trend warming is actually more significant prior to 1940 rather than post 1975?
Professor Wunsch:
25:43 The ocean is the major reservoir into which carbon dioxide goes when it comes out of the atmosphere or to from which it is re-emitted to the the atmosphere. If you heat the surface of the ocean, it tends to emit carbon dioxide. Similarly, if you cool the ocean surface, the ocean can dissolve more carbon dioxide.
Professor Wunsch:
26:44 – The ocean has a memory of past events ugh running out as far as 10,000 years. So for example, if somebody says oh I’m seeing changes in the North Atlantic, this must mean that the climate system is changing, it may only mean that something happened in a remote part of the ocean decades or hundreds of years ago who’s effects are now beginning to show up in the North Atlantic.
Professor Wunsch:
49:22 – The models are so complicated, you can often adjust them is such a way that they do something very exciting.
Professor Wunsch:
50:46 – Even within the scientific community you see, it’s a problem.
If I run a complicated model and I do something to it like ugh melt a lot of ice into the ocean and nothing happens, ugh it’s not likely to get printed. But if I run the same model, and I adjust it in such a way that something dramatic happens to the ocean circulation like the heat transport turns off, ugh it will be published. People will say this is very exciting. It will even get picked by the media. So there is a bias, there’s is a very powerful bias within the media, and within the science community itself, toward results which are ugh dramatizable. If Earth freezes over, that’s a much more interesting story than saying well you know it ugh fluctuates around, sometimes the mass flux goes up by 10%, sometimes it goes down by 20%, but eventually it comes back. Well you know, which would you do a story on? That’s what it’s about.
Give it away Paul – the “documentary” is made by shonks featuring shonkerati and poor old Paul Wunsch was swindled into taking part.
Carl actually thinks “I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component.”
The documentary is a bloody disgrace !
This will go down in infamy as the height of utter crappiness of the contrarian position.
Paul Wunsch on latest off the press RC.
“Swindled: Carl Wunsch responds”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=417
So David Archibald – this is the standard to which you aspire? This is gonna go on for weeks.
Who needs Brian Burke when you have commie documentary makers selling out the denialist side with shonk videos. The Arthur Dalys of climate. “Hey guv – wanna buy a dodgy doco.”
“The documentary is a bloody disgrace !”
Luke, are you referring to ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ or TGGWS?
I reckon Gore intended to call his science fiction movie ‘The Inconvenient Truth,’ but it would have been abreviated to ‘T.I.T.’
“eventual change to become a proper forcing agent MUST appear in the graphs as a steeper rise in CO2 than temperature to the point where the temperature then lags CO2. There is no evidence of this so the CO2/Temp records fail to indicate cause and effect.” First part – WHY ? simply coz you say so? And yep CO2 isn’t the driver it’s an amplifier – read why I said the current situation is different. Ian I would have thought you’d have loved the validation of an 800 year ocean circulation from previous arguments. Temperatures decline as the oribital changes start to remove the solar component.
As for the mid-century “non-warming” – funny that when the IPCC models put the solar, greenhouse and aerosols in they just seem to to fit the temperature evolution of the 20th century. hmmm.
Ian it’s worth re-reading this oldie but goldie.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/05/planetary-energy-imbalance/
But just to muddy the waters perhaps we’ve all been too quick – Gavin remarked on RC
“Gavin – could you please clarify this issue for me succinctly and without a lot of hand waving? Prior to the 20th century, does CO2 concentration lag or lead the temperature cycle?
[Response: During the ice age cycles, it was mostly likely a lag. The degree of that lag is actually quite uncertain and there is recent paper under review that suggests with good reason that it is less than the 800 years seen in the Caillon et al study. At other points in the past, such as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (55 million years ago), it looks like the CO2 (or possibly CH4) lead. Over very long timescales (millions of years) the overall level of CO2 (driven by weathering/geologic balances) probably lead – and is hypothesised to have contributed to the onset of the Quaternary ice age cycle in the first place. – gavin]”
Anyway Ian – this lag stuff is the wrong question anyway and wrong rabbit hole.
Jennifer,
without entering any debate on the substance of the film it appears that the makers, the “Revolutionary Communist Party” along with their off shoot Spiked Online, have a long and proven history of misrepresentation and should be approached with a very long stick.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Marxism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiked_Online
Any film has to be viewed as suspect if its subjects claim that they have been misrepresented;
“Professor Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said he had been “completely misrepresented” by the programme, and “totally misled” on its content. He added that he is considering making a formal complaint.
…Any complaint would provoke a crisis at Channel 4, now recovering from the Jade Goody Big Brother storm. It had to make a rare public apology after the Independent Television Commission convicted previous programmes on environmental issues by the same film-maker, Martin Durkin, of similar offences – and is already facing questions on why it accepted another programme from him.
The commission found that the editing of interviews with four contributors to a series called Against Nature had “distorted or misrepresented their known views”.
Professor Wunsch said: “I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled.”
When told what the commission had found, he said: “That is what happened to me.” He said he believes it is “an almost inescapable conclusion” that “if man adds excess CO2 to the atmosphere, the climate will warm”.
He went on: “The movie was terrible propaganda. It is characteristic of propaganda that you take an area where there is legitimate dispute and you claim straight out that people who disagree with you are swindlers. That is what the film does in any area where some things are subject to argument…”
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2347526.ece
Prof Carl Wunsch explains himself more clearly;
“..Many scientists therefore rely upon numerical models of the climate system to calculate
(1) the nature of natural variability with no human interference, and compare it to
(2) the variability seen when human effects are included.
This approach is a very sensible one, but the ability to test (calibrate) the models, which can be extraordinarily complex, for realism in both categories (1) and (2) is limited by the same observational data base already describe. At bottom, it is very difficult to determine the realism by which the models deal with either (1) or (2)
Thus at bottom, it is very difficult to separate human induced change from natural change, certainly not with the confidence we all seek. In these circumstances, it is essential to remember that the inability to prove human-induced change is not the same thing as a demonstration of its absence. It is probably true that most scientists would assign a very high probability that human-induced change is already strongly present in the climate system, while at the same time agreeing that clear-cut proof is not now available and may not be available for a long-time to come, if ever. Public policy has to be made on the basis of probabilities, not firm proof.”
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=4688&tip=1
Since AGW is found on other planets in the solar system, it’s obvious there are other A’s out there doing the GW thing.
It used to be thought that we were the only anthros in this planetary neighborhood. But global warming is popping up all over the solar system!
We should send ambassadors to the leaders of other planets and ask them if they have found an answer to the problem.
We must fund this project, generously and urgently, because our planet is at stake. We don’t want to bake!
Rog
so you agree with Wunsch. What he is saying is that despite the imperfection of models, we still have to act on AGW.
“It is essential to remember that the inability to prove human-induced change is not the same thing as a demonstration of its absence. It is probably true that most scientists would assign a very high probability that human-induced change is already strongly present in the climate system, while at the same time agreeing that clear-cut proof is not now available and may not be available for a long-time to come, if ever. Public policy has to be made on the basis of probabilities, not firm proof.”
Probably, AGW is true and we should make policy on that basis.
Schiller
I take it you have nothing to add to the conversation?
Schiller if you’re smart enough to retype what denialist central has told you you’re also smart enough to tell us why it’s rubbish.
Nice try Rog – but they’re out and out shonks! and you guys are backing them. Utterly typical.
What Carl says at the very latest is at RC latest. It’s unambiguous.
You guys are never gonna live this down.
“I believe that climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component. But I have tried to stay out of the `climate wars’ because all nuance tends to be lost, and the distinction between what we know firmly, as scientists, and what we suspect is happening, is so difficult to maintain in the presence of rhetorical excess. In the long run, our credibility as scientists rests on being very careful of, and protective of, our authority and expertise.
The science of climate change remains incomplete. Some elements are so firmly based on well-understood principles, or for which the observational record is so clear, that most scientists would agree that they are almost surely true (adding CO2 to the atmosphere is dangerous; sea level will continue to rise,…). Other elements remain more uncertain, but we as scientists in our roles as informed citizens believe society should be deeply concerned about their possibility: failure of US midwestern precipitation in 100 years in a mega-drought; melting of a large part of the Greenland ice sheet, among many other examples.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled-carl-wunsch-responds/
Carl Wunsch responds.
Rog,
According to the Wiki link you provide the Revolutionary Communist Party were disbanded in 1997 … is the new movie that old?
The film ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ was made by WAG tv apparently commissioned by the BBC’s channel 4
http://www.wagtv.com/acatalog/About_Wag.asp
The producer Martin Durkin has a Marxist background. His response to this attack on his integrity and the integrity of the film has been “Exposing that a journalist has a Marxist background is like exposing that he wears trousers.”
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/2948/
… so if you are a global warming skeptic you are either despicable and from the left or despicable and from the right.
This Wunsch issue is being seriously overplayed by the usual suspects. Gather half a dozen people together and it is a certainty that one of them will feel misrepresented. How many times has the essence of a newspaper story been altered by a sub-editor with a catchy but misleading headline?
Film is a media that subsumes objective fact to subjective image. It is nowhere near as false or misleading as a Midnight Oil rock song but much less accurate than a journal article.
But on a scale of sleaze and misrepresentation the “The Great Global Warming Swindle” still falls well short of “An Inconvenient Truth”.
Wunsch may not like the entire package, for a whole host of reasons known only to himself and those who influence him, but he did make the statements that are attributed to him.
And it betrays a rather curious political bias on his part to be expecting some sort of veto over how those views may fit with the views of the other scientists who have expressed their position on anthropogenic global warming.
Are we seriously expected to allow this guy to exercise a veto over the conclusions of other scientists on the program?
I have no idea what kind of funding imperatives Wunsch is subject to, or what kind of pressure has since been applied to him, but the facts are that he did completely debunk a very popular, and particularly stupid, greenhouse myth, the “Atlantic Conveyor Collapse – Euro Ice Age” wank.
His contribution to the film was by no means predominant nor critical to the substance. And the key conclusions, that AGW was a big swindle, were made by other well qualified people who have every right to draw their conclusions without being subject to Wunsch’s imaginary right of veto.
Quite clearly, someone has had a quiet word in Wunsch’s ear about his retirement prospects in the very ways described by other contributors to the film.
His problem is that he has misrepresented basic facts, like the temperature/solar cycle match. He has also misrepresented what Carl Wunsch really thinks.
Ian
“I have no idea what kind of funding imperatives Wunsch is subject to, or what kind of pressure has since been applied to him”
So why imply that you know that he has had pressure applied, of any kind? You don’t know, so you don’t know.
As for the conveyor belt etc, it was postulated, and further research has shown it’s not likely to happen. So what? That’s why research is still going on today. When “The Day After Tomorrow” came out, the CSIRO had a disclaimer on it’s website to point out scientists didn’t believe it was at all likely to happen.
He said what he said in that film, and if you read his later comments, despite the fact that models are not perfect, he still thinks their results indicate we should be taking action on global warming.
Never thought I’d see the blog defending commies – wow !
“Gather half a dozen people together and it is a certainty that one of them will feel misrepresented.”
Cmon Ian, surely you aren’t going to peddle such a weak brush off. Where are your intellectual standards? (rhetorical question, no need for a response)
Apply that logic to the handful of scientists that had issues with the IPCC out of the hundreds that participated and your conclusion is.?
“His contribution to the film was by no means predominant nor critical to the substance. And the key conclusions, that AGW was a big swindle, were made by other well qualified people who have every right to draw their conclusions without being subject to Wunsch’s imaginary right of veto.”
That sounds almost like an argument on consensus Ian. Apply that logic to the IPCC, and we can see that the shoutings of a handful of people who disagree doesn’t greatly alter the picture.
Also, see here to see how ‘well qualified’ the other “experts” in the film were:
http://climatedenial.org/2007/03/09/the-great-channel-four-swindle/
Steve – Ian is withering – he knows when to pack the swag. Of more interest for cheer squads is the “Great Debate” – Gavin goes head to head with the goons.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/global-warming-debate/
Jennifer, maybe they were disbanded but the key members are still operating and have produced and/or are supporting this film. This Durkin is at least as nutty as Pilger and like Al Gore has no credibilty.
Professor Fred Singer drops a clanger.
“I personally believe that there should be some slight warming. But I think the warming will be much less than the current models predict. Much less. And I think it will be barely detectable. Perhaps it will be detectable, perhaps not. And it certainly will not be consequential. That is, it won’t make any difference to people. After all, we get climate changes by 100 degrees Fahrenheit in some places on the earth. So what difference does a 1-degree change make over 100 years? ”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html
Come on Fred, you can do better than that. A 100 degree difference in temperatures is the weather, not the climate.
Yeah, right, a web site that labels climate sceptics as being subject to “climate denial” is going to give a balanced assessment. Hardly.
That link was the standard hatchet job. With the usual string of claims about people not having done “peer reviewed” papers and labelling others as professional communicators. As if Al Gore is not a professional communicator and has published loads of peer reviewed papers. Give us a break.
But as usual it is the excesses that are the critics undoing. It seems patrick Moores crime was to oppose the greens and see merit in sustainable forest practices. And this supposed fall from grace was presented as evidence to justify his condemnation. And if all the rest were so biased then why would the producer need to mislead them?
On ya bike, Bozos.
Just downloaded it – legally of course – and will watch it tonight with great interest!
And I agree that it’s unlikely any TV station in Australia will pick it up – too strong a herd instinct in our fearless , independent journos!
Ian
I am perfectly happy for you to forget everything Al Gore has ever said. Just look at what the scientists are saying, please. The IPCC is not fronted by Al, nor do they rely on anything he thinks or says for what they publish.
Just contemplate the problems with that show.
Graphs manipulated to fit the conclusion. The match between solar activity and temperature is not what they portray, at all.
1) Solar activity has fallen just when as it has continued to heat up.
2) Their experts include a punter who keeps his model a secret, and it is only as complicated as fits on a piece of paper.
3) The carbon cycle spews out prodigious amounts of CO2, but that’s why it’s called a cycle. It absorbed as much as it produced. We are adding the buried amounts that have been out of circulation since the dinosaurs were around.
4) The willfully misrepresent one man, who states they took his remarks out of context, and ignored his belief that global warming is a problem that must be taken seriously.
5) The misrepresentation of the cooling around the 1940’s, as if no-one has come up with a scientific explanation for it, when all along they know perfectly well that there is an explanation. They don’t have to accept it, but no-one mentions it at all.
Ian,
Patrick Moore’s crime was that he owned a red sports car , according to some GP people.
Note this, I pointed out that GP owned two SUVs, but they told us they were needed for important work , as opposed to other SUV owners….
Wunsch is a “Cecil and Ida Green” professor at MIT. They would have told him to get in line and recant. No big deal if he doesn’t have the stomach to fall on his sword.
If you want something really funny, look at this AGW-driven stupidity:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/03/frostbite-brings-attention-to-global.html
So David – how’d you get your paper published BTW – did you know someone or were they having a soft day? Will the next one be actually refereed?
David
once again, do you have any evidence there was any pressure applied to him? I mean, you have told us he was, as has Ian. But apart from making it up, do you have any evidence. Lindzen is also at MIT, but no-one has shut him up. He looks like a pushover to me.
Wunsch has also stated why he was misrepresented, and it is consistent with what he had already said prior to the documentary being released. No-one has pressured him, he has changed a thing he says. The only change was the producers of the documentary selectively quoting him to give their own bias.
Woody,
would like to point out the accurate bit in the movie? I missed it.
Luke, Luke, where are your manners? I made the contribution that initiated this post, which gave you another opportunity to lather up and get indignant at all the persecution you and your ilk are suffering. It would be polite to first thank me for drawing your attention to the Swindle video, which you otherwise might not have been aware of.
On my paper, modesty forbids me from giving too much detail. Of course I am inspired by Steve McIntyre, but instead of going the E&E then GRL then US Senate hearings route, I am planning to skip GRL and go straight to US Senate hearings. I recently attended the Lavoisier Society confab in Parliament House, and I got a good vibe from the parliamentary democracy thing.
I read recently that there is nothing more dangerous than those with deep convictions who become dissillusioned. And so I fear for you. What will become of you when the world turns colder and there aren’t any aerosols to explain that cold away? You will be like those two stupid women who went to the Arctic looking for global warming, and came back with severe frostbite. They came back still believers despite all the evidence to the contrary and their own physical damage. Will you be able to maintain your faith, or will you wander the Earth just the empty husk of a man, with the fire gone out in rheumy eyes that once saw so much promise for damnation for mankind?
AGW is so miniscule that the effect cannot be measured from year to year, and even generation to generation. From here to 620 ppm is only 0.2 degrees C. Our generation has bathed in the warm glow of a benign, giving Sun, but the next will suffer a Sun that is less giving, and the Earth will be less fruitful.
Now for another hint. Those seeking to foretell the future should look to the Heavens. Specifically to one large object, the Sun. Note the complete lack of something. What is the thing that is missing?
Well David I really really encourage you to go the Senate hearings route and put your erudite material on the public record. I’m sure it will be seen as an excellent piece of science and that you will be very much remembered.
Your frostbite story is simply a stupid piece of trivialisation – a diversion that’s the best you can do to answer the serious defects in your paper.
Again you make a rhetorical appeal to the teensy weensy factor of CO2 and the majesty of the Sun – that’s not science – it’s bulldust and you’re not a scientist. You’re not religious too are you ?
We do look forward to your Senate appearance (giggle ROTFL and LMAO)
P.S. Steve McIntyre might know some statistics.
“What is the thing that is missing?”
Greenies?
Anonymous blog posters?
More fraud from TGGWS
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/more_tggws_fakery.php
Where did they get that temperature graph? It’s been found, and it’s a fraud. They have manipulated old data to look like it records changes up to the present day. Why? Because the solar record does not match their claim that the solar changes correlate to the temperature changes.
As I asked earlier, could someone point out the accurate bit in the movie, I must have missed it.
David
you are reasonably correct about the direct forcing from CO2, which is why a lot of scientists needed to be convinced that a change in CO2 would create a large rise in temperature. They mostly convinced now, because the evidence is there. Feedback mechanisms are your answer. You need to go past your initial calculations, and see what happens when that small rise in direct CO2 forcing, causes more water vapour, which causes more melting, which alters the albedo, which generates more radiated heat, which is trapped by CO2, etc. If the issue was only what is the direct component of CO2’s contribution to the climate, everyone would have packed up and gone home by now. The evidence, however, is already there. The feedback mechanisms are kicking in. The solar forcing is not the cause.
SJT,
re: more fraud from TGGWS, I reckon that if a line of best fit was added to both of those temp graphs there would be very little difference. The point being made in TGGWS was that there was a cooling between 1940 and 1975. The alternative graph provided on your link still clearly shows a cooling with the same max and min. OK there is also a rise and another fall in the “corrected” graph but the general point being made was still relatively correct.
Wunsch was not misrepresented because Wunsch does not appear to have been asked his view on whether AGW is fact or fancy. Wunsch was asked particular questions about his field and he gave his answers which were included in the doco. But after getting leaned on is now complaining that other people with different views to his were asked the big question.
But has everyone noticed how Luke and SJT are still sidestepping the lagging CO2 in the Ice Cores? I stated that for the CO2 to become a forcing agent after an initial temperature boost from orbital change, it would need to overtake the temperature graph to demonstrate a causal link. But all we got back was “says who”? and some drivel about CO2 being an amplifier and tossed in some chestnut about some big oceanic burp.
So let me spell this out for the gormless.
FOR SOMETHING TO HAVE A CAUSAL EFFECT OR AN AMPLIFYING EFFECT IT MUST FIRST BE PRESENT.
The ICE Core data makes it clear that for nearly all of nearly every substantial warming event, the CO2 was not present in anywhere near the concentrations needed to operate as a forcing agent.
And clearly, if there was some sort of oceanic big burp of CO2 then why is it not on the graph?
This “Big Burp” theory is looking more and more like big fart theory. You guys are talking through your ass.
Luke and I both addressed it. You just chose to ignore the answer, Ian. Thanks for that comment, anyway.
Jees Ian you do go on. As my mate SJT says read the fine answer. RTFA.
Why ould it be present first? Coz why. Let’s see – the CO2 molecule was quietly sleeping when it was bumped by an unfeeling inert nitrogen molecule. Gee CO2-ey what are you going to do today. Gee I might get energised with my mates and suddenly out of this equilibrium warm up the planet. What a good idea said the despondent O2 molecule who had just broken up from an ozone molecule over a rare little bit of bromine.
And why would it big burp – we were thinking of a ongoing wheeze. You were into gradualism when we last spoke about oceans – try to keep consistent – I know it’s hard.
My ass talks for itself Ian – don’t put words into its mouth.
Ian give it away – you’re talking utter drivel now – I left something in the comments above but you’re so far up your self you didn’t read it. Sigh.
Jen better put a whaling thread soon or we’ll all go mad.
So Martin Durkin is an ex commie, or marxo! Great it’s always a joyful occasion when one of them comes over, when most of them flock to join the Greens,and the Global Warming Industry.
Full marks to him for producing TGGWS, (and apparently, other docos. where he gets stuck into the true believers).
I watched the GGWS at the weekend, and found it well presented, well researched and well reasoned. Far more so, and far more factual then Al Gore’s effort, and streets ahead of that uttery trite drivel that ABC 4 Corners screened a few weeks back.
And it was good to see so many scientific experts speak out, knowing the abuse they could expext from the AGW Industry, which pursues them with the vigour of a 21st cent. McCarthyism. Why are they so afraid of being subjected to scientific scrutiny ? Because their multi billion dollar industry is a castle built of sand, and is in danger of collapsing in a rising tide of factual data.
One can only smile at the near hysterical response from the RC bully boys. But then RC is only the puppet of the IPCC maestros.
Meanwhile back here in the real world, the BoM has quietly released it’s qr. climate review for the summer period just ended. Most subdued, they admit that it was a relativly cool summer, with many areas recording max & Min temps. below average. This is after their much trumpeted forecast last Nov. that because of global warming, Aust. could expect an extremely hot summer.
The BoM are apparently uncomfortable with The Australian publishing daily temp. data from around the country. Day after day, week after week and year after year this data shows what a nonsense the AGW campaign is.
For example, from today’s Australian..Records..
Canberra. High: 33.4 in 1940.Low: 2.6 in 1995
Sydney. High: 33.8 in 1897.Low: 9.3 in 1886
Brisbane. High: 36.2 in 1965.Low: 12.6 in 1994
Melbourne. High: 37.3 in 1934.Low: 6.8 in 1954
Adelaide. High: 37.1 in 1899.Low: 8.4 in 1994
Perth. High: 41.3 in 1922.Low: 9.8 in 1917
Hobart. High: 33.8 in 1951.Low: 5.0 in 1987
Darwin. High: 36.5 in 1889.Low: 20. in 1941
Sid
where did you hear the BoM are uncomfortable the Australian is publishing daily temperature data? Any actual evidence?
What in particular was the evidence to support your claims about TGGWS? All of it has already been discredited. Is there anything left you believe?
As telling us todays temperatures, have you ever heard of a hasty conclusion?
Sid thinks Durkin’s doco was factual and gives us a weather report .. .. hehehehehehehe roftl
SJT he won’t be back for few days until he rounds up the cows.
Sid – if you’re serious (and you’re not) give us the top 20 warmest and coldest for each city.
Luke and SJT, you can’t weasel out that easily. Explain it all for us again please? You guys are just sooooh clever.
What a couple of slime balls. If there is a lag of even one century between a temperature increase and an increase in CO2 then clearly the CO2 was not present when the temperature increase started and was also not present when the CO2 peaked.
So can you explain it all for us just one more time? How can CO2 that wasn’t there cause Global Warming?
duh – gee Ian dat’s a hard ‘un. mmmmmm. So maybe you’re right – it wasn’t there in large enough amounts to start things off. But maybe it came along later from the oceans and a revving up biosphere. Ian are you that thick that we have to explain this again – are you suffering hyrdro-pneumatic cranial stress from the waterfall. And are you that limited that you cannot imagine two factors solar and CO2 working at once. Try engaging both hemispheres of the brain.
For years we’ve been told about ‘The Big Bang’.
Now Luke and SJT have come up with ‘The Big Burp’,
Wow!
Ian,
did you actually read anything? You demand again what has already been written in a reply to Jennifer. If you have a problem with that reply, then please raise it. Otherwise you are just engaging in pointless abuse.
Meanwhile, Durkin confesses, he had to fudge a graph because it didn’t fit in with his theory.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece
Read it Ian, and tell me what you think.
“Mr Durkin admitted that his graphics team had extended the time axis along the bottom of the graph to the year 2000. “There was a fluff there,” he said.
If Mr Durkin had gone directly to the Nasa website he could have got the most up-to-date data. This would have demonstrated that the amount of global warming since 1975, as monitored by terrestrial weather stations around the world, has been greater than that between 1900 and 1940 – although that would have undermined his argument.
“The original Nasa data was very wiggly-lined and we wanted the simplest line we could find,” Mr Durkin said.
The programme failed to point out that scientists had now explained the period of “global cooling” between 1940 and 1970. It was caused by industrial emissions of sulphate pollutants, which tend to reflect sunlight. Subsequent clean-air laws have cleared up some of this pollution, revealing the true scale of global warming – a point that the film failed to mention.”
Could the people who called this documentary “accurate”, please note the ‘fluff’ that was included. It had to be fluffed, otherwise the central premise of the film, that the rise in temperature was closely correlated with the solar cycle, was not demonstrated.
Pathetic, Luke. You say, “But maybe it came along later from the oceans and a revving up biosphere”. Do you mean later, as in after the warming has already taken place? Or do you mean later during the warming period? And if the latter, then how come we don’t see this CO2 from a “revving up biosphere” or from the oceans in the data?
We know you want to believe it was there, and we know you NEED to believe it was there, BUT IT SIMPLY WAS NOT THERE.
You have provided an explanation that is not supported by the evidence, either in warming phases or in cooling phases.
Readers should note that Luke and SJT are exhibiting textbook examples of obfuscation. Note how SJT actually invites me to ask the question that I had already asked in the previous post.
His feigned display of reasonable is exposed when he said, “If you have a problem with that reply, then please raise it. Otherwise you are just engaging in pointless abuse”.
So once more for the record, I don’t see the response you claim to have provided so am asking you to make it again. And have specifically asked how CO2 could have driven the latter stages of past warmings when it is simply not present in the graphed data.
No abuse here, just a simple question to a couple of cornered rats.
Ian
I will repeat my previous reply to Jennifer on that question.
“Luke has it right. CO2 is a forcing in this case, because we are adding more of it to the atmosphere.
There is no ice age we are coming out of. So if you want the answer of what happens when we are coming out of an ice age, you are going to get a different answer. The CO2 seems to be acting as a positive feedback in that case. The warmer it gets, the more CO2 enters the carbon cycle, it then gets that bit more warmer. It’s like kick starting a motorbike. The engine is still and doing nothing, you kick it over, in ice age terms, the attitude of the earth changes or the sun’s radiation grows stronger, then a CO2 cycle starts, and then keeps on going. More warming, more CO2, more warming, in a feedback mechanism.
Where it stops appears to vary. The dinosaur era, the whole planet was covered in plant life, this time, it settled down in a different state, with a lot of the carbon from the previous time trapped under the ground. That carbon is now being released in a time that, in geological terms, is a blink of an eye. That in turn is going to bring about what is for the earth’s ecology, rapid climate change. Previous rapid changes in climate have lead to mass extinctions.”
“Dr Leroi e-mailed Mr Durkin about his use of data, concluding: “To put this bluntly: the data that you showed in your programme were . . . wrong in several different ways.” He copied Mr Singh into the exchange.
Mr Durkin replied to both later that morning, saying: “You’re a big daft cock.” Less than an hour later, Mr Singh, who has worked for the BBC, intervened to urge Mr Durkin to engage in serious debate. He wrote: “I suspect that you will have upset many people (if Armand is right), so it would be great if you could engage in the debate rather than just resorting to one-line replies. That way we could figure out what went wrong/ right and how do things better/ even better in the future.” Mr Durkin replied nine minutes later: “The BBC is now a force for bigotry and intolerance . . . Since 1940 we have had four decades of cooling, three of warming, and the last decade when temperature has been doing nothing.
“Why have we not heard this in the hours and hours of shit programming on global warming shoved down our throats by the BBC?
“Never mind an irresponsible bit of film-making. Go and f*** yourself.” ”
Durkin takes part in a debate over the validity of the data he presented on the documentary.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article1517515.ece
But Luke, Even if it is part of a feedback mechanism, as you claim, it must be present during the time when this claimed feedback is actually feeding back. But the graphs show that it is not present at that time. The delay in this so-called feedback is so long that it can only be functioning as an effect, not a cause.
So can we take your admission that CO2 has, in the historical record, functioned as a feedback, as an admission that it has not functioned as a forcing agent? This is, exactly, what you are saying, isn’t it?
Oh Luuuke?
nice one Ian
“A good doco. Covers much of what has been said on this blog about the Climate Cadres. But will we ever see it on “their ABC”?”
wow, pity that all of the ‘science’ in this piece has already previously been debunked and the scientists proven wrong. well, all but one of the scientis – and he protested that this hack piece quoted him out of context.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/13/channel-4s-problem-with-science/
its alright mott, stick to your guns. a good docco indeed! hahaha.
Ian, you finally find Luke’s post, and still hound him.
Try to get the concept of a forcing and feedback clear in your mind.
A forcing is when something changes, and causes another change. Eg, the sun gets brighter, it forces the temperature up. The level of CO2 rises, it forces the temperature up. In the current situation, we are increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
A feedback is when something responds to something else to cause another change. When the earth was in an ice age, there was not much of a carbon cycle, the earth was pretty barren. The level of CO2 was not changing. Something else raised the temperature, for example, the Milankovich cycle. As organic life became more active, CO2 is released. It is not forcing the temperature rise, but resulting from it. As the CO2 concentration rises, the temperature is increased even more. A feedback. So it can be both a feedback and a forcing.
The question is, when you are in a steady state, such as in an ice age, or, as we are now, between one, why is change happening?
SJT,
“Steady State?” surely you jest!
Ian, if you pour petrol on a fire, the petrol didn’t start the fire, but it sure as hell made it hotter. How hard is it to fathom that CO2, in the past, has been the petrol on the fire?
I don’t think any sceptic actually doubts the physics of CO2 causing some degree of warming. However they do doubt the sensitivity to this warming (including feedbacks) and the effects this will have on life.
If you can’t get past – CO2 causes at least some degree of warming – the mind boggles…
Peter
The climate has been remarkably stable for the past thousand or so years. There have been changes, but there is always a reason for the change. The temperatures go up and down, but the climate has a whole always has to change for a reason, or forcing. No other forcing accounts for the current change but CO2. The ‘solar’ connection in TGGWS had to have the data fudged by the producers to make it look like there was a connection.
Peter,
however, that was not the point of my post. All I was trying to do was give a descriptive example of how CO2 can be a forcing or a feedback. If you have an issue about the stability of the climate, that is another matter.
Ian – I am amazed how dense you are really.
So we have a CO2 rise over the last 30 years and the planet has warmed.
The physics of greenhouse gases are well studied and we know how they react to infra-red.
If we didn’t have any greenhouse effect it might be a bit chilly on Earth overall.
We know that greenhouse isn’t the only effect – solar and aersols have an impact too. But over the last 30 years we have no solar change.
Philipona measures radiation on the ground and calculates the greenhouse flux as about what it should be.
Satellites show closure in the spectral bands from space.
SO most people presented with that evidence and who had the ability to comprehend it might think a few things are lining up.
You seem to have no ability to hold more than one driver in your head at one time. IT’S NOT EITHER OR – YOU GIMP ! You also have no ability see a body of interlocking evidence preferring to pick cherries.
Why would CO2 suddenly start suddenly increasing in a frozen stadial equilibrium state. Coz it woke up one morning and decided to?
Orbital patterns change the solar forcing and warm things up – that starts CO2 being liberated from the oceans and a warming biosphere also starts cycling carbon. Interesting that 800 years is about the ocean lag turnover time.
During the developing interstadial changing solar and CO2 forcings determine the temperature – a product of both from their relative contributions.
At the moment the orbital calculations put an ice age inducing change off for at least 150,000 years if you do the modelling. No ice age soon.
Unlike in an average interstadial “steady state” situation we are doing a relatively unique experiment liberating gigatons of stored fossil fuel derived CO2 in a 200 year burst. A bloody big spike. Very short period of time.
But having said all that I’m still surprised you haven’t read Gavin’s comments above. I might chase the references down if I’m bored – which is increasing rapidly with the sheer stupidity of your contributions.
Luke
do you actually think Ian reads anything you link to at RC? I think you are wasting your time.
Well it’s not necessary to read anything of course if your mind is made up and you have a large envelope. But Ian’s not really serious – he’s just seeing how long he can stretch us out. He knows we’re right.
He taunts you for replies, then doesn’t even bother to read or understand them. He can’t know we are right, ever, because it is ideologically impossible for him to. Property rights and global warming are mutually exclusive for him. He can’t accept both at the same time.
This is your standard weasel device Luke. You got caught out big time. If the CO2 played any role in any past warming, either as forcing or feedback, then it should be present at the point in time when the warming is taking place. In fact, by your argument it should overtake temperature at the end of that warming but it does not.
And no amount of cheap insult and slimy jinks and jives will alter that fact. But I must say the way you and SJT use Real Climate like some sort of cargo cult for Climate Cretins is amusing. You seem to think that all it will take to convert your illogical argument into an accepted truth is just a few more doses of RC. How very quaint.
Ian
you don’t have to take RC as gospel. Just read the link, and tell us where they are wrong. Slimy? What does lurk inside your brain?
Ian it is actually you are the one who is caught out big time. “should overtake it by the end – why – did I say solar forcing is constant – perhaps that’s the point you gimp – a waxing and waning solar and CO2 flux. Just turn your chain-saw off an have a think for 30 seconds. It may help. Why do you think the place was going in and out of ice ages Ian – “Oh Ian says – that’s because the solar forcing is constant forever” – throw up coffee over keyboard and fall off chair .. ..
And so why is the place warming up now then on same logic – do you have a solar driver. Duh – gee I didn’t think of that says Ian. Wow !
Do we have a reasoned laid out refutation – no just a bit of the old biffo. Pathetic Ian – give it away and put on the duelling banjo music and try some Byron Gold. It won’t help but it will keep you off the street. And you are so up youself you haven’t even digested Gavin’s comments. Thick as a brick.
Remember SJT – Ian’s trade mark and use to the forestry industry is to be able to spin arguments at close range for shorty bursts. Just to obfuscate and derail discussion. Called spoiling. Long term utility though = zero.
Of course just for fun and seeing how long Ian would run on this let’s just lob this in.. ..
Clim. Past Discuss., 3, 435–467, 2007
http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/3/435/2007/
New constraints on the gas age-ice age
difference along the EPICA ice cores,
0–50 kyr
L. Loulergue1, F. Parrenin1, T. Blunier2, J.-M. Barnola1, R. Spahni2, A. Schilt2,
G. Raisbeck3, and J. Chappellaz1
1Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de G´eophysique de l’Environnement (LGGE), CNRS, Universit ´e
Joseph Fourier – Grenoble, BP96 38402 Saint Martin d’Heres Cedex, France
2Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern, Sidlerstrasse 5,
3012 Bern, Switzerland
3Centre de Spectrom´ etrie Nucl´ eaire et de Spectrom´ etrie de Masse (CSNSM),
IN2P3-CNRS-Universit ´e de Paris-Sud, Bat 108, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
Gas is trapped in polar ice sheets at 50–120m below the surface and is therefore
younger than the surrounding ice. Firn densification models are used to evaluate this
ice age-gas age difference (Éage) in the past. However, such models are not well
5 tested on low accumulation and cold sites of the East Antarctic plateau, especially for
periods with different climatic conditions. Here we bring new constraints to test a firn
densification model applied to the EPICA Dome C (EDC) site for the last 50 kyr, by
linking the EDC ice core to the EPICA Dronning Maud Land (EDML) ice core, both
in the ice phase (using volcanic horizons) and in the gas phase (using rapid methane
10 variations). We use the structured 10Be peak, occurring 41 kyr before present (BP) and
due to the low geomagnetic field associated with the Laschamp event, to experimentally
estimate the Éage and Édepth during this event. It allows us to evaluate the model
and to link together climatic archives from EDC and EDML to NorthGRIP (Greenland).
Our results reveal an overestimate of the Éage by the firn densification model during
15 the last glacial period at EDC. Tests with different accumulation rates and temperature
scenarios do not entirely resolve this discrepancy. Our finding suggests that the
phase relationship between CO2 and EDC temperature inferred at the start of the last
deglaciation (lag of CO2 by 800±600 yr) is overestimated and that the CO2 increase
could well have been in phase or slightly leading the temperature increase at EDC.
Oh dear.
Letter to the Guardian
I share George Monbiot’s view that science needs dissent and debate (Comment, March 13). That’s why I commissioned The Great Global Warming Swindle: to reflect the views of the significant minority of respected scientists who do not agree with the prevailing consensus on climate change. The response to the film has been lively and opinionated, but some clarification is needed.
With regard to reports that one contributor says he was “misled” by the programme and “misrepresented” within it, Channel 4 has a detailed correspondence which shows this is not the case. The view that Professor Egil Friss-Cristensen, head of the Danish Space Centre, “incorrectly handled data” and used “faulty methods” in his research is contested in his response, and he has demonstrated a good correlation between solar-cycle length and temperature. Professor John Christy, head of the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Alabama, also disputes the claim that he has been “proved wrong”, and his most recent (2005) data on the heating of the lower atmosphere have not been challenged. There were many other voices in the film that present a powerful argument…
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,2033170,00.html
Jen – you should also note how the “documentary” doctored its data. Shocking stuff. Do we expect an editorial from you? Of course not.
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/more_tggws_fakery.php
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/spot_the_difference.php
scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/03/guest_post_on_tggws.php
As for Egil Friss-Cristensen – do we have a paper?
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=170
So where then Jen is the refutation wrong. Of course Christy will complain !
Jen, where is the detailed correspondance Channel 4 refers to? Certainly doesn’t appear in the article.
I’ll just take the standard strategy on this blog, post a link to something with no explanation
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/#more-414
and assume I am right. Problem solved
So what, Luke. The conclusion betrays its intent.
Note the final para, “Our finding suggests that the phase relationship between CO2 and EDC temperature inferred at the start of the last
deglaciation (lag of CO2 by 800±600 yr) is overestimated and that the CO2 increase
could well have been in phase or slightly leading the temperature increase at EDC”.
Note he did not state that they were in phase or did slightly lead temperature, he merely stated a possibility that they COULD have been in phase. An overestimation means just that. It does not mean the entire lag did not exist.
Once again you have only construed what you want to read in the document. Note also that he is only refering to the last deglaciation, not the lot.
Funny how you get more abusive when your position becomes more tenuous?
Mr Abuse himself (scum, spiv etc) complains about some jocular invective. Now Ian – no getting touchy – you know I don’t mean it. Ian I’m wearing the biggest smile watching you sink by the stern. Don’t worry – we’ll pick you up (eventually).
Read Gavin’s comments above about other periods where CO2 or CH4 may have led. Of course it’s only the last glaciation in the paper – that’s what they’ve studied (jeez) – so maybe it applies to all? Do you know otherwise?
Answer my point about your assumption of solar remaining constant. It’s waxing and waning over these cycles (unless you want to throw out Milankovitch and apply something else?).
SJT – two more posts and he’ll give up I reckon.
Ian
You seem to have a fixation, that seems to occur to many people, that because CO2 is the ‘forcing’ now, CO2 is claimed to always and only ever be the forcing for global warming. No one has ever claimed that. (Except people like you). Try to understand this. In this case, CO2 is the forcing. That is what the science seems to be telling us, with a good degree of certainty.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/planet-hotter-than-ever/2007/03/16/1173722715669.html
“The world has just experienced the hottest three months since records began more than a century ago, according to the US Government agency that tracks weather.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the combined global land and ocean surface temperature from December until the end of February was the highest since records began in 1880.
The period included the hottest January on record.
“Contributing factors were the long-term trend toward warmer temperatures as well as a moderate El Nino in the Pacific,” Jay Lawrimore of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said.
The next-warmest corresponding period was in 2004, and the third warmest in 1998, Mr Lawrimore said.
The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995.”
I guess that’s the end of “We are in a cooling phase”, Lindzen.
Well it seems that SJT is cherry picking from NOAA, so let me quote from NOAA. ’34th. coolest February in 113 years. The average worldwide Feb. 2007 temp. was 32.9 F., 1.8F cooler then the 1901 – 2000 average, and the 34th coolest Feb. for the past 113 yrs., from 2007.
http://www.ncdc.noaa./gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
Now let’s see SJT, Gavin and Luke, and the other hounds from RC come out baying.
Explain it away boys.
Sid
I’m still waiting for evidence of this
“The BoM are apparently uncomfortable with The Australian publishing daily temp. data from around the country.”
How do you know that?
Your link is broken, but fixing it I get this quote
“UNITED STATES
Climate Summary
February 2007
page delimiter
The average temperature in February 2007 was 32.9 F. This was -1.8 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 34th coolest February in 113 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. ”
Thats the United States, which got a huge blast from the North. Those blasts happen from time to time. Prior to that, just about everyone was amazed that winter had not turned up.
Hey Sid – how do even know what you’re measuring as far as capital cities go,- they’ve probably moved the met station few times and increased haze changing temperatures.
So CO2 is only a forcing when it is convenient for the Climate Y2K campaign to claim it is? I guess “sometimes it sits and thinks and other times it jess sits”. Is that it boys?
The latest from climate audit http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1152 makes it very clear that the work of Jones, who supposedly found that urban heat islands were not influencing world temperature records cannot be relied upon.
Jones never did supply his data for anything but “selective peer review”. And the prospect that his data sets from 1910 to 1990 (from revolutionary and stalinist USSR and warlord, Japanese invasion and cultural revolutionary China) offer any consistent methods and locational data is increasingly laughable.
Ergo, the so-called “Global Warming” over the past century is essentially a crock of the proverbial. And that means the “forcing” that the Climate Cretins claim as fact is no such thing.
Ian,
I’m interested to know how a climate audit report on data around urban heat islands disproves the physical relationship between CO2 and warming?
http://www.exxonmobil.com/corporate/campaign/climate_view.asp
here is exxon’s take on it. If you want credibility (as a skeptic on climate change) it seems now that its all the rage to agree there is warming, agree CO2 is PART of the cause but that there is no crises and there are more important things to worry about.
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=debate_skills_advantage_climate_contrari&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Does anyone else get that sinking feeling? or is it just Ian?
Ian maaaate.. .. the climate audit gimps latest rubbish is being BBQ’ed over at Eli Rabbet’s
sizzle sizzle
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2007/03/open-book-test-in-comments-over-at.html
As for the CO2 story – jeez what’s the difference between Ian and computer. You have to punch the data into a computer once.
Ian if the solar and CO2 forcing is at equilibrium and orbital position stable – climate will be relatively stable – move them and things changes. Caphece ?
Ian, here is another way:
For every big black hole dug in a coal seam over say 50 years around the east coast of Australia there is an equivalent in CO2 gas still unaccounted for somewhere in the atmosphere.
Don’t try to tell us the extra trees we have grown since have already used it. ABC TV this week on Gippsland native forests and the recently forced logging state wide decline proves this; we are behind in catch up in one state at least (Victoria).
That leaves us arguing only about CO2 as a forcing re AGW. Now tell us the extra CO2 from this part of the world has no impact in heating us up based on volumes converted. If this CO2 doesn’t act as a blanket, then why not?
Ian
CO2 as a forcing or feedback only when it is convenient? Well, at least it’s one small painful step forward, you now recognise the difference between a forcing and a feedback.
I would hope, Ian, it’s not a matter of what suits me or Luke or anyone. Hopefully science is what removes that factor. Science is not perfect, but it’s numerous accomplishments demonstrate it’s ability to produce results.
‘The BoM are apparently uncomfortable…’. How do I know that?
Well, sorry SJT, but I am not going to divulge the identity of the BoM officer who told me, as he feels his employment would be threatened. He said that he and many other officers are not happy with the politicisiation of the Bureau on the issue of ‘global warming’. They feel that rather then being a recorder of factual data, the BoM has become an active player in the politics of the issue. Says that Lowe, of the ACF may be causing a bit of mischief there, as are some of the old leftie sages of the Wentworth Group.
He comments that the Bureau would like to curtail the release of ‘raw’ data, but rather play round with it a bit, graph it ,and delete any ‘anomolies’. Perhaps because the ‘natives’ may get the wrong idea from raw facts.
He didn’t say, but it is my belief that this is why the BoM has discarded as ‘unreliable’ their temp. records prior to 1950. Could it be that to include these would make a lie of their claims of recent record highs? It is interesting that NASA/GISS is happy to use these early records and regards them as reliable. As does The Australian.
‘Thats the US, which got a huge blast from the north….’ Well,well, according to you guys these things are supposed to be getting weaker and less frequent, not stronger.So NOAA data is fine if its hotter. If its colder, its just a ‘one off’.
Ian , I agree with you, these guys just bend and twist, when they are cornered. Keep it up mate.
Jen, thanks for posting the bit from the Guardian.
There is a very interesting bit of research on Glacial Budgets by Prof. Cliff Ollier, D.Sc., Research Fellow, University of WA, titled Glaciers and Ice Sheets. In it he says that Hansens views on glacier collapse (March 13/07), is untenable. You can see a summary on the Lavoisier website.
Sid – BoM have not discarded their pre-1950 data. They’re in the national archive. Some have recently been computerised.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/how/climarc.shtml
So Sid how does it feel to be a lying coot. You couldn’t lay straight in bed.
I consider your “playing around with data” story as a total fabrication. You’ve sunk to new depths. Disgraceful.
These turkeys tried to claim that CO2 didnt need to be present in the ice core graphs because it was only a feedback during the last warming. Then it was big burp theory until it was pointed out that big burps should also appear on the graphs. And then they claimed a paper said it was there as a forcing after all when it said no such thing. And now we have Gavin claiming the current warming is all forcing because “what else could it be”?
The problem is that most of the so-called warming is within a normal range that has been obscured by data sets collected from two of the most turbulent historical periods, with repeated revolutions, invasions, civil wars, drug epidemics, famines and purges. And the guy who claims he took out all the heat islands etc, refuses to supply his workpapers. And even here in Australia we have numerous stations located at airfields that have been paved during the period and located in areas with considerable landcover change that can contaminate the records.
But keep it up fellas. The other people reading these trails are not stupid. They can spot a couple of bunko artists whenever you type a word.
Total crap Ian – next you’ll be telling that BoM has disposed of pre-1950 data like your shonky mates. (A) didn’t give a big burp theory – you did you stinking liar. (B) did we say it was only a feedback in the last warming (nope). Obviously been to Sid’s school of fibbing and bulldust.
We’ve got good data from North America, UK and Australia to show it’s a world wide trend. Add in ocean temps, proxy records, glaciers melting, species moving range, lower extreme events lessening and Ian wants to run “oh we don’t know anything now”. Oh pullease ! I’m sure your bolsh will impress Toby though.
BoM have looked at a set of stations for a high quality reference set (definitely not shonky sly Sid’s capital cities bogus list) and we know what they show.
The heat island crappola has been looked at and dismissed anyway. Get off your lazy butt and find why in the archives here.
I find it hilarious but the height of hypocrisy to see you now arguing “we know nothing” then turning around and quoting the same data as an argument when it suits you. Ian you have simply determined a priori that anything we say will be attacked by you on principle. Using whatever scummy little nonsense floats into your brain.
Well Ian Gavin’s on the right track – so smart aleck give us your theory of the current warming and tell us how it works.
Sid
Ian doesn’t make us squirm. It’s him who is squirming. Trying to pin him down long enough to make one, simple point clear is a nearly impossible task. No, impossible. He jumps from the question at hand, the role of CO2 as a forcing or feedback, to urban heat island effect. Ian, look moi, look at moi, look at moi. CO2, forcing or feedback?
“I guess “sometimes it sits and thinks and other times it jess sits”. Is that it boys?”
CO2 is inanimate. It always just sits, and reacts. Maybe you should study some physics, learn how the world works.
When it’s a forcing in this case, it’s not actively deciding to warm the atmosphere. We are adding extra quantities to the atmosphere, when it was previously stored underground. That changes the amount of it in the atmosphere, the way the climate works changes, it’s being ‘forced’ into a different state.
Now, the climate can have any number of different states, there are many types of physical forcings that can happen to make it change states. Changes to CO2 levels in the air is often not the reason it changes states. It just happens that this time it is, and the reason it is happening is that we are changing it’s concentration in the atmosphere.
Excuse me Luke, SJT and Gavin, the unambigous intent of the official interpretation of the Vostock Ice Cores was that they demonstrated a direct causal link between rising CO2 and rising temperature. End of story.
But when I asked how this link could be possible if the last warming took place 600-800 years before the CO2 got out of bed you guys try to claim that CO2 was just having a bad hair day and was only up to acting as a feedback.
And when I pointed out that for CO2 to act as a feedback it would still have to be present at the time the warming took place you guys decided that in that particular case there must have been some other forcing.
Consequently, you guys have no other recourse than to admit that the Vostock Ice Cores do not explain global warming. Aint that so?
Ian
Realclimate had you in mind when they wrote this, I think.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13
“What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?
This is an issue that is often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after Antarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen every 100,000 years or so.
Does this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no.
The reason has to do with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from this ice core data.
The 4200 years of warming make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6 of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming.
It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.
From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a “feedback”, much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.
In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.”
I tried to write pretty much that before, but gave up, because I couldn’t get it clear enough. I looked up Realclimate and found they had already done the job for me. The concept is a little hard for some people to get their head around, I think Al Gore might have been a little confused too. But that is an excellent explanation of what happens. CO2 as feedback, described there, compared to CO2 as forcing, now.
So finally we agree – the Vostock ice cores do not have much value in explaining the current global warming. i.e. in a shorter version “yep”
This is just your same old Bollocks SJT. If the lagged CO2 acts as a feedback then the feedback is lagged as well. And that would mean the graphs have a gradual peak as the lagging CO2 catches up. So how come we don’t see that in any of the graphs.
In fact, in the last big cooling 125,000 years ago the temperature had almost bottomed (a 9C drop)while the CO2 was still on a peak plateau. And it did so for about 15,000 years.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/cryosphere/data2.html
This graph shows the mix of CO2 and Methane with temperature change but again we get the lags in both directions. Note also that Methane is in parts per billion (ppb), not parts per million (ppm) as in CO2.
Some have attempted to suggest that the combination of the two has a closer association with temperature change. But the problem is that methane is not 1000 times more greenhouse capable than CO2. I think the last IPCC stuff suggested it was only 20 times stronger. So to factor in the methane into the graphic at its proper CO2 equivalent the virtical scale for CH4 should be only 20/1000 or one fiftieth of the CO2 scale.
When one does that we get a combined result that differs only very marginally from the CO2 line. So exit Gavin’s little fairy tale and we are back at the little problem of the unrelated movements in CO2 to temperature.
But thanks for drawing this stuff to my attention, fellas, I always like uncovering new attempts at distorting the true picture. But really, distorting the scale is hardly a new form of misleading behaviour.
For gods sake, Ian.
That graph shows a drop of about 5C while the CO2 content stays relatively constant. So what? No one said that temperature is tied to CO2 content perfectly. If it was, I would be surprised. Obviously there was a forcing of some sort that dropped the temperature at that time, and it wasn’t anything to do with CO2.
It’s not my fault you can’t understand how things work. Rather than abuse people here, maybe you should just acknowledge you don’t understand what is going on and try to learn. It’s a complex topic, and I’ve spent several years now trying to scratch the surface.
Gee Ian – having 2 variables in one’s brain at once – boy that’s daring. Maybe if started to cool from a reduction in solar input – hmmmm .. .. nah too complex. You have to work out whta’s what with your watts I’m afraid. Crank up your envelope GCM.
The important thing Ian is that you’ve had a good time and that we’ve been of service dredging up all this information for you to correct. So many errant papers – such little time.
Wrong SJT, the graph shows a drop of close to 9C that is entirely independent of CO2 and CH4. But we are being told all the time that the volume of CO2 already in the atmosphere will continue to produce warming for centuries to come.
We are told constantly that a rise in a global mean of 0.5C due to CO2 is a very significant change but you now have the gall to suggest that a 9C drop that is independent of CO2 is nothing to worry about? You are all over the shop, boyo.
So tell us all why that high level of CO2 decided to stop warming? Why did 280ppm decide to only deliver the warming of 180ppm, for 15,000 years?
And can we conclude that your silence on the graphing of Methane amounts to acceptance of my view that relevance of CH4 is exaggerated by 5000%?
Do you accept that on the actual graph at
http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/cryosphere/data2.html
the entire CH4 vertical scale should only be 0.3 of one small gradient interval if it is to be properly compared with CO2?
SJT – I simply cannot believe the stupidity of what’s being written here by Ian. Hope Toby is reading.
So now Ian wants overnight for CO2 having a forcing rating of “x” to suddenly become “9x” because the solar forcing is decreasing.
WOW !
Ian wants us to transmute iron into gold. Gee I know we’re pretty good but .. .. ..
SJT – at this point of mental disturbance – work out what you’re dealing with and we’ll just tip-toe away.
“Yes Ian that’s right – now you just sit here and some nice men will be along soon to take you back”.
Also nicely revealed (and I’m shocked actually) – he doesn’t know how the greenhouse effect works.
Ian,
as I have said already, I have spent years learning how this all works, and I have only just scratched the surface. I’m an amateur, I get things wrong from time to time, the exact use and meaning of terms, how it all fits together. I have no idea of the advanced mathematical models they use, the physics behind it all, the thermodynamics involved. It’s about 30 years since I studied that stuff in first year university. By the same token, they would know little about how to do the things I do as a job. That’s ok, that’s one of the modern dilemmas. We are all just human, there is only so much you can squeeze into one brain, so we all just specialise.
The problem with that is that a lot of people feel uncomfortable with that fact. Who are these people, why are they saying these things? Why do they tell things I don’t like? That’s why we have a scientific method. It’s served us wonderfully well. It’s not perfect, it makes mistakes, but it’s the best tool we have so far for advancing science, and taking mankind along with it. The results speak for themselves.
Now we get to your problem. I don’t know a lot about the topic, but I understand enough to understand those graphs we are talking about at the moment, and you don’t. I am willing to admit when I don’t understand, why don’t you? The theory fits in perfectly with those graphs.
There are 12 or so identified forcings for the climate, IIRC. Some are stronger than others, some are more active than others at various times for various reasons. Just because there is CO2 in the atmosphere, it doesn’t mean it will override the other forcings. If you turn off the sun, it doesn’t matter how much CO2 there is, there could be 100% CO2, it will still be damm cold.
The climate is like a battleship, making it changes direction can be a long drawn out affair, usually. Unless something drastic happens, then it could change overnight. That is the guess of what happened to wipe out the dinosaurs. So it won’t work like a car. Turn the engine on, the engine starts, turn it off, it stops. Put the foot down, it goes faster, put on the breaks, it slows down.
OK?
So now we dispense with any discussion at all and just accuse me of insanity, do we Luke? I suppose it is a change from straw men.
I note how you have converted realclimate’s possible into a certainty, SJT. RC said,
“The lag is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first 800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of warming COULD (my emphasis) in fact have been caused by CO2,”
So even RC is reluctant to argue with the degree of absolute certainty that you and Luke have been arguing here. The fact is that it is only a possibility, not a certainty. And given the afore mentioned serious fudging of the graphs on CH4 then we are getting much further down the “climate forcing” pecking order to a point where your original contention is looking very shoddy indeed.
If methane looks like a flat line when graphed in CO2 equivalence then we can only assume that the other forcings will have even less amplitude.
So this line about the rest of the 12 forcings kicking everything along, curiously only put forward after your CO2 line was looking shakey, is stretching credibility even further.
And I suppose we will never know the real picture from the Vostok ice cores until they put back all the records that were taken out as “contaminants”.
And for the record Luke, it was you who raised the big burp issue, I just gave it its proper title.
Ian
everywhere you look, there’s a conspiracy. I didn’t raise the other forcings because CO2 was looking shakey. It’s all in your head, Ian. Now the conspiracy reaches to the Vostok Ice Cores, with “contaminants” another part of the plot.
Nope I didn’t raise the issue of massive burp like expulsion of CO2 – you did ! I’m talking about a progressive outgassing – a long wheeze – read above !!!!!!!
We’re not arguing the “certainty” we’re just been trying to get you to point (1) with understanding the basics of CO2 and solar interacting in various combinations. I don’t think it’s been a profitable exchange somehow. Silly in fact.
Ian, you’ve just about got ’em mate!
Luke has moved from a big burp, to a long wheeze. Not far off a last gasp.
Sid, got who?
Ian twists and dodges, misquotes, makes up strawman arguments, diverges off into anything that comes into his head. Your applause appears to be for the most juvenile of reasons, ridicule from a play on words. Is that the standard of debate, honestly?
All we are trying to do is educate him. As I have said already, the science behind global warming is very complex.
Just about everyone agrees, even the deniers, that CO2 is causing global warming. What the point of difference is, is if CO2 is going to cause more warming to the point of seriously disrupting our civilisations. That seems to hinge on whether or not the models are reasonably accurate, and feedback mechanisms significantly add to the warming.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas, there is no dispute from anyone with any scientific background on that point, the mechanism for that greenhouse gas has been known for about 200 years. That’s how basic the physics is that is required to understand that point.
CO2 is also a part of the physical world. It can be broken up into it’s components, it can be absorbed into the oceans, it can be released from the oceans. It can be created by the process of combustion or organic life such as us breathing. If you want a simple, one paragraph definition of exactly what CO2 does, how, why and when, you aren’t ever going to get it. If that’s what you want, you may as well pack up and go home now, you’re wasting your time here.
“Got’em ” …. sheesh – mate he isn’t even at first base and you haven’t got out of bed.
Yes, Sid. SJT rattles off a whole bundle of attributes to try to reclaim some sort of credibility but still, none of them can explain how come this “progressive outgassing”, as “big burp theory” has now morphed into, is not observable in the graph.
They cannot get their indoctrinated brains around the fact that the progressive outgassing is still taking place after the fact of each part of the temperature rise.
Clearly, something else started the warming, something else continued the warming, and something else cooled it back down again.
The CO2 had to come from somewhere, because, as you note, the level rises. If it came from the ocean, to make the content in the atmosphere rise, lets call that process an outgassing.
Can I ask about another scene in that movie (TGGWS)?
It seemed to say that emissions of C02 from volcanoes is much much larger than that of humans (the cute little animations were quite nice).
But I have read elsewhere (including here: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html and here: http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html) that human emissions are 150 times greater per year (I presume averaged out over a long time).
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
I have read all arguments (or most o them) and it seems like regardless of what is changing our climate, be it human CO2 emissions or solar activity, the FACT that our climate is changing is not in doubt.
Therefore, I put this to Ian and Sid:
“If humans are not the cause of climate change and solar activity is the cause of climate change, should humans keep using fossil fuels with absolutely no regard for what effect the additional green house gases may have on climate change.”
Hello Jen,
The issue of CO2 leading or lagging temperature change is a critical issue.
The graphs shown by Al Gore in his documentary come from the Vostok ice core sample analyses.
There are two gaphs, one above the other. One shows temperature, and the other shows CO2, for the duration of the ice core, which is about 420,000 years.
The two graphs show very clear upward spikes in temperature and CO2 levels, at 100,000 year intervals, and these spikes occur at about the same time. Analyses of the timing of these spikes shows that temperature increase leads CO2 increase by about 1200 years. That is, temperature change drives CO2 change, which is the opposite of the claims made by Al Gore et al.
It is proposed that the reason that this happens is that much, or most, of the earth’s CO2 is dissolved in water, mostly the oceans, and CO2 is an unusual gas in that its solubility in water is inversely related to tempeature, that is, as temperature of water increases, solubility decreases. This causes the oceans to release very large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere as their temperature increases.
The spikes correlate very closely with the Milankovic cycles, which is a natural cycle of variation in the earth’s orbit around the sun.
Right now, we are on the rising side of one of these spikes.
To summarise, natural variations in the earth’s orbit around the sun cause variations in the amount and distribution of solar energy falling on the earth. This causes natural variations in atmospheric temperature on 100,000 year cycles. As temperature increases, oceans release CO2 and hence CO2 level increase.
Al forgot to discuss this.
Everyone loves data, graphs and the sense that they can control the uncontrollabe, right?
But no one has even bought up the subject of war pollution yet. If we are so conscientious about pollution why dont we give up war, period. Has anyone got a graph of the pollution that is emitted by general warefare yet? I think its a huge contributor somehow?
Another point comes to mind also. I believe the earth has a wobble as it rotates. Anyone got any data on the effects of this on the weather? If not why not? It has to be put in the equation surely?