It’s just not settled in the way that the warm mongers want you to believe.
[Update a few minutes later]
The latest on campaign laws, The Columbia “Journalism” Review, and freedom of speech, from Mark Steyn:
That “chill” is not just an incoming ice age but the chill of free speech and vigorous debate, too. My comment – on the “fraudulence” of Mann’s hockey stick – was not “deplorable”, but necessary. The stick is, indeed, fraudulent: It does not prove what it purports to, and Dr Mann well knows that, which is why in East Anglia, in Virginia, in British Columbia, and now in the District of Columbia he refuses and obstructs proper scientific disclosure. So my comment is truthful, as I will be happy to demonstrate at trial. And there is something very strange (and actually almost Pravda-like) about a “journalism review” that finds alternative viewpoints “deplorable”. It’s because so many others – from planet-saving narcissists like James Cameron and transnational opportunists like Rajendra Pachauri all the way down to the boobs and saps of The Columbia Journalism Review – insist that the cartoon alarmism of the hockey stick cannot be questioned that it becomes not just non-deplorable but highly necessary to question it.
And of course, questioning is what science is all about.
Phew, that’s a huge relief. But why do esteemed scientists like Judith Curry seem totally unaware of this refutation of the AGW theory?
Any time I use the phrase, “the science is settled,” you can be quite sure that I am being sarcastic.
I’m no warmist, but I too doubt whether he has completely refuted the theory. I seem to recall from reading other articles that it is not the CO2, acting alone, that is believed to cause global warming, but its interaction with other mechanisms. Perhaps, for instance, the altitude at which most of the LWIR is absorbed has an important effect. I also vaguely recall that the effect on cloud coverage is crucial.
I actually would like to hear what someone like Judith Curry would say about this argument.
Oh by all means, let’s add some epicycles.
Hmm… I was with him, mostly, until near the end. His comment about “bovine flatulence” was simply wrong. The issue there is methane, not CO2. (Also, it’s mostly from burps, not farts, but that’s a detail (unless you’re downwind, I suppose)). Hard to see how someone who is a physicist with knowledge of the AGW controversy would not know that.
I have to wonder about the relevance of the data he cites from 1950. Presumably those measurements were taken at roughly sea level, horizontally. One can ask how that relates to the vertical IR radiation at issue. (However, my uninformed guess is that it’s nearly identical, to the first order anyway.) Also it’s not just the earth’s surface that’s radiating. Any substance, including the atmosphere layers above sea level, radiate according to the black body equation. There will be different temperatures and different amounts of intervening GHG for various altitudes.
Last (and here’s where it gets really really dicey) most of the CAGW models rely almost entirely on the amplification of the admittedly small CO2 effect by increases in H2O vapor and other GH gasses. The dicey part comes from the gain factors assumed in the models, and the handling of related anti-gain factors like increases in reflective cloud cover and atmospheric particulates. There’s plenty of room for tweaking in there.
Dr. Spencer doesn’t like it. I had some questions for him here. Will see if he responds.
Andre Lofthus’ arrogance and stupidity is breath taking. Even the most cursory read up of the literature on the science would reveal to that idiot that the effect is that the rate at which heat then travels to the top of the atmosphere where only then can it escape to space is slowed.
This is a classic case of someone being blinded by what they want to believe despite them having (or at least claiming to have) the expertise in science to be a scientist.
Nice link Bart, you just ruined it a bit by linking to your comment rather than directly to what Spencer wrote.
It doesn’t mesh, though. That is the reason for my comment.
As for stupidity, the one thing we do know for certain is that the GHE is not unfolding as it was expected to by the “experts”. So, if anyone deserves the description, it is the people who led us on a wild, trillions-of-dollars, goose chase for the past three decades.
Holy smokes! Bart, I remember meeting you now! I think it was in ’94 or ’95.
I was moving northeast, trying mostly to live off nocturnals like possums and raccoons, supplemented with the occasional kitchen stash, in the aftermath of the burning ozone holes,. As I recall it, you were headed to the Gulf coast with some twenty-something Asian/Amerindian one-eyed girl who called herself Oh-three, but you called her Ozona. You both said the fish in the Gulf would be protected from the UV rays that had killed off 90+ percent of the American population back in the 80’s due to CFC’s. Ozona kept moaning that all the world’s top scientists had been warning us about the catastrophic ozone holes, which could open us up to a lethal UV dose in under 30 minutes, but we didn’t listen. That it was our fault that hundreds of millions of American’s died from UV exposure.
But by that time I was well past the point of reflection on what scientists actually had known and what they had been tossing out as utter BS to scare up some funding. All I cared about was food and finding the next basement that would shield me from the sun’s deadly rays. Even with what everybody knows now about staying underground during the day to avoid unpredictable nozone window, I’m still both surprised and heartened that I count you amongst the relative handful of survivors.
.
One thing that has kept me going through these dark times was saving primates from the Cincinnati zoo, whose thick dark skin pointed to a possible long-term survival solution by mixing human DNA with ape and chimp DNA. But I have become quite pessimistic after hearing that the zoo staff had been killed in some kind of rebellion.
I hope you stay well, and give my regards to Ozona, if she hasn’t succumbed to the UV or the apes yet. We will get through this. Of that, science is as certain as their warnings of impeding mass death from ozone holes.
Jeez, George. I’m one of those guys like Sheldon Cooper who doesn’t get sarcasm. I don’t know if you’re mocking me, or suggesting varying ozone levels could be contributing to the AIRS result.
What I know is that, if CO2 were really responsible for that chunk of IR being taken out, the world would have to be warming. But, it isn’t. Therefore the test result must have some other equally viable interpretation. I’m just trying to figure out what the weak point is.
I’m pretty sure George is just pointing out that, even though absolutely nothing was done to reduce the amount of CFCs we’re putting into the atmosphere, those silly scientists were obviously wrong about CFCs damaging the ozone layer because it’s still there.
If we give George some time, he’ll also point out that all those silly alarmists who were worried about the Y2K were also wrong because, even though nothing was done to prevent the bug causing problems at the turn of the century, it was all a furore over nothing because it caused no problems.
Later on George will explain the pointlessness of the Thames Barrier, car airbags and landing gear on planes (planes have landed safely without using their landing gear you know).
” even though absolutely nothing was done to reduce the amount of CFCs we’re putting into the atmosphere, those silly scientists were obviously wrong about CFCs damaging the ozone layer because it’s still there.”
That’s not what the data shows.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Effect
Bart, that was sarcastic but fun alternate history where the CFC’s acted as science predicted, as evidenced by the links by Andrew and Dn Guy, who couldn’t read a graph to save their lives. CFC concentrations are down 10 percent from eminently lethal, with ozone holes about to roll across the US and kill us all, but at 90 percent of that there’s nothing to see here, move along, and oh, the ozone drop is a pure function of temperature and light.
At what point will the alarmists realize that they have to cut off their nut sacks because the alien space ship is hiding behind a comet? I am waiting for that day, which is soon to come.
As an added note, if I use you in as a fictional character in an alternate history, you can bet that it’s an alternate history where idiots where right and we’re only miraculously alive because of our freakish survival skills.
as evidenced by the links by Andrew and Dn Guy,
Poor George is imagining things again.
Look at the graphs in DN guy’s wiki link, like this one
Global total EECl dropped from it’s peak of 2250 ppt, where all of humanity was about to die from roving holes that would pass lethal amounts of UV to the surface, to 2000 ppt, where the problem is solved and all of humanity was saved by switching to refrigerants whose patents hadn’t expired yet. Thank you Du Pont!
I’ve about had it with those who carry on about varying amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. I’ll listen if you talk about the effect of varying amounts of CO2 in an atmosphere that is for the most part largely close to saturation with water vapor.
We can do an experiment. Mars has a mostly CO2 atmosphere and according to Viking, 100% relative humidity. We can vary the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere of Mars by adding something that is not CO2 – say, by slamming a water ice-rich comet into Mars, preferably into the dry ice at the poles. Then we can study the effects. The total experiment time would probably be on the order of a few hundred years or so.