David Suzuki vs. Michael Crichton (finally! Global warming charlatan gets msm whacked!)

National Post - Canada ^ | Wednesday, February 21, 2007 | Barbara Kay

[WOSG]

"The alarmist crowd is all saying that doubling the CO2 will result in a 1 degree warming, well CO2 levels during the Ordovician were 100 times higher than today, if there's any verasity to the CO2 warming predictions that should more than over power any differences caused by the distribution of land."

Interesting. What specific CO2 numbers, temperature and date are we talking here?

As per previous discussion of 'band saturation', CO2 at some point wont have much effect (log-relative impact). So impact of going from 300 to 600ppm equals impact of going from 600ppm to 1200ppm, more or less.

And btw, doubling CO2 impacting 1C in temperature is not the 'alarmist' view, the alarmist view is that it would be 4C.
I am a skeptic, and think 1-2C is likely answer.

Also, I recently found out that earth was a near-snowball 500 million years ago. How could that have happened? And why are we worried about warming when the opposite could be such a far more frightening scenario?

[cogitator]

Nice editing, way to ignore the simple math. Obviously land mass location has some effect on the climate, not disputing that at all. But if the way alarminst say CO2 effects climate is correct then the 100 fold increase in CO2 for that period should easily over power and difference caused by land distribution. We're not talking CO2 levels 3 or 4 times current, that could understandably be over powered by how the land mass effects global temperature. We're talking 100 times the CO2, according the the alarmists under current land conditions that should result in a 100 degree increase, that's far too big to be over powered by the land mass distribution.

Are you being deliberately dense? Can you actually think for yourself?

Toward reconciliation of Late Ordovician (~440 Ma) glaciation with very high CO2 levels

Although Phanerozoic glaciations usually coincided with times of estimated low atmospheric CO2, the Late Ordovician (440 Ma) glaciation is a significant exception. CO2 levels during that time may have been as much as 10 times greater than present. In an earlier paper we suggested that the unique geographic configuration of Gondwanaland may explain such a response, as the edge of the supercontinent was essentially tangent to the south pole, and the moderating effect of the nearby ocean may have suppressed the magnitude of summer warming on the landmass, thereby allowing glacial inception. One limitation to the earlier study was that it used a linear energy balance model (EBM). In this paper we further test the above hypothesis in a suite of experiments with a nonlinear EBM that allows for snow-albedo feedback. We also utilize updated estimates for CO2 levels, decreases in solar luminosity, and variations in orbital forcing. Baseline experiments with no changes in luminosity or CO2 resulted in an ice-covered area of 6.3×106 km2, 53% of the estimated area covered by the Ordovician ice sheet. Additional experiments for different combinations of orbital forcing, 7X/13X CO2 and -3.5%-5.0% luminosity yielded 0-35% of the estimated ice area in the Late Ordovician. A crude estimate of possible topographic influences increased these numbers to 7-47% of total estimated ice area.

Additional factors related to ice sheet growth should increase these values somewhat. These results provide additional support for the high CO2/glaciation explanation, with the caveat that even the partial success occurs only when parameters are at the extreme end of their permissible range. The estimated duration of Ordovician glaciation is also consistent with the migration of Gondwanaland across the south pole, with a centrally located pole yielding ice-free conditions in the summer. Thus identical levels of external forcing yield either glaciated or ice-free conditions, with the solution dependent on location of the landmass. Although more work is required on this topic, our experiments suggest that there may be a relatively parsimonious explanation for this perplexing paleoclimate paradox. The results lend further support to the proposition that paleogeography significantly modifies the role of CO2 in the long-term evolution of climate."

Note that this reference is from 1991. Why don't you do a little frigging work now and see if there's been anything done since then? (BIG clue: there has been.)

Don't backtrack now telling me to go read something else, something else which I'm sure will again prove you're wrong, because so far all the real data says you're wrong.

If you think it might prove me wrong, get it and find out if it does. I've got it in front of me and I know it doesn't.

[discostu]

Talking about the CO2 numbers in the Ordovician, CO2 levels were over 4000 PPM for the entire period yet there was a major temperature dip late in the period. The interesting part if you look at a graph of CO2 levels and temperatures over the long haul (the real geological long haul that is) is there's really no corrolation.

Really warming isn't that bad. We know it's been warmer on the planet during human history than it is now and it didn't seem to bother anybody. Having most of the northern US under miles of ice on the other hand would kind of suck.

[cogitator]

What about the fact that CO2 absorbs at certain frequencies and at some concentration will be fully absorbing the radiation at those frequencies and more CO2 ppm wont increase radiative forcing?

Huh? Your link (PDF one) confirms that statement about band saturation and states that CO2 concentration increases impact based on log of increase of CO2. So you call something a 'canard' and then link to a cite that confirms the underlying premise!

But what you completely miss is... band saturation doesn't happen because the altitude at which CO2 radiates IR to space is temperature-dependent. So the net effect is that you get more IR absorption by CO2 higher in the atmosphere -- and therefore continued addition of CO2 to the atmosphere continues to affect radiative forcing, to concentrations far above anything that humans might achieve. (That's a simplistic description; don't attack me because it might not be accurate in detail, because I'm not a climate scientist.) You could probably have figured this out yourself if you'd tried to read and not simply tried to argue with me. Here's another explanation from the Internet:

"It is true that the CO2 molecule suffers many collisions between the time that it absorbs radiation from the solid Earth, and re-emits it in all directions. This means that it is in thermal, and radiative equilibrium with its surroundings at each altitude. As we go up in the troposphere, the temperature of that atmosphere drops, and hence the temperature of the CO2 at greater elevations also drops. At these lower temperatures found at the top of the atmosphere, the energy is radiated into space because there is so little CO2 above it that the atmosphere is essentially transparent at these emitting wavelengths. However, at that altitude the intensity of the emitted radiation is decreases (recall the Steffan-Boltzmann law says that: I is proportional to T4). Thus the loss of radiative loss of energy to space from this altitude drops, because of the presence of the CO2 in the atmosphere. If now more CO2 is added to the atmosphere then the level from which the emission occurs rises. Since the temperature of the emitting CO2 is even lower, radiation leaving the Earth is reduced. The climate then warms until once again the input of solar radiation just balances the radiative loss to space. The fact that near sea level the CO2 concentration is sufficiently high to absorb all the radiation in the main CO2 band is therefore irrelevant!"

My concern is not with their conclusions, which may well be right. My concern is with the political dunderheads like Al Gore who have insisted - WRONGLY - that the science is settled. This paper is only one of the first to even show that the data correspond to the model, now, in 2005 ... and yet for more than a decade we've been told the lie that 'the science is settled'. And not futher that my original point about cloud cover not being fully understood IS ACKNOWLEDGED IN THE ARTICLE YOU CITE. This is not a 'skeptic' saying it, this is from the 'pro-GW' climate-change-boosting scientists. They *know* the models are just models, and hey may 'believe' in them, but faith is not fact.

The phrase "the science is settled" probably doesn't refer to the details of cloud cover feedback. I think it means the basic: "Human activity is increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and these increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations are contributing to an increase in global temperature." Regarding that statement, the science IS settled.

A) The IPCC estimates of actual CO2 production are IMHO absurd, an issue separate from the GHG science issues B) If you overlay proper view of CO2 production with moderate scenarios you would get a mean estimate in the 1.5-2.0 range.

I don't have a problem with that. (I also think energy conservation will have a significant influence and will be advisable for economic security. Previous IPCC reports have included a variety of emissions scenarios. I do think that global economics, political instability, environmental catastrophe will all (unfortunately) modify the emissions pathway in coming decades. I say "unfortunately" because most modifications will be painful for some sectors. (If Iran launches a nuclear attack somewhere, all bets are off.) But based on business-as-usual, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are going to rise considerably.

"Yet it appears that the current warming trend is contributing to a substantial loss of perennial Arctic sea ice. " I heard the total mass was unchanged when considering both poles together.

Ice on land in Antarctica and around the continent is a lot different than ice covering the polar Arctic Ocean. Albedo down south isn't going to change much for awhile. But up north, much different story.

You call them canards when they are not.

Most of them are. CO2 band saturation (as used by skeptics) is one of them. Raypierre on RealClimate refers to it as the "band saturation fallacy". (If you Google search with those three words you'll get the RC thread where he said it.) That's why I directed you to "Busy Week for Water Vapor".

PS. If we are to get back to real science on this, we will have to understand the impact of clouds ... as stated on climate audit.org as a comment:

You don't have to tell me. As a praying man, I pray that God has the cloud feedback set to negative.

[WOSG]

okay, so this started with opinions on Al Gore's film,
which has been panned by many people as junk science and hyperbole. I just found a ready link to cite. You posted a link attacking one of the 'panners' but your source is a flunky attacking all sort of non-liberals and defending other junk science.

Pointless gainsaying aside, I stand by the informed view that Al Gore is a hyperventilating fearmongerer. If you can't see that, you are blind.


From Gregg Easterbrook's (environmentalist and non-GW skeptic) review of Gore's movie:

http://www.slate.com/id/2142319/
"The picture the movie paints is always worst-case scenario. Considering the multiple times Gore has given his greenhouse slide show (he says "thousands"), it's jarring that the movie was not scrubbed for factual precision. For instance, this 2005 joint statement by the science academies of the Western nations, including the National Academy of Sciences, warns of sea-level rise of four to 35 inches in the 21st century; this amount of possible sea-level rise is current consensus science.

Yet An Inconvenient Truth asserts that a sea-level rise of 20 feet is a realistic short-term prospect. Gore says the entire Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could melt rapidly; the film then jumps to animation of Manhattan flooded. Well, all that ice might melt really fast, and a UFO might land in London, too. The most recent major study of ice in the geologic past found that about 130,000 years ago the seas were "several meters above modern levels" and that polar temperatures sufficient to cause a several-meter sea-level rise may eventually result from artificial global warming. The latest major study of austral land ice detected a thawing rate that would add two to three inches to sea level during this century. Such findings are among the arguments that something serious is going on with Earth's climate. But the science-consensus forecast about sea-level rise is plenty bad enough. Why does An Inconvenient Truth use disaster-movie speculation?"

[discostu]

Sad and pathetic. the guy buying lock stock and barrel the party line is insulting other people for supposedly not thining for themselves. Maybe YOU a little friggin work and learn to accept that global warming isn't proven.

You should also accept that you yourself agreed the model was flawed and we'd need a lot more data to get a new better model, which was my original statement. Now stop with the insults.

[rickylc]

Depends on how you look at it, his prediction was 3 times larger than the actual increase.

[aruanan]

Depends on how you look at it, his prediction was 3 times larger than the actual increase.

No, it depends on how the prediction was made. If he predicted that it would be X and it turned out to be 3X, then 3X is 200% higher than X. But he predicted that it would be X and it turned out to be about 1/3X meaning that he was off about 2/3X or about 66%.

[rickylc]

ok,

is the following statement true or false?

His prediction of a 0.35 increase was more than 3 times the actual increase of 0.11.

[cogitator]

It's very clever how that paragraph innocently inserts "austral", I think. The 20 foot rise is based on the Greenland ice cap melting (completely), which, ahem, is boreal.

Read this (and get back to me tomorrow, please). The pictures below the link are illustrative of a mechanism described in the article.

Can we defuse the global warming time bomb?

I really don't want to discuss the whole thing. The section of interest begins on page 14, with the paragraph commencing "This means that, with the 0.5 C warming of the past few decades..."

And based on that, the message of "realism" is based on one's interpretation of the meaning of "short-term". I won't be around to find out, but if the Greenland ice cap was 80% gone by 2250 A.D., I'd call that "short-term" (particularly by geological standards).

Larsen B Ice Shelf, January 31, 2002:

Larsen B Ice Shelf, March 7, 2002:

Breakup of the Larsen Ice Shelf, Antarctica

[WOSG]

Re: "Science is settled"

I think it means the basic: "Human activity is increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and these increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations are contributing to an increase in global temperature."

---
cogigator, this statement is something most global warming 'skeptics' would agree with, and I agree with. That's not the point ... The debate is over certainties and magnitudes of these impacts.

There is a serious 'jumping to conclusion' element from 'contributing' to assuming that sea levels will rise 20 feet (one of Gore's outrageous hyperboles), when it is just as likely the sea rise is measured in millimeters not feet.

Although nature pumped out 10 times the amount of CO2 man did last year, nature's balanced absorbs it, and man's contribution is not balanced out by absorbtion. However, a reason to think CO2 increases wont be a drastic as one might think in future is due to absorbtion effects that may increase as CO2 ppm goes up, eg, fertilizer effect of CO2 to plant growth. I stand by the comment that the postulate that CO2 will double is a scenario that simply will not happen - not because of a dire scenario, but simply because even 'business as usual' will mean less fossil fuel use over time an dother mitigating factors. Did you know UK uses less coal than in the 19th century? etc.

If mankind's influence on the climate reduces to making siberian winters 0.5C warmer, 'global warming' would be a bit of an understatement, wouldn't it? What if we found it to be a moderate and benign change?

"The phrase "the science is settled" probably doesn't refer to the details of cloud cover feedback. " And yet when Prof Lindzen or other 'skeptics' raise the issues that the details of cloud cover *matter* and are not properly understood, they are dismissed by the 'alarmists'.
When the 'hockey stick' was questioned (validly so), same story.

Let me repeat: I don't see a problem with climate science, I see a problem with its abuse at the hands of globalist social engineers who want to turn a worst-case scenario into bad public policy choices. Thus, I distinguish between the real climate scientists and the politicians and alarmists like Al Gore who have transmuted an uncertain and developing understanding on climate into an alarmist hyperbolic religious-fervor on the matter.

To avoid this, it is best to let the skepticism play out to keep the modeller honest. The models *are not yet validated* to the point where anyone can claim certainty with a straught face.

"As a praying man, I pray that God has the cloud feedback set to negative."

It's a near-certainty that that is the case. Clouds form from water vapor. If water vapor increases, so do clouds and precipitation, which means albedo increases as cloud cover increases. If a model has cloud cover treated as a positive feedback factor and not a negative one that is another dubious component that wouldnt comport with intuition.

[WOSG]

These are pretty pictures,but I dont get your point:
- Are you with Gore and his "20 feet rise" claim or
- are you with Easterbrook and the 35 inches claim?

[ssaftler]

Ping for alter reading. Thanks for the reference to Crichton's speech. Always did like the man's writing...

[GMMAC]

Climate change: The Deniers
A continuing series on scientists who buck
the conventional wisdom on climate science.

Commenced in National Post (Canada),
Friday, February 09, 2007
The - so far - 11 articles in the series
all may be accessed via the link above.

PING!

[WOSG]

"CO2 band saturation " is a real physical effect yet a 'canard' to bring it up because there are disagreements about how it plays out. hmmmm.

"Previous IPCC reports have included a variety of emissions scenarios."
.. and most of them are mere guesses, and the journalists focus only on the worst case of those ...hmmm.

Simple example: Let's say we just have 'status quo' - no growth, no reduction. What ppm increase will we see?
1.5 ppm /yr => 150+380=530ppm. Which scenario does IPCC have to reflect that case?

[WOSG]

To answer the questoin of what impact global warming will have ...

Which emissions scenario is most likely?

[westmichman]

I say there is a definite amount of carbon on the earth. At any one time there is a percentage in gaseous form (CO2), another percentage in liquid form (OIL), and a percentage in solid form. These percentages have changed over the years and will change in the future. God isn't making any more carbon as far as I know.
If Ahmadinejad wants the world of the left to eat out of his hand, all he has to do is threaten to start a bunch of fires at his oil wells and give off lots of CO2. This would drive them into a serious panic. He could forget the nukes, they aren't worried about them.
PS: I wish the warming would start soon here in Michigan, my golf clubs are getting lonely.

[BobS]

Is your news up there dominated by Anna Nicole Smith or Brittney Spears news like it is around here? It's unwatchable. It must be Hollywood's Worst Hosemonster month.

[Artemis Webb]

I can sink my teeth into this thread like I do a medium rare t-bone. This thread is that good! No...it's better. It is that part of the meat on the t-bone where the steak meets the bone and bliss explodes in your mouth like a night of fine wine and smooth-skinned-big-eyed-love.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo......babyyyyyyy.

[cogitator]

I looked briefly at this. Point IX, on Mars, is wrong. And Nir Shaviv has objected to misstatements in Point X. See link below and excerpted comments:

On the IPCC's summary for policy makers, and on getting interviewed without noticing

"given that I am the only scientist mentioned in the article, I presume it is meant to describe me. So, no, I don't deny global warming exists. Global warming did take place in the 20th century, the temperature increased after all. All I am saying is that there is no proof that the global warming was anthropogenic (IPCC scientists cannot even predict a priori the anthropogenic contribution), and not due to the observed increase in solar activity (which in fact can be predicted to be a 0.5±0.2°C contribution, i.e., most of the warming). Moreover, because empirically Earth appears to have a low sensitivity, the temperature increase by the year 2100AD will only be about 1°C (and not 2°C and certainly not 5°C), assuming we double the amount of CO2 (It might certainly be less if we'll have hot fusion in say 50 years)."

and

"Well, the moral in this is case is that if you're a science reporter, consider running parts of your articles by your interviewees just to make sure you don't write rubbish, which is a smart thing to do, if you don't want to end up looking stupid. It is of course also a descent [sic] thing to do if you respect your readers."

And he follows that with an actual informative link:

Carbon dioxide or solar forcing?

from which I extract:

Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th century global warming, on condition that there is a strong solar/climate link through modulation of the cosmic ray flux and the atmospheric ionization. Evidence for such a link has been accumulating over the past decade, and by now, it is unlikely that it does not exist. ... This link also implies that Earth's global temperature sensitivity is also on the low side. Thus, if we double the amount of CO2 by 2100, we will only increase the temperature by about 1°C or so. This is still more than the change over the past century. This is good news, because it implies that future increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases will not dramatically increase the global temperature, though GHGs will probably be the dominate climate driver."

Which is his opinion and he's loyal to his research. Now, I am willing to provide several links about this issue (ancient_geezer is even more informed than I) for further elucidation -- I'm not going to get into it again because ancient_geezer and I have taken it as far as it can go here on FR.

The bottom line on the series is: it's typical climate change skeptical points. Which I can summarize as:

There's still scientific uncertainty about how much warming there will be.

Not all the climate trends agree completely.

Predictions of catastrophic consequences this century are probably unlikely.

All of which I would say are probably true. SURPRISE!! But note I said "this century". I won't make it to 2100. But if there is about a 2-3 C rise in global temperature by then, there will be significant degradation of global ecosystems compounded by the ecological pressure that is exerted by an increasing human population. And if the temperature rises by 2-3 C by 2100 and the trend is still upward, the following centuries become significantly more problematic.

And having said all that, there are other major issues of concern, like Iran getting a nuclear device and handing it off to any of a dozen terrorist organizations.