Peak Exaggeration? Solar, wind may save life in the Universe for 4 billion years: “top” climate scientist

This is the moment of Peak Exaggeration

Raymond Pierrehumbert, the man himself and author of the “gold standard” textbook in climate science, thinks so big he’s run out of universe. It’s not just the black tailed antechinus we are threatening with our climate meddling —  it’s all Sentient life in the Galaxy. Perhaps we’ll become extinct, because we didn’t build enough industrial wind towers or coat the Earth in the blessed Arc of solar panels.

Thanks to Andy Revkin for publishing The Climate Challenge and Human Destiny with a straight face.

Pierrehumbert:

…There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a species.

But we have to make it through the next two hundred years first, and this will be a crucial time for humanity. This is where Destiny Studies and our paper on the Anthropocene come together. The question of why we should care about the way we set the climate of the Anthropocene is far better answered in terms of our vision for the destiny of our species than it is in terms of the broken calculus of economics and discounting.

For all we know, we may be the only sentience in the Galaxy, maybe even in the Universe. We may be the only ones able to bear witness to the beauty of our Universe, and it may be our destiny to explore the miracle of sentience down through billions of years of the future, whatever we may have turned into by that time. Even if we are not alone, it is virtually certain that every sentient species will bring its own unique and irreplaceable perspectives to creativity and the understanding of the Universe around us.

Thinking big about our destiny, think of this: the ultimate habitability catastrophe for Earth is when the Sun leaves the main sequence and turns into a Red Giant. That happens in about 4 billion years. However, long before that — in only about 500 million years — the Sun gets bright enough to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect and turn us into Venus, sterilizing all life on Earth. We waste half the main sequence lifetime of the Sun.

However, if we last long enough, technology will make it easy to block enough sunlight to save the Earth from a runaway, buying us another 4 billion years of habitability.

Thus speaks one of the most respected brains behind the Great Global Warming Scare.  This is the man who wrote The Textbook every larval climate scientist is currently fed. He’s the one who captured in writing (without naming it) the invisible mental model that is the application of “basic physics” to estimating sensitivity to increasing Co2. He gave us a glimpse of the holy grail source code that drives the implacable belief that atmospheric CO2 Must Cause Global Warming with a climate sensitivity of 1.5C – 4.5C.

At this point, I have to mention (go on, forgive me) that David Evans recently found a couple of ahh, minor problems with the basic mental model (mental being the most appropriate word, h/t Steve Milloy). Fixing these mistakes reduces climate sensitivity by a factor of ten; the whole CO2 was due to a simple modeling error; who forgot a class of feedback loops? David’s work is laid out here. For a shorter summary see the updated Synopsis. The mistakes, specifically: The Rerouting Feedback, and Omitting Feedbacks that are not Temperature-Dependent.

 

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173 comments to Peak Exaggeration? Solar, wind may save life in the Universe for 4 billion years: “top” climate scientist

  • #
    PeterS

    I thought he was considered a long time ago to be a clown. Is anyone really taking him seriously?

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    • #
      PeterS

      Going by the thumbs down at least two do take him seriously. Now that’s scary.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Remember Einstein said:
        “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe”.

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        • #
          Mike

          Perhaps Einstein was just a bit bitter because he could already foresee anthropogenic climate science, economic climate science, political climate science, and a few others.

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    • #

      Agree, lots thought he had no understanding at Judith Curry’s site years ago when she first made some reference to him. I certainly knew he had no understanding of Thermodynamic and Heat Transfer. I think Judith Curry now accepts that he has no understanding and I understand has accepted the thoughts of Prof Claes Johnson (a top mathematician and one of the original Sky dragon Slayers) see his blog here http://claesjohnson.blogspot.com.au/

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    • #
      Bulldust

      He hasn’t been taken seriously for years now:

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/17/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-real-climate-scientist-dr-ray-pierrehumbert/

      As with any good climate politician he wants to silence any dissent, anyone questioning the dogma. I have overused it perhaps, but I keep finding myself coming back to that memorable Firefly quote by Captain Reynolds (Nathan Fillian):

      “My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.”

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      • #
        bit chilly

        agreed, he has all the classic signs of the common purpose herd. advocating leading beyond authority. the sooner these clowns are forgotten the better.

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    • #

      Paul Erlich is still at Stanford University, one of the US’s “premiere” universities.

      Preaching doom is a racket where you never have to admit you’re wrong. You were just off on the time frame. Then wait for people to get distracted by the latest shiny thing in their purview. Rinse, and repeat.

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  • #
    me@home

    WOW, that’s really thinking of the grandkids!

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  • #
    Gary in Erko

    I’m quite thrilled to be playing an admittedly extremely small part in determining an alteration of the whole of Earth; a minor participant in delivery of the anthropocene, a geological epoch as significant as the initiation of the holocene 10,000 years ago. It’s been a long time since any of my ancestors could brag about weilding such influence, possibly 400 or 500 generations.

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    • #
      The Backslider

      There is no such thing as the Anthropocene. There has been no significant geological event to delineate it. It is just another warmist grab. This is the Holocene.

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      • #
        Geoff Sherrington

        Backslider,
        Thank you, totally agree.
        These terms like Holocene are not items on a supermarket shopping shelf, available to anyone with a whim.
        In geology, they serve a serious purpose, somewhat like Chapter headings in the book of time.
        It is silly to promote a term which, even if it eventually becomes valid, is presently too bereft of significant characteristics to warrant a name that will mean something in future centuries.

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      • #

        Well if there IS an Anthropocene, in it there’s a significant
        layer known as the Idiocene.

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    • #
      Gary in Erko

      /sarc

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  • #
    Peter C

    David Evans recently found a couple of oh-so-minor problems with the basic mental model (mental being the most appropriate word, h/t Steve Milloy). Fixing these mistakes reduces climate sensitivity by a factor of ten

    Climate sensitivity seems to be shrinking towards NOTHING!

    David should re-read this.
    http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/sh1/the_skeptics_handbook_2-3_lq.pdf

    Instead of carbon (dioxide) pushing up temperatures for the past half-a- million years, temperatures have gone up before carbon dioxide levels

    I think he may in fact have suggested this problem with the Green House Gas Effect Theory in the first place!

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    • #
      me@home

      Peter, you may be interested in this extract from my forthcoming memoir:

      What the IPCC doesn’t remind us is that the median estimate of climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 concentrations aided, of course, by various poorly – if at all – understood ‘positive feedbacks’, by the IPCC’s own alarmist ‘scientists’ and their ‘trustworthy models’ has declined from about 4.4o C in 2000 to about 2.1o C in 2015. There is no indication that the almost straight line trend down of these estimates will flatten any time soon.
      Graphing these progressively declining estimates of climate sensitivity and applying a straight line trend projection (Hey, this is about as good as any other climate model to date) shows that at, the present rate of decline, climate sensitivity ‘could’ – don’t you love these qualified projections? – reach zero by about midnight on December 13 2029 and be negative 1.0 C by midnight on December 31 2035 and negative 2.0 C by the century of my birth in December, 2041 Now that will be some cause for celebration! (Disclaimer: No climate models or polar bears were harmed in this ‘scientific experiment’ and no funds were accepted from BIG OILTM nor, sadly, from any other source.)

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      • #
        Peter C

        Please let us know when you publish your memoir!

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        • #
          me@home

          Peter, thanks for that but I am only intending to print a couple of dozen copies of ‘Connections‘ for close family and friends. Most of it is personal stuff which I don’t think will be of much interest to others. The “won’t someone think of the grandchildren” part currently runs to about 100 closely typed A4 pages including material lifted – with attribution – from Jo and contributors here. I had given some thought to publishing it electronically but haven’t come to a decision on that.

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        Manfred

        …reach zero by about midnight on December 13 2029 and be negative 1.0 C by midnight on December 31 2035

        But perhaps not before a proclamation of bureaucratic totalitarian world government, timed to be installed to “save the planet” by 2030.

        There remains much work to do.

        In the meantime, Raymond Pierrehumbert predictably fulfills his destiny far better than the billion dollar IPCC models could ever have predicted: Power Intellectual arrogance corrupts, absolute power intellectual arrogance corrupts absolutely

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          The only way the warmists can maintain power as The Big Lie starts to be exposed, it ruthless imposition of a totalitarian Leftist global govt to supress all opposition. Once the population realize CAGW is a global “let them eat cake” moment, they will come after the powers that be, I’m sure of that….which is where the totalitarian govt comes in.

          Its not coincidence that all comms globally are filtered by the 3 letter agencies for “terrorist” stuff – the concept of “terrorist” can be abused to cover anyone who dares have an opinion contrary to the Politburo of the day.

          I still recall teh day I mentioned Echelon to a person I wont name and they suggested I might tone it down a bit….mind you Echelon is small beer compared to the stuff they have now…voice prints anyone?

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      • #
        F.I.N.

        As the incomparable Hitchens famously quipped, everyone thinks they have a book in them, and that’s where it should stay!

        [It would be good if you had a worthwhile comment to make, never mind a book, no matter who the author.] AZ

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    • #
      el gordo

      ‘Climate sensitivity seems to be shrinking towards NOTHING!’

      Can we all agree that CO2 does not cause global warming?

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      • #
        Andrew McRae

        No.
        It’s just as silly to project a linear trend of sensitivity estimates indefinitely into the future as it would be to extend the temperature trend of 1975-2005 indefinitely into the future. It stopped at some point.

        •CO2 has an absorption/emission spectrum in which the 15μm band is near the peak of surface thermal emission.
        •There is radiation downwelling from the cloudless winter sky at night.
        •Part of the spectrum of that downwelling radiation matches CO2’s emission spectrum.
        •The amount of downwelling radiation that is due to CO2 has been increasing as CO2 increased.

        All of the above is observed occurring at the surface. You don’t have to believe me, you can look them all up and find the same things I found (and maybe more^^ ).
        Global warming is a proposition about surface air temperature increase. No fact contradicts any other fact. Therefore it doesn’t matter what else is said about the effect of CO2 in the stratosphere, or whether there is rerouting by H2O, or whether there is a solar Force X that has done most of the recent surface warming. Even if all of those other claims were true, they cannot annul what we have already observed at the surface.

        Three additional theoretical points…
        •Radiative transfer in the atmosphere is a solved problem and the model predictions match spectrometers with high precision. CO2 makes 100 times more IR emission than water vapour in the 15μm band at altitudes above 7km, both in theory and in practice. Those same models predict that, in the absence of clouds, CO2 increases surface temperature.
        •Reflection can occur without any significant energy being used which is why cloud albedo is a probable compensating process in global warming, but if all other external factors are constant the additional cloud cover happens only after the surface has warmed, so it is a negative feedback but doesn’t prevent the initial warming.
        •Since no refrigeration process can be 100% efficient there also cannot be any process driven by that same downwelling IR energy supply in the boundary layer that can expel the absorbed energy quickly enough to exactly compensate. Once the downwelling IR has been created it must create warming, nothing can stop that, the same as with all other materials that have ever been studied.

        That altogether implies the effect of CO2 at the surface is greater than zero.
        That doesn’t mean it is a problem but it does mean that CO2 causes some portion of global warming.

        And even if we were to agree that CO2 didn’t cause any global warming, consensus counts for nothing in science.

        _________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

        Footnote ^^ : I didn’t directly link to the supporting evidence so as not to rob anyone of the joy of discovery in finding the answers to their questions by themselves. You really can find it if you look.
        Hints if you get stuck… Nal purzvfgel grkgobbx, FHESENQ, Crggl/FbQ, Sryqzna 2015.

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        • #
          Mark D.

          •Since no refrigeration process can be 100% efficient there also cannot be any process driven by that same downwelling IR energy supply in the boundary layer that can expel the absorbed energy quickly enough to exactly compensate. Once the downwelling IR has been created it must create warming, nothing can stop that, the same as with all other materials that have ever been studied.

          I call Bull s*it. You have invented a “refrigeration” analogy then declare that the natural systems must comply with it. Funny that.

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          • #
            Andrew McRae

            Refrigeration is natural in the sense that it isn’t supernatural, but that is probably not what you meant.

            In your desperation to score easy points you have read the comment too hastily. I think you’re trying to claim that I required nature to comply with an analogy, but I did not. I used the physical definition of refrigeration to summarise what the natural system *cannot* be doing, please read the comment properly.
            Refrigeration must be a man-made artifice because heat will normally move from hot to cold and moving it the other way requires the consumption of additional energy in a manner that would not normally happen without designed machines, pressure vessels, and so forth. That’s my point, I was saying any mechanism you can think of to prevent downwelling IR from warming the surface would be a refrigeration process. It would have to move the radiation in the reverse direction it is coming from, before the IR can warm the surface layer, and without consuming any additional energy. Any such excuse would therefore be, as you so succinctly put it, “bull s*it”.

            Whitegoods aside, if you can think of any process that would make the surface air temperature impervious to increases in downwelling IR, you have to explain why that same process is not contradicted by the fact that under cloud cover at night the surface air is certainly warmer than under cloudless conditions. Certainly feels like more downwelling IR makes the surface air warmer than it is without the extra IR.

            One could argue trees and water bodies are a natural air-conditioner since their evaporation cools the air flowing past them, but this requires evaporation to begin with, which could only be accelerated if the temperature increased (or the wind speed increased which arises from temperature differences anyhow), so it still doesn’t dodge the warming effect of downwelling IR.

            Besides, there’s no need to focus on the theoretical section of my comment, the evidence observed at the surface is sufficient.

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            • #

              “That’s my point, I was saying any mechanism you can think of to prevent downwelling IR from warming the surface would be a refrigeration process. It would have to move the radiation in the reverse direction it is coming from, before the IR can warm the surface layer, and without consuming any additional energy. Any such excuse would therefore be, as you so succinctly put it, “bull s*it”.”

              Do you have any evidence of any downwelling anything from the lower temperature atmosphere? There is nothing to reverse except your fantasy!!

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            • #
              Mark D.

              Refrigeration must be a man-made artifice because heat will normally move from hot to cold and moving it the other way requires the consumption of additional energy in a manner that would not normally happen without designed machines, pressure vessels, and so forth.

              That is correct. Hot always to cold.

              So what is back radiation?

              Yet you profess that colder can warm the warmer……. YOU profess that it is measurable

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          • #
            Just-A-Guy

            Mark D.,

            You wrote:

            I call Bull s*it. You have invented a [false] “refrigeration” analogy then declare that the natural systems must comply with it. Funny that.

            First of all, this was an excellent call. 😉
            Notice that I added ‘false’ in the square brackets. Andrew wants people to believe that the only way that the additional heat caused by back-radiation can be removed from the boundary layer is by the process of refrigeration and because refrigeration is never 100% effective, some of that additional heat will always remain in the boundary layer.

            Ergo – according to Andrew, CO2 must cause warming.

            Off Topic – On Topic!

            Back in September in the comments to New Science 1: Pushing the edge of climate research., you had asked me how I became a skeptic. In my reply, I also explained the main reason for becoming a hard skeptic.

            Here’s another good reason why I left Luke’s camp. Arguments such as the one provided here by Andrew. It’s wrong in a variety of ways but in order not to derail this thread and for greater exposure, I’m in the process of preparing a deconstruction of the refrigeration argument as presented here to post in unWeekend Unshreaded.

            Link to follow when posted.

            Abe

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        • #
          el gordo

          ‘That doesn’t mean it is a problem but it does mean that CO2 causes some portion of global warming.’

          By 2034 will the climate be warmer or cooler than today?

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          • #
            Andrew McRae

            That’s changing the topic.
            You asked “Can we all agree that CO2 does not cause global warming?”
            Even if I were the only one who disagreed, the answer would be No, we can’t all agree.
            I have given you my reasons. Of course I think they should be sufficient to persuade others too, but this need not be so.

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            • #
              el gordo

              ‘That’s changing the topic.’

              In your mind 2034 will be warmer than now because of human induced CO2, whereas I think it will be cooler based on Scafetta’s harmonic hypothesis.

              Your theoretical construct is worthless if it doesn’t match observation.

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              • #
                Andrew McRae

                el gordo, you are a liar and I can prove it.
                In the early hours of 16 Feb I wrote a comment with a prominent link to my climate model projection, which forecasts a downtrend from 2012 to 2040 in spite of continuously rising CO2. The picture itself was posted to that image host over a year ago and has not been (and cannot be) altered since then.
                Your reply to that comment was posted at 16 February 2016 at 8:17 am, under your user name, which is evidence that you did in fact read my comment.
                Now here you are claiming my projection is the opposite of the projection you read.
                Indeed, since I have never predicted that temperatures will increase over that specific time frame your statement was a lie, regardless of whether you clicked the link to see the picture.

                It was only three days ago, so I will not believe you if you try to claim this was due to forgetfulness.
                If you think anything I have ever said implied that temperatures would increase over 2016 to 2034 then it shows you don’t even understand the CO2 global warming proposition itself, which again makes your claim about me unfounded, though perhaps due to studied ignorance rather than malice.

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          • #
            Andrew McRae

            That’s changing the topic again. Possibly a diversionary tactic.
            It’s also a logical fallacy. In previous threads, which you have read, I’ve argued CO2 is just one of several influences and has been a minority player in the last 100 years.

            I would be pleased if someone can describe calmly, succinctly, logically, and empirically, why the observations I listed do not prove that “CO2 causes [some] global warming”. Admittedly that’s a bit difficult when I didn’t cite the specific data I’m talking about, but I promise you will find that evidence if you look. Indeed, finding the observations that I’ve talked about is a pre-requisite to any further discussion on the topic.

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            • #
              el gordo

              ‘That’s changing the topic again. Possibly a diversionary tactic.’

              No the hiatus proves beyond reasonable doubt that CO2 has no warming influence.

              Lukewarmers need to get their act together by arguing in advance that temperatures in 2034 will be unchanged from the present because human induced CO2 has eliminated the natural 60 year climate cycle.

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          The Backslider

          There is radiation downwelling from the cloudless winter sky at night.

          Well, this does not mean there is no water vapor. To suggest this is entirely due to CO2 is ridiculous.

          Now, can you explain why the CO2 graph from Moana Loa shows a steady, unchanging rise? Why does it not follow human CO2 emissions? (300% rise since 2000). Perhaps because human emissions are so insignificant in comparison to natural emissions? Huh? They are only 3% of the total, which is well within the bounds of natural variation.

          Why did the planet cool between 1935 and 1975 while human emissions of CO2 were wildly escalating? Perhaps CO2 has next to nothing to do with warming? I think so.

          Luke warmers need to spend a little more time thinking…… Start by asking “Where did the rise in atmospheric CO2 really come from?”. Then you can ask “Did it really cause warming?”.

          Please try to explain “the pause” and the above cooling…..

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          • #
            el gordo

            Before Andrew gets back …

            ‘Why did the planet cool between 1935 and 1975 …’

            I think that might be 1945 to 1975.

            “Where did the rise in atmospheric CO2 really come from?”.

            Going on your figures 97% was liberated from the warm oceans.

            “Did it really cause warming?”.

            No, as you correctly point out ‘it is well within the bounds of natural variation’.

            Lukewarmers should remind themselves that temperatures always lead an increase in CO2 and not the other way around.

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              tom0mason

              And remember that Leif Svalgaard says “It is now abundantly clear that there is no correlation between TSI and Global Temperatures.”
              🙂
              So that’s it then, global temperature variation is influenced by …

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              • #
                AndyG55

                Leif was saying this WELL BEFORE he found ways to “adjust” the solar cycles.

                Very Gavinesque of him. !!!

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              • #
                tom0mason

                AndyG55,

                Exactly! Thankfully other researchers proceed with open minds. See
                ‘Once again about global warming and solar activity’ 2005 K.Georgieva1, C. Bianchi and B. Kirov

                Abstract.
                Solar activity, together with human activity, is considered a possible factor for the global warming observed in the last century. …
                … show that the index commonly used or quantifying long-term changes in solar activity, the sunspot number, accounts for only one part of solar activity …

                or

                ‘Total solar irradiance and climate’ 2005 Blanca Mendoza who concludes with —

                The secular reconstructed TSI variations can account for a considerable part of the temperature variations of the Earth in the pre-industrial era. But even for those times the temperature changes are not fully reconstructed from TSI. Which means that other sources of solar activity as well as internal natural causes were contributing to the Earth’s temperature variability.

                My bold.
                and
                ‘Surface warming by the solar cycle as revealed by the composite mean difference projection’ Charles D. Camp1and Ka Kit Tung in GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L14703, doi:10.1029/2007GL030207, 2007 which starts with —

                1.Introduction
                [2] Because of the variations of sunspots and faculae on the sun’s surface, the total solar irradiance (TSI), also called the solar constant, varies on a roughly 11-year cycle by about 0.07%, which has been measured by orbiting satellites since 1978 [Lean, 1987, 1991; Wilson et al., 1981]. …There have been thousands of reports over two hundred years of regional climate responses to the 11-year variations of solar radiation, ranging from cycles of Nile River flows, African droughts, to temperature measurements at various selected stations, but a coherent global signal at the surface has not yet been established statistically [Hoyt and Schatten, 1997; Pittock, 1978]. Since the forcing is global, …
                … shows that the correlation coefficient, r = 0.47, between the global temperature and the TSI is statistically significant at 98.4% confidence level. …

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              • #

                AndyG55 – Gavinesque? It was downright Mannly!

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              • #

                Should I have had a /sarc tag on that? Sorry, thought it was obvious.

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              The Backslider

              I think that might be 1945 to 1975

              No, 1934 was the peak.

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          • #
            Andrew McRae

            this does not mean there is no water vapor. To suggest this is entirely due to CO2 is ridiculous.

            Hooray, another strawman bites the dust!
            Try reading (for the first time). You may discover the 3rd bullet point.

            Then find the observational data. No more til you do. You don’t have to agree with me, but you do have to make some effort to understand both the greenhouse theory and the empirical support for it.

            Perhaps CO2 has next to nothing to do with warming?

            Mmm, yeah… that’s roughly what I’ve been saying all along. Greater than zero but a minor player (in recent centuries).
            Either you have suddenly decided to join Team Luke or you have not accurately expressed your beliefs there. (If it is the former I would be curious about what changed your mind.)

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              The Backslider

              Either you have suddenly decided to join Team Luke

              Not at all. I do not for a moment believe that something colder can warm something warmer.

              There is something sadly wrong with your observations.

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          Just-A-Guy

          Andrew McRae,

          You wrote:

          It’s just as silly to project a linear trend of sensitivity estimates indefinitely into the future as it would be to extend the temperature trend of 1975-2005 indefinitely into the future. It stopped at some point.

          Yes. It stopped at some point. That’s why this is a false analogy. Apples and oranges.

          You attempt to compare one system which has already been observed to have stopped in the past to another system which has not yet been fully observed. We don’t know when the climate sensitivity estimates will reach a final point of accuracy, if ever. This comparison would be valid if both systems were similar in nature as far as the way each of them behave. But, alas, they are not.

          Temperatures are known empirically to vary in cycles. This behaviour can only be described by sine waves. As such, linear trends are not always adequate for their analysis because they’re subject to arbitrary start and end points.

          The accuracy of climate sensitivity estimates improve as more information is gathered and better techniques of processing that information are devised. As such, their accuracy is by nature not cyclical but linear. Therefore a linear trend is the only proper way to describe improvements in their accuracy.

          Once upon a time, I pointed out an error in an something you said. You got upset that I tricked you by what you called ‘a bait and switch’, but didn’t respond to the error itself. Instead, you vowed not to respond to any of my comments in the future. Let’s see how well you live up to your word.

          Abe

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        • #

          “•CO2 has an absorption/emission spectrum in which the 15μm band is near the peak of surface thermal emission.”

          15μm is quite far from thw 288K peak of 9.8μm.

          “•There is radiation downwelling from the cloudless winter sky at night.”

          There is absolutely no evidence of such radiative flux! Their have been no successful attempts to measurements such flux. There are many demonstrations that thermal electromagnetic flux between surfaces of equal radiance is always zero. There is clear written documentation that thermal radiative flux emission in a direction of higher radiance is a direct contradiction of maxwell’s equations. Where is evidence of your fantasy?

          “•Part of the spectrum of that downwelling radiation matches CO2′s emission spectrum.”

          ibidem

          “•The amount of downwelling radiation that is due to CO2 has been increasing as CO2 increased.”

          ibidem!! The 15μm radiance of a 10 meter column of 100ppmv CO2 atmosphere at STP has been demonstrated not to increase in any measurable way, as the CO2 fraction is increased to 2000ppmv.

          “Global warming is a proposition about surface air temperature increase. No fact contradicts any other fact.”

          You have presented no fact whatsoever!! You have claimed only the fantasy from some unknown madd magazine

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            KinkyKeith

            Nicely laid out Will.

            🙂

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              Andrew McRae

              The 15um band is 75% of the way to the top of 288K, and nearer again to the mid-tropospheric emission peak, so if Word Salad doesn’t want to call that “near” then he can have his own language along with his own quirky physics.

              And the rest is nicely laid out?? Count the fallacies: Doublespeak (twice), Argumentum ad Verecundiam (twice), Absence of Evidence is Evidence of Absence (twice), Straw Man.
              It’s nice only for the humour value of seeing good old Word Salad Janoschka explicitly denying observed facts – facts which anyone can find if they look. Facts which I didn’t make up and which are measured by everyone who tries to measure them. Note he isn’t denying global warming here, he’s denying observed facts, quite independent of any other hypothesis one may wish to pile on top of them.

              And you believe him.

              Nicely laid out, KK.

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                KinkyKeith

                Hi Andrew

                Yes I did get a bit frustrated on occasion and use that term.

                On this occasion I concur with Will that energy does not move against the energy gradient.

                You provide above in your comment a link to a black body curve for 288K.

                In the real world there is no such thing as a “black body” situation.

                Only possible in highly controlled lab experiments.

                I don’t know why the 15mu and 288K were linked together but last time I felt 288K it was bit like 15 deg C which doesn’t give me much comfort.

                That’s cool but not as cool as the external temp shown on the screen as our aircraft hit almost 11,000 metres.

                Something like 40C below 273.16K or 233K.

                If the ground is say 15 C and the temperature at altitude is -40C, that says a lot about which way the energy is going to move: away from the ground is my guess.

                Well laid out Will.

                KK

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        Just-A-Guy

        el gordo,

        You wrote:

        ‘Climate sensitivity seems to be shrinking towards NOTHING!’

        Can we all agree that CO2 does not cause global warming?

        Yes. 🙂

        Abe

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          AndyG55

          “Can we all agree that CO2 does not cause global warming?”

          CONSENSUS time !! 🙂

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            KinkyKeith

            On the 90 to 100 thousand year cycle it is global warming and cooling by orbital mechanics.

            There are of course other cycles like the 24 cycle where I regularly experience global warming at 12 noon each day.

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          • #
            KinkyKeith

            On the 90 to 100 thousand year cycle it is global warming and cooling by orbital mechanics.

            There are of course other cycles like the 24 cycle where I regularly experience global warming at 12 noon each day.

            KK

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    • #
      Peter C

      David Evans recently found a couple of ahh, minor problems with the basic mental model (mental being the most appropriate word, h/t Steve Milloy). Fixing these mistakes reduces climate sensitivity by a factor of ten; the whole CO2 was due to a simple modeling error;

      Having generated a certain amount of controversy here, which of course was in the intention, I now find that I might have misinterpreted Jo’s remarks! Sorry Jo and David.
      I think that Jo was referring to David’s original 10x reduction on the CO2 sensitivity which he announced 6 (six) months ago. I thought that Jo meant that he had discovered another 10x reduction on top of that.

      Now I am going to re read David Evan’s summary of his work!
      http://jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/guest/david-evans/synopsis-of-basic-climate-models.pdf

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    john karajas

    In all humility I think we should rename the Anthropocene the “Pierrehumbertian” in recognition of hie epoch-making flash of inspiration.

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    pat

    Pierre’s language is anything but sparse, so no doubt he will be able to contribute to this rush job!

    15 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Climate scientists face tight deadline to deliver 1.5C research
    Researchers will have 18-21 months to flesh out understanding of tough global warming limit if – as expected – IPCC accepts call to produce a special report
    Accordingly, in the small print of the (Paris) deal was a request to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for a special report on 1.5C, by 2018.
    That effectively gives researchers 18-21 months to flesh out “fairly sparse” literature, said British scientist Jim Skea. “There have been meetings in various countries on how existing research could be tweaked to get things into the public domain in time.”…
    The call for analysis on 1.5C is only one of 27 proposals for special reports submitted by countries, UN bodies and observers. The IPCC only has the capacity to pursue two or at most three…
    Mike Hulme, professor at Kings College London, argued recently in Nature Climate Change that scientists should use their limited time on more pragmatic research…READ ON
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/15/climate-scientists-face-tight-deadline-to-deliver-1-5c-research/

    and just in case a Republian wins in November:

    15 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Why the Paris climate deal doesn’t depend on the US
    With or without Washington, governments in developing countries are already taking steps to slash emissions and clean up their economies
    But for the rest of the world, tackling climate change is not about Washington DC’s toxic politics. It’s about toxic air that kills, and emerging norms…
    Does that mean there’s no point in the global climate deal agreed in Paris last December?
    Not exactly. Paris is about accelerating the raft of domestic laws and policies governments are already deploying, harnessing cities, regions and the private sector to do the heavy lifting.
    It offers a global framework allowing countries to better work together, source green finance and scrutinize what each other is doing…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/15/why-the-paris-climate-deal-doesnt-depend-on-the-us/

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  • #
    Robert R

    The sad and alarming thing is that they are committing billions of dollars of public money to hair brained schemes based on stupid ideas of this calibre. Just one idiot scheme is the ten billion dollars worth of desalination plants on the east coast of Australia. Built as a result of unproven conjecture like this by climate scientists, rusting away and never used and never will be used because they have never been needed. And then they have the hide to contemplate increasing taxes to finance such gross waist.

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      Robert R

      ‘such gross waist’ should be ‘such great waste’ of course, unless one is referring to the girth of those who are benefiting from the deals!

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      • #
        KinkyKeith

        “those who are benefiting from the deals!”

        An this was the whole driving force of the farce of desalination.

        The easy transfer of cash to the mooment and it’s many voters.

        How many dams could have been built with the money misappropriated for Desal schemes?

        Politics is Broken and badly needs fixing.

        KK

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    • #
      MIke

      Robert R : “The sad and alarming thing is that they are committing billions of dollars of public money”….

      What public money?
      What there is is the bond market (IOU market) Government print bonds (IOU’s) backed by the given population.

      “The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it”

      http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-money-iou-bank-of-england-austerity

      “In other words, everything we know is not just wrong – it’s backwards. When banks make loans, they create money. This is because money is really just an IOU. ” ….

      20

  • #
    pat

    Shell saving the planet from CAGW:

    15 Feb: ReutersCarbonPulse: Stian Reklev: Former ICIS-Tschach analyst joins Shell China carbon team
    Jian Wei Lim, who resigned from his position as ICIS-Tschach director of Chinese carbon markets last month, has joined Shell’s China origination team, sources told Carbon Pulse.
    Lim will be involved in the development and marketing of offset projects that can deliver Chinese Certified Emissions Reductions (CCERs) to China’s seven pilot carbon markets and the national ETS, which will begin next year, as well as trading of emissions allowances, Carbon Pulse understands.
    Shell is actively trading in several of the pilot markets, and last June advertised for a senior carbon trader and a senior originator to be based in Beijing, as the company is gearing up to participate in what will eventually become the world’s biggest emissions market.
    http://carbon-pulse.com/15638/

    when Peter Hannam promised “more to come” on the CSIRO cuts, he wasn’t joking:

    16 Feb: SMH: Peter Hannam: Major conferences to ‘expose’ CSIRO climate cutbacks as scientists fear for jobs
    The CSIRO’s plans to dismantle most of its climate monitoring and modelling capability will be in the international spotlight at a series of conferences in coming months that had been intended to showcase Australia’s world-leading research, senior scientists say…
    Hobart, home to many of the 110 of the 140 CSIRO scientists in the two main Oceans & Atmosphere programs facing the axe, will play host to two major gatherings in March and May.
    So far, six CSIRO researchers are understood to have submitted papers to the International Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences (IPICS) conference in March…
    John Church, a world-leading CSIRO researcher in sea-level rise whose team is among those understood to be facing the chop, said visiting scientists will question the logic and impact of jettisoning so many Australian climate researchers…
    CSIRO declined to say whether Larry Marshall, the chief executive who announced the plan to cut 350 jobs across the organisation earlier this month, will attend the events or whether CSIRO will retain its “gold” sponsorship…
    The roll-call of potentially axed CSIRO researchers may also be on display at other conferences, including the global Adaptation Futures 2016 event in May in the Netherlands, which eight researchers are currently scheduled to attend…
    These cuts may also be on show at the Climate Adaptation 2016 conference planned for Adelaide in July…
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/major-conferences-to-expose-csiro-climate-cutbacks-as-scientists-fear-for-jobs-20160216-gmva5y.html

    hard to give up the jet-set life, I guess. who cares about carbon footprints?

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    Maybe this is the guy who will have the courage of his convictions and actually close down those evil CO2 emitting coal fired power plants.

    Closely followed by ….. “Uh Oh! What just happened then?”

    Tony.

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      AndyG55

      What’s the bet the guy has a mansion or two with a carbon footprint measured in “Gores”

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      • #
        Bulldust

        The Gore is a huge unit, a bit like the Sievert. We should use something more manageable for day-to-day calculations, like the milliGore or microGore.

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        • #
          AndyG55

          I was hoping someone would take that up. 🙂

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        • #

          It’s an odd thing really, and that’s in a serious context.

          People have no concept of the terminology when you mention the terms used for powers of ten, on the big side, Kilo, mega, giga, and terra, and on the small side, milli, micro, nano, and pico.

          They only look at the number.

          It makes me smile when I explain even that term for CO2 concentration 400 parts per million. People see that 400 and then the added part ….. million and think its a big number. When I use the analogy of only 4 cents in 100 dollars being the equivalent of 400PPM, people look at me like I’m (seriously) telling lies.

          It’s the same when speaking about radiation doses. People have no concept of what it means. At the height of the Fukushima scare, I found a Nuclear Dose Chart that made me sit up and take notice. I wrote a Post at my Home Site, at this link, and have a read of that for some context.

          In that Post I linked to the actual chart, but those of you who just want to see the chart, it’s at this link, but the Post is well worth the read for some explanations regarding context of some of those dose levels.

          I can understand how not everyone has the knowledge of what those power of ten levels mean, and that’s effectively how a scare campaign can be mounted. Perhaps one of the most deceptively written about things is electrical power generation, because it can be so easily misunderstood.

          Tony.

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          • #
            AndyG55

            Like that utter crapo of using x10²² joules in the modelling of Ocean Heat Content.

            Immeasurable and meaningless.

            Covert it to the equivalent degrees C.. IMMEASURABLE.

            Enough to fool some people though. 😉

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          • #

            From that Radiation Dose Chart, far and away the single most telling thing in all of it is shown on the green chart in the middle there. Half way down on the left side of that green chart is listed the EPA yearly limit on radiation exposure to a single member of the public, and that is One milliSievert.

            Then, just two image panes below that is listed the NORMAL yearly background dose, and that is 4 milliSieverts.

            So just living your normal average every day life, you are exposed to four times the EPA yearly limit.

            Just what does the EPA take us all for?

            I’m beginning to get the impression that the EPA is being run by the UN, who, incidentally, want to take over everything it seems. No wonder a former Prime Minister of Australia (who shall remain nameless but whose initials are Kevin Rudd) is hungrily eyeing off the position of SecGen.

            Tony.

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              Kinky Keith

              Nice catch Tony.

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            • #
              Mike

              This system of measuring radiation doses completely ignores radiation doses from ‘point sources’ of radiation such as ingesting a radioactive particle.

              The idea of Newtons ‘inverse square’ law is nowhere to be found.

              A soldier comes back from a war zone with depleted uranium particles in him/her and all that is done is a whole body measurement averaging out the dose as if the whole body is getting an identical dose. An so on.

              Completely absent//

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              • #
                Mike

                Here’s the thing……there are two kinds of radiation doses. One comes from a point source. The closer the radioactive particle is to the human tissue, the greater the ‘dose’. The other kind of radiation is the homogeneous kind that EPA and similar organizations are trained to only observe or measure.

                This “point source” kind of dose is not measured by the EPA. In the case of an ingested particle of depleted uranium the radiation is mainly alpha particles which do not penetrate further than a sheet of paper and about 5% gamma radiation which does get out of the body. If it gets into a lung whilst being attached to a larger lighter particle, it can hammer away at cells in the immediate proximity of it where it is lodged and go undetected.

                From the point of view of the EPA and a Geiger counter, a scintillator, or a whole body scanner, the radiation dose is averaged out and the alpha radiation from the depleted uranium particle is ignored.

                After the Fukushima thing, it took months for the workers to finally get good respirators instead of those paper masks they had if anything at all during the outset. This is the kind of ignorance we all face with respect to any discussions about radiation doses.

                As i said, Newton’s inverse square law which pertains to a radiation dose from a “point source” of radiation as would occur from an ingested radioactive particle is exactly the kind of ‘dose’ that is precisely not measured .

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          • #
            F.I.N

            So Tony, given that 400 ppm is such a minuscule amount, I take it you’d be willing to drink a glass of sodium cyanide containing 400 ppm because obviously at such small concentrations it couldn’t possibly harm you, right? Or maybe the equivalent of carbon monoxide perhaps? I dunno, you tell me, you’re the expert with numbers.

            011

            • #

              F.I.N.

              How interesting that you give CO2 the same equivalence as Sodium Cyanide. No wonder there is a scare campaign. It’s people like you doing this who exacerbate it.

              Carbon Dioxide is NOT the equivalent of Sodium Cyanide, or even CO as you allude to here.

              And I feel sure you would have checked this.

              The permissible dose is around 5PPM, and you would be in imminent danger with a dose of 25PPM, so 400PPM would virtually kill you on the spot.

              They are NOT equivalent as you suggest here.

              Tony.

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            • #
              AndyG55

              Poor Fin, sitting there in front of your computer in your padded basement, the CO2 level is probably around 1000-3000ppm. 😉

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            • #
              Vlad the Impaler

              Greetings F.I.N.:

              Just curious: What is the concentration of CO2 where you are right now? If, perchance, you are outside, it is somewhere in the vicinity of 400 (give or take) ppm. Are you feeling any ill effects? Are you on your death-bed?

              If, perchance, you are in some building, say your house/flat/apartment, or your workplace (even w/ HVAC), the CO2 concentration might be somewhere north of 400 ppm. It is not uncommon for office buildings to be at 600 ppm, with a diurnal signature as the building is occupied during the day (high O2 consumption, high CO2 respiration), then a return to background 400 ppm during the night (hours the building is typically not occupied).

              US (and probably other Navies as well) nuclear submarines routinely operate with internal CO2 concentrations of about 1000 ppm. If you saw “Apollo 13”, you would know that the LM ‘lifeboat’ for the crew did not alert them to CO2 until it reached 1500 ppm (that’s the scene where the crew, from instructions from the ground, made an ersatz CO2 scrubber).

              Your analogy of ‘400 ppm sodium cyanide’ is a red herring. There are substances which are toxic in minuscule concentrations, and then there are other substances which are life giving, in minuscule concentrations (selenium, for example; the human body needs a very tiny amount, and as present [I believe] the amount has not been determined; if we have too much or too little selenium, things go bad very quickly). Carbon dioxide is not toxic to humans at the 400, or even the 800 ppm level. If it was, we’d all be gone anyway. If you can show me what ill effects you are suffering from 400 ppm CO2 in the global atmosphere, I’ll listen.

              Otherwise, your ‘400 ppm cyanide’ is a comparison of apples v. oranges.

              Regards,

              Vlad

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    Robert R

    ‘such gross waist’ should be ‘such great waste’ of course, unless one is refering to the girth of those who are benefiting from the deals!

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    RB

    Peak Stupidity? Peak Exaggeration? Peak Jumping the Shark?

    It has to be PTTP.

    Peak Taking the Piss.

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    Yonniestone

    God Complex much?

    To the insignificant humans,
    I, Y Stone demigod and despoiler of carbon, judge you all as being incorrect in all imaginable ways and so proclaim that upon the light of next dawn I will stand on the oceans edge and urinate, the result of such reckless abandon will be your demise as a great yellow sea engulfs all that you know cleansing the earth of the bacteria that is mankind!

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  • #
    Konrad

    Raymond Pierrehumbert has form, permanently recorded on the Internet.

    He was the one when faced with the difficult question of how adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduced its radiative cooling ability came up with his mad “choked radiator” conjecture in a 1995 paper.

    This essentially claims that initially,/b> adding radiative gases caused atmospheric cooling, but then, um, err, the unicorn to rainbow ratio goes negative and then magically increased radiative gases reduce the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability.

    As I recall the paper was somewhat vague about where this magical “tipping point” was. I also recall it was complete tripe. There have been many spin-offs over time, including the ERL and ERL arguments. They are all nonsense. The net effect of radiative gases is atmospheric cooling at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.

    1933

    • #
      Just-A-Guy

      Konrad,

      Unfortunately the CAGW ™ ‘bug’has infected some of our luke-warmers as well!

      Dr. Evans wrote:

      Yes, I reckon “removing CO2 from the atmosphere just redistributes the OLR between the pipes. More can go out the CO2 pipe, because the CO2 blanket is thinner (mixed analogies?), so less must go out the other pipes.” Until the point where the CO2 concentration gets so low that the CO2 emission layer starts running into the surface at many wavelengths — which is the concentration of maximum OLR from CO2 — whereupon the trend rapidly reverses, and as more CO2 is removed the CO2 emits less and less OLR as its concentration falls to zero. No contradiction.

      my bold italics

      So yes, CO2 will radiatively cool the atmosphere at low concentrations but warm the atmosphere at higher concentrations. 😮 /sarc off.

      Abe

      929

      • #

        Co2 radiatively warms at lower levels so as to distort the lapse rate slope to the warm side in rising air but cools at higher levels so as to distort the lapse rate slope towards the cool side in descending air

        The two effects are equal and opposite for a zero net effect other than an adjustment in convective overturning rates.

        In a hydrostatically supported atmosphere at equilibrium convective adjustments neutralise radiative imbalances and radiative adjustments neutralise convective imbalances.

        The entire greenhouse effect is a consequence of conduction to and convection within atmospheric mass. The radiative characteristics of that mass are irrelevant to the strength of the greenhouse effect.

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        • #
          Just-A-Guy

          Stephen Wilde,

          We were talking about CO2 concentration, measured in parts per million. You respond with CO2 location, measured in height above the surface.

          What’s your point? How is it relevant?

          Abe

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    TdeF

    Raymond Pierrehumbert, Halley Professor of Physics, Oxford University.

    This is a new chair, 1991 in Atmospheric physics right after the IPCC started their rush to the alarm bells. An opportunity for a bright scientist.

    “The person appointed will be an exceptional physicist with an international reputation in one or more areas of atmospheric, oceanic, climate and planetary physics and an outstanding research and publication record.”

    A geophysical scientist from Chicago he has fitted right into the exciting world of alarmism and world travel, waxing loudly about the future of mankind as if we will be unchanged in six billion years. So much for evolution then.

    “He/she will exercise leadership in research and teaching, will be keen to interact with members of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics (AOPP) and other groups within the Department and the University, and will play a strategic role in advancing further the research portfolio of AOPP in Oxford.”

    We know what that means. His job in part is to make the atmospheric and ocean physics department famous and of course, to get funding. 25 years ago, Global Warming was a hot topic. He has done well.

    However anyone who thinks you can extrapolate models to a planetary scale and start predicting the climate, let alone the weather is kidding. No one can even predict the major events like El Nino and increasingly, such events and ‘natural variation’ are blamed for everything from the lack of warming to excess ice in Antarctica.

    Exactly what has he achieved in the 25 years? Where is the deep understanding of the mechanisms which now allows us to fit the past exactly and what is now after 25 years, the future? How good were his predictions in hindsight? Did anyone even get close to predicting the temperature today? Why are we worried about six billion years in the future?

    Even the sea rise has slowed noticeably.in recent years and of course that could not be from global cooling and massive ice formation in Antarctica, which should not be happening according to any professional climate scientist. The climate is utterly predictable apparently, even if the weather and even the temperature is not.

    This generation of happy scientists will go into comfortable retirement in the sure and certain knowledge that they did no good for anyone, discovered nothing, understood nothing and even their simple predictions were as wrong as is possible. Worse, they have been responsible for the greatest waste of human resources and opportunity through human history. At least the previous generation put a man on the moon.
    What good are all those awful windmills?

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    handjive

    Memo to Raymond Pierrehumbert:

    7 smarter ways to talk about climate change

    ” #7. “Nobody knows enough to be a cock-sure pessimist.
    Not even Bill McKibben, even if he knows a lot.

    There are truly deep unknowns [in climate science], such as the evolution of clouds and atmosphere with more humidity.
    We don’t know enough about the deep ocean, what it’s going to be up to.
    We don’t know [enough] about the Arctic permafrost.
    . . .
    Bonus quote:

    “Let me end on a positive note: Who would have thought that in the year 2014, CO2 emissions did not increase for the first time ever?
    Who predicted that?
    And China’s coal consumption is down.
    Did you know? Who would have predicted that a year ago?

    No one predicted this, either:

    NYT, Nov, 2015: China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases from coal, has been burning up to 17 percent more coal a year than the government previously disclosed, according to newly released data

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    toorightmate

    This subject should be referred to the eminent astrophysicist, Shane Warne.
    Shane probably knows a few aliens who could assist this powerful thought process, along with Shane himself.

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    tom0mason

    The first paragraphs should read …

    “…There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a virtual species.

    But we have to make it through the next modeled two hundred years first, and this will be a crucial time for virtual humanity. This is where Modeled Destiny Studies and our paper on the Fictional Anthropocene (hereafter call the F.A.) come together. The question of why we should care about the way we set the computerized climate of the F.A. is far better answered in terms of our visualizations for the destiny of our virtual species’ programming than it is in terms of the difficult calculus of real economics, trading, and all the messy problems of real organic life.
    All this will lead to a more harmonious virtual environment and an enhanced, or sweet, F.A.”

    Mr Raymond Pierrehumbert is not available for answering questions at this time, all questions will be answered by his personality-programmed android as usual.

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  • #

    I graduated from Oxford in way back 1972. At that point, I realised, that whatever benefits I might have accrued from three years study, the real purpose of the institution was not to educate such as myself, rather to secure livings for those many people who otherwise would be wandering the streets incapable of gainful employment, and to themselves, their family, or society.

    Thank you to Prof.Pierrehumbert for, 44 years on, confirming this. The poor man.

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    Andrew McRae

    Really? Do none of you watch new movies? Thirty-two comments and nobody has mentioned this?

    technology will make it easy to block enough sunlight to save the Earth from a runaway, buying us another 4 billion years of habitability.

    Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing, the computer models are fine, nothing will go wrong.

    (Really good movie, but don’t want to see it recreated at 1:1 life scale.)

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    • #
      RB

      A lot of well known actors but I don’t think that it was even released in Aus. I suspect that there was something too unPC about it.

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  • #
    cedarhill

    Thus we now have we can call The (Raymond) Pierrehumbert Paradox “If humans disappear from the Universe as the only sentient species, who really cares?”

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    Klem

    Back in a science undergrad, we used to kid each other about our present period and we called it the Anthropocene, but we were just kidding around, back then it was just a joke.

    Now the leftists are actually trying to legitimize something which was a little more than a running gag. These people are so pathetic.

    Everything they do is always wrapped up in their politics, it’s gotten to the point that you can’t believe anything environmentalists say anymore.

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    ScotsmaninUtah

    Dirt Harry ” a man’s got to know his limits”

    …There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a species

    .

    I disagree…
    There are a number of things that come to mind ..

    light speed travel
    Changing the Climate
    Elect an honest politician

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      That’s the great mistake with leftist idealism, they try to enforce or install the qualities of a higher being into a lesser one, the result is people continuously rejecting the flawed vision of life only to seek freedom to choose via democracy, it will be a long road.

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    jorgekafkazar

    …There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a species.

    Urm, I strongly suspect that Newton’s Laws and the laws of thermodynamics are, indeed “limits.” But if “accomplish” refers to new heights in academic hubris, then, yes, there’s absolutely no limit.

    The question…is far better answered in terms of our vision for the destiny of our species…

    Surely he meant “density.”

    …David Evans recently found a couple of oh-so-minor problems with the basic mental model…

    By “basic mental model” do you refer to the German AGW concept of “Der Gedrunkenexperiment?”

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    • #
      TdeF

      …There’s no limit to what we can accomplish as a species.

      It makes you wonder why what we have done is simply solar cells and windmills. Sun and wind worship. What happened to technologies like nuclear? Temperature gradient harvesting from the oceans? Expanding metal combustion cycles from carbon? Geoforming? Climate change?

      That also raises the question that if we wanted to change the climate, what would we want? More ice at the North pole or less? Warmer days or cooler? More rain in the desert, or would that be interfering with nature? As a species we did amazing things in harvesting water. Now that it is illegal. No more dams, no clearing land for agriculture. No more sources of energy which are not shaman. In fact, no new technologies and no evil manufacture and farming, the rise of the Green politician who wants to stop everything.

      These wafflers offer nothing. They are probably against evolution as well. The talk of ‘man’ in six billion years. Look at the diversity in 60 thousand and wonder what humans will be like in a million, a billion. More human species? Larger brains? Or back to the caves, as the Greens want?

      Now we have a waffler PM. Giant vision. No actual ideas. Another Rudd who preferred to talk to media personalities and ask Cate Blanchett about the future of mankind. As Galadriel, she would know.

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    handjive

    Gavin Schmidt, When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job:

    “I don’t agree.
    I don’t think we’re f*cked.
    There is time to build sustainable solutions to a lot of these things.

    You don’t have to close down all the coal-powered stations tomorrow. You can transition.

    It sounds cute to say, ‘Oh, we’re f*cked and there’s nothing we can do,’ but it’s a bit of a nihilistic attitude.
    We always have the choice.
    We can continue to make worse decisions, or we can try to make ever better decisions.

    ‘Oh, we’re f*cked! Just give up now, just kill me now,’ that’s just stupid.”

    He also shrugs off the abrupt-climate-change scenarios.
    “The methane thing is actually something I work on a lot, and most of the headlines are cr@p.
    There’s no actual evidence that anything dramatically different is going on in the Arctic, other than the fact that it’s melting pretty much everywhere.”

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  • #

    How about this for an over the top theory?

    Insects actually rule the world. They stimulated the evolution of mammals toward man. Man developed technology to be able to design and build windmills. The windmills are spreading across the globe in order to kill the birds who eat insects. In the end, the insects get to eat the dead birds and the people who died from the collapse of civilization. An inadequate and intermittent supply of energy could not possibly sustain a civilization. The resulting unlimited supply of man made non-biodegradable plastic is simply a bonus. It all happened because the ruling insects wanted to eat dead things.

    Evidence? We have a growing number of windmills with piles of dead birds around them. The supply of non-biodegradable plastic is growing rapidly. Large areas of the ocean are covered with it. The insects keep multiplying and we haven’t been able to stop them. They seem to have more than enough to eat.

    Peak Exaggeration? Not even close. As it is with stupidity, the supply of exaggeration is endless. It is the supply of intelligent life on earth that is so very close to becoming non-existent. Now if only we could discover a way to transform stupidity into electricity….

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    Neville

    Over at climate audit Steve McIntyre has recently obtained more data on some of the past studies that claimed to show less warming for the Med WP. Using his maths and stats skills he has been able to find much higher dendro info for the Med wp when compared to recent warming.
    Some of his graphs show the results compared to the earlier studies and Willis Eschenbach’s comments backed up by maths expert Nic Lewis endorse Steve’s results. Here’s Willis’s comment———-

    “Steve, I’m overjoyed to see your continued deconstruction and disambiguation of the tree ring data.

    I was saddened but not at all surprised by this statement:

    Although the article in consideration was published more than a decade ago, the analysis in today’s article was impossible until relatively recently, because coauthor Luckman withheld the relevant data for over a decade.

    The tragedy of modern climate science is that this kind of scandalous scientific malfeasance goes not only entirely unpunished, but is completely ignored by the overwhelming majority of mainstream climate scientists. Gotta say, it angrifies my blood. People tell me all the time that I’m too passionate about this kind of scientifically criminal behavior.

    The taxpaying public funds these charming fellows to go adventure in the wild and secure important scientific data, and they treat it as if it were their own. Disgraceful and shameful. Me too passionate? I say that people are not passionate enough about this underhanded, deceptive withholding of scientific information.

    Except Canadians, I have it on good authority that they never sweat unless there’s emotional attachment. But for the rest … where is the richly deserved outrage?

    But I digress. Good stuff, and fascinating. I gotta learn more about “random effects statistical techniques”, where might I start my further education?

    My best to you,

    w.” End of quote.

    Some of these people seem to be extreme cherry pickers and con merchants, certainly not serious scientists.

    http://climateaudit.org/2016/02/15/disappearing-the-mwp-at-icefields-alberta/

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  • #
    el gordo

    Shane Warne thinks Darwin was wrong on the emergence of humanity, in his mind aliens discovered the planet and tinkered with the apes.

    Have they found the missing link yet?

    20

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    Raymond Pierrehumbert

    Perhaps the photo in the link says it all: a really cool dude playing the university Don to the limit.

    It is unfortunate that people in pure science step outside of their areas of expertise where they are so obviously highly regarded.

    Like many “pure scientists” Mr Pierrehumbert has obviously not bothered to take courses in real Modeling which would lead them/him to find

    that they have totally misrepresented the position of CO2 in the great CO2 CAGW Scam.

    The many factors which help describe the Earths Temperature variations in this debate have never been given due consideration because of all

    those factors it is obvious that CO2 is an irrelevance and should have been immediately consigned to the modelling Black Box, where all

    trivial or irrelevant factors belong.

    While it is understandable that people get taken in by the Global Warming CO2 scare it is a sad reflection on humanity that in some sense,

    that of being in possession of “the truth”, we are no further advanced than we were in AD700 or the later “dark Ages”.

    Oh how I wish for an honest politician to lead us into the light.

    Somehow I don’t think the score will change soon.

    Politicians and Media 100

    The People (serfs)* 0

    KK

    Acknowledgement to Beth

    73

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Well, climate change has certainly derailed Raymond Pierrehumbert. So why not human destiny? It’s only one more small step for mankind and hardly difficult under the current circumstances.

    I’m beginning to understand how Alice felt when she began to encounter the various inhabitants of a bizarre, dysfunctional world: a White Rabbit who was always late; a Mad Hatter; talking chess pieces and so on; even a cake that would make her grow smaller or larger depending on which side of it she ate. And most puzzling of all, a cat that disappeared leaving only its grin, then reappeared again as if to confuse poor Alice all the more.

    I believe that as the full impact of where she was began to set in, she uttered, “Curiouser and curiouser.” And then something less presentable under her breath. Well maybe not that — she was a nice, well bred young Victorian English girl after all. And there she is right now as a matter of fact. She doesn’t look too pleased by any of it, does she? But you’d better look quick before Alice herself disappears, leaving only her grin.

    Hey! Do you suppose Alice was in on it from the start? Maybe that look is one of a conspirator.

    No matter. One way or the other I feel the same way. Curiouser and curiouser. I can’t tell the Mad Hatter from the March Hare nor can I tell them from Tweedledee and Tweedledum. And I wonder if there’s much benefit in knowing the difference anyway.

    But one thing seems certain. This is not yet, “…the moment of Peak Exaggeration. Surely there’s more to go.

    I’ve always loved a good roller coaster. But I never signed on for this ride. No way! So where do I apply for my ticket refund? Jo? Moderators? Anyone? Surely someone will know.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Jo,

      I picked the image of Alice at random from many that show up from a search on “Alice in Wonderland”. I saw no copyright notice so I assume this is fair use. I avoided those from Disney because I know they do keep their copyright going forever. If you disagree you’re welcome to cut out that link.

      Roy

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      • #
        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Tom,

          I originally did the Google search so I could be sure I remembered a few of the principal characters. I was surprised to see a list of images and that gave me the idea to actually show an “Alice” but I wanted one that was just Alice alone. The first one I found in the list looked about the right age and wasn’t risque so I picked it. On second thought the girl in the picture is probably a little older than the Alice of Lewis Carroll but her expression didn’t look like someone enjoying her circumstances, so there it is.

          It looks like there have been several movies or plays that I didn’t know about. Alice’s Wonderland is more popular than I thought. And the bizarre nature of the place certainly describes today’s world.

          10

      • #
        AndyG55

        Roy, I think that comes under the clause.. “fair usage”

        10

    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Yes Roy, we do indeed inhabit a “bizarre, dysfunctional world”.

      When I think of the world I grew up in and compare it with the internet and media driven world of today, I feel apprehensive for the young

      people whose only hold on reality is daily contact with other people trapped in the same mold.

      Politicians love this because the crowd is easier to control and manipulate.

      What do truth and reality matter to politicians: not much.

      KK

      30

      • #
        AndyG55

        “trapped in the same mold”

        You mean that in a fungal sense, don’t you. !

        11

        • #
          KinkyKeith

          Andy.
          Just being lazy.

          There are a number of different moulds from point of view of country of origin, U.K. or US.

          Are you trying to mould me into something?

          KK

          10

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        KK,

        I have a real fear for the world in which my grandson, now 11 months old, will grow up in and live in. What influences will be putting pressure on him to become someone I wouldn’t even recognize? And I can’t even begin to come up with an answer.

        30

        • #
          KinkyKeith

          Yes Roy,

          it’s an unreal and isolated world young minds inhabit.

          Trouble is we can’t all go and live on a farm where reality gets you with the weather, the life of plants and animals and isolation by distance.

          At the present we have isolation by confusion and stimulus overload.

          Don’t have any answers though.

          10

          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Don’t have any answers though.

            KK,

            I didn't expect anyone would. We don't seem to even understand the question so how can anyone have an answer?

            It's frightening.

            On the other hand, the world has been running the way it is now for a long time and we're still here. So maybe we'll survive the future just because the problem is so complex that no one can tighten the screws too much because they can't figure out how to do it.

            ;-), 🙂 or 🙁 depending on how much of that your can believe.

            10

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              I feel more like Alice by the day. The news concerning things Obama has done over the past 7 years is slowly leaking out (if you know where to look) and it’s truly bizarre. But don’t expect to get honest journalism from your daily news broadcast or your newspaper. They have all turned advocate for some cause and can’t be believed unless you can corroborate everything they say independently. They all have a bias, even Fox News.

              I don’t know whether I’m shrinking or growing taller. Probably shrinking.

              But Glenn Beck has turned out to be right about the direction of things. The man has done his homework very thoroughly. And he’s been shunned by his former friends and associates for his trouble. They’re very polite to him but they won’t be associated with what he says anymore. None of them. Such is the price for hollering wolf when there really is a wolf.

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              • #
                Roy Hogue

                PS:

                There is far too much from Glenn Beck for me to provide links to even a significant part of it, much less all of it.

                10

              • #
                Roy Hogue

                But nothing stops anyone from researching Glenn Beck. I suspect he’s put everything he has on the Internet.

                20

  • #
    pat

    lengthy but, for those interested, read all:

    16 Feb: CarbonBrief: Sophie Yeo: Explainer: Europe’s struggle to switch on low-carbon heating
    Heating and cooling is the unglamorous consumer of half of the EU’s energy, with 75% of this generated from fossil fuels. Only 25% is generated from low-carbon sources.
    This sector sits alongside transport and electricity, which consume 31% and 20% of the EU’s energy, respectively…
    While there are a number of policies that indirectly target heating and cooling, for a long time efforts to address this sector have not been in proportion to its contribution to the EU’s emissions.
    Today, the EU has taken steps to remedy this. It has released a new strategy on heating and cooling, as part of a wider energy security package…
    Heating and cooling are important to the quality of life within the EU…
    Yet, according to the EU’s new strategy, 11% of Europeans cannot keep their homes warm enough in the winter…
    The difficulty of reducing emissions from other sectors, such as aviation, means that heating may have to almost fully decarbonise if the UK is to hit its long-term goal of an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, it says, and, by 2035, all new investment in heat will have to be zero-carbon…
    http://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-europes-struggle-to-switch-on-low-carbon-heating?utm_content=buffer87873&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

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    • #
      Wayne Job

      Pat heating and cooling for all at a small cost is already available, the Earth exudes heat from the inside out. Drill a hole about 32Ft deep plumb down and back using water you have water at about 80F drill deeper you have hotter water. This can heat and cool your house for the cost of running a small pump. This system has been around for ever but ignored, just think of the heaters and Aircons that would not be sold etc.

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      • #
        Mark D.

        Not around here Wayne. My water well is 70 feet and the water is a cool 55F. Most new drilled water wells around here are 200 feet or more and the water is still cold.

        Yes people are putting in ground source heat pumps though and you can suck a lot of warm out of 55F earth.

        10

  • #
    pat

    profound insanity:

    15 Feb: Guardian: Arthur Neslen: Europe’s climate change goals ‘need profound lifestyle changes’
    Leaked European commission document calls for wide-ranging debate on how to keep global warming to 1.5C
    European countries should prepare for a far-reaching debate on the “profound lifestyle changes” required to limit climate change, according to a leaked European commission document…
    “It will require exploring possibilities for realising ‘negative’ emissions as well as profound lifestyle changes of current generations.” (document says)…
    “The EU has to redo its homework and set out a pathway to meet stricter energy efficiency and renewables targets,” said Greenpeace EU’s climate policy adviser, Bram Claeys. “We can’t have confidence in a plan that plays fast and loose with global warming and fails to accelerate Europe’s shift to 100% renewable energy.”…
    “The potential scale of such a deep transformation will require a wide societal debate in Europe,” says the document, which was jointly prepared by the European commission and its foreign office, the European external action service.
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/15/europe-climate-change-goals-need-profound-lifestyle-changes-european-commission

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    pat

    16 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Alex Pashley: Bipartisan US senate group takes clean energy tour of Alaska
    Republicans and Democrats look at how wind and solar can help remote communities reduce reliance on diesel imports
    US energy secretary Ernest Moniz was among six senators on a field visit on Monday to a far-flung community to examine ways to cut its diesel addiction…
    The bipartisan Senate delegation called by chair and Alaskan Republican, Lisa Murkowski, explored the potential for combined wind-diesel power generators, solar panels and micro-grids.
    It was intended to inform lawmakers debating an energy bill which bids to cut down energy waste and reinvest the savings in clean technology.
    Energy security trumped climate change as the reason for the trip, on which Republican lawmakers outnumbered Democrats by four-to-one…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/16/bipartisan-us-senate-group-takes-clean-energy-tour-of-alaska/

    16 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Todd Stern: US will sign and support Paris climate change pact
    Despite intense hostility from Republican critics and legal block from Supreme Court, top US negotiator says White House is ‘sticking to its plan’
    Lead US climate envoy Todd Stern has arrived in Europe on a charm offensive, days after the White House’s low carbon energy plan was delayed by the Supreme Court.
    The veteran negotiator told lawmakers in Brussels the US would ratify the Paris climate pact this year, arguing it was “really premature to assume the Clean Power Plan will be struck down”.
    Stern also dismissed fears a future Republican president would wreck the deal, despite fierce opposition from frontrunners Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.
    “Paris was seen as such a landmark, hard-fought, hard-won deal that, for us to turn around and say we will withdraw, that would give the country a kind of diplomatic black eye,” he told reporters…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/16/todd-stern-us-will-sign-and-support-paris-climate-change-pact/

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    pat

    16 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Laurent Fabius quits as UN climate talks president
    Official credited with guiding Paris COP21 summit to successful conclusion announces he is to step down to focus on new role heading constitutional court
    Fabius had intended to continue chairing global negotiations until November’s UN Conference of the Parties (COP) in Morocco.
    But over the weekend fears had grown it would clash with his new job chairing France’s constitutional court, and in a letter Fabius said he wished to avoid any controversy…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/15/laurent-fabius-quits-as-un-climate-talks-president/

    14 Feb: WolfStreet: Don Quijones: Deloitte About to Pay for its Spanish Sins?
    Spain’s two biggest bankruptcies ever, Bankia (2011-2012) and Abengoa (2015-?), share one thing in common: their auditor…
    Deloitte could end up facing a similar fine for failing to notice a veritable mountain of debt piling up on Spanish energy giant Abengoa’s books during the three years that it served as the firm’s auditor. Deloitte didn’t express any alarm about Abengoa’s financial health until November 13, just two weeks before Abengoa announced that it was seeking preliminary protection from creditors. By that time it was already common knowledge that there were serious problems with the finances of the firm, which is now estimated to have debt of over €8 billion and total liabilities exceeding €25 billion.
    As WOLF STREET reported in December, Pepe Baltá, a 17-year old secondary school student in Barcelona who chose Abengoa as the subject of his economics project, noticed serious flaws in the company’s accounting of its mountain of debts — a full year before Deloitte’s handsomely paid auditors blew the whistle!
    “The big surprise was that negative profits were being converted into positives,” he told the Spanish daily El Mundo. “I didn’t understand how they could do that.”…
    To rub salt in the wound, the SEC is considering launching its own investigation into Deloitte’s role in Abengoa’s downfall. The U.S. regulator’s interest in the case is perfectly justified: not only is Abengoa’s U.S. subsidiary listed on the New York Stock Exchange, its bankruptcy has left many of its stateside investors high and dry. Chief among them is the U.S. government itself, the company’s biggest creditor, which lent the firm $2.65 billion for two massive infrastructure projects, the Solana solar plant in Arizona and the Mojave Solar Project in California…
    Those projects are now at risk of default, along with three other solar and wind farms owned by the company. If Abengoa ends up going into liquidation, rate-payers and/or taxpayers could be left holding the tab…
    http://wolfstreet.com/2016/02/14/deloitte-spain-to-pay-for-audit-sins-bankrupt-bankia-abengoa/

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  • #
    Bulldust

    At the other end of the spectrum, climate change may increase the cost of transatlantic flights!

    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35533761

    Sadly this is another published study … they “found” things based on modelling. RIP real science.

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    pat

    ABSOLUTE MUST-READ, ESPECIALLY IF U’VE SEEN THE MSM PROGRAMS BOASTING ABOUT THIS PROJECT:

    17 Feb: Guardian: Masdar’s zero-carbon dream could become world’s first green ghost town
    Developers have abandoned their original goal of building the world’s first zero-carbon city in the UAE desert. With completion originally scheduled for this year, just how much of the once-revolutionary vision has actually been realised
    by Suzanne Goldenberg in Masdar City:
    Years from now passing travellers may marvel at the grandeur and the folly of the futuristic landscape on the edges of Abu Dhabi: the barely occupied office blocks, the deserted streets, the vast tracts of undeveloped land and – most of all – the abandoned dream of a zero-carbon city.
    Masdar City, when it was first conceived a decade ago, was intended to revolutionise thinking about cities and the built environment.
    Now the world’s first planned sustainable city – the marquee project of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) plan to diversify the economy from fossil fuels – could well be the world’s first green ghost town…
    “We are not going to try to shoehorn renewable energy into the city just to justify a definition created within a boundary,” said Chris Wan, the design manager for Masdar City…
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/16/masdars-zero-carbon-dream-could-become-worlds-first-green-ghost-town

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    • #
      Robber

      Reminds me of a Yes Minister episode where Sir Humphrey reported he had found the perfect hospital that was achieving all its adminsitration performance metrics.
      Only issue for the minister – it had no patients.

      30

  • #
    pat

    peak exaggeration indeed!

    16 Feb: Treehugger: Lloyd Alter: Has Masdar turned into a ghost town?
    Sound utopic? Brian Merchant visited it in 2011 and called it “the enigmatic, controversial, and pioneering ultra-low carbon city.” He concluded by calling it “a first class experiment; or it will be as soon as more of the tenants move in.”…
    It was a glorious dream, designed by Foster and Partners, but less than 5 percent of it has been built, and it is barely inhabited…
    In 2009 Jesse Fox wrote in these pages that Masdar “will serve as an incubator for the next generation of sustainable technology breakthroughs, transform the supply chain and change the way we look at cities on a global level.” Alas, it was not to be…
    http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/has-masdar-turned-ghost-town.html

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  • #

    To Raymond. Please, when you are “setting the climate”, don’t set it to the 1930s. Oh, and no 1890s. 1870s are out (what about that 1878 round-the-world drought!). Can’t think of a period in the 1700s or 1600s I’d want. Maybe some of the warmer patches or the 1400s and 1500? Er, maybe not…1540’s Big Sun could have Europeans looking back fondly on 2003.

    1300s are totally out of the question (duh); before 1300, not so bad…

    Say, Raymond…maybe you should just set the climate to the present date.

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    • #

      Hi Raymond, if u are back peddling, yer might take us back
      ter the Medieval Warming Era, not too bad fer serfs.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Some of the summers in England in the 1730’s were quite warm. Some still remain in the list of 10 warmest summers (since 1690).
      Pepys reported 1660 summers as ‘unprecedented’ i.e. such a summer that no one alive can remember. So too 1665 and 1666 warm summers.

      30

    • #

      I quite liked the 1970s. With all the storming and splish-splash we had a string of years where much of the continent forgot the whole drought/fire/heat thing. Then came the Heathcote fires and 1983 El nino…and we got to remember again.

      Mind you, one didn’t want to be around Africa in the 1970s. I wonder if Raymond can tailor his climate-setting so Africa and California don’t parch while Australia is awash. Raymond is a very clever intellectual and an author of gold standard text books…I’m sure he can come up with something.

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  • #

    Look I know this way off topic, and I can see you all right now thinking ….. well, that’s par for the course for you Tony, and I also might think that not very many of you would be aware of this.

    Have you wondered why there are so many retirements from Federal Politics in the run up to this election, and so far, it’s running at around the average multiplied by at least five plus, if you go back a while, all announcing that they will not re-contest their seats at this election, and it’s from all sides of the political fence, sort of being done in a staggered sequence, so as not to draw too much attention to it.

    I, umm, seriously wonder if it has anything to do with, umm Superannuation. You see, after this election, the parliamentary super rules change to what the rest of us have in place. Previously, politicians having served the minimum could take their extrapolated Super as a lump sum based on their time served, and not wait until they are 55, or have to take it as a fortnightly payment.

    And you should see how much a parliamentary super plan is.

    No wonder they’re, umm, wanting to spend more time with their families.

    Tony.

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    • #
      ianl8888

      Yes …

      And there is also a thought bubble with some background evidence (eg. the Murray Report) that “lump sums” will become extinct by regulation. One will have to accept the money in an approved annuity – heavens, there may even be some left for the Treasury if one dies a bit early

      If it happens, that ought to ignite an A-bomb or two

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  • #
    handjive

    But can it measure surface air temperatures …

    Europe launches Sentinel-3A satellite to help track global warming

    Europe has launched a satellite it is hoped will help predict climate change patterns as well as improve everyday weather forecasting.

    Sentinel-3B, its twin satellite, is scheduled for launch next year.

    Data from all the Sentinels are used worldwide and are free of charge for all users.

    20

  • #
    KinkyKeith

    It was, is and always will be about the money.

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  • #
    pat

    16 Feb: Scientific American: Reuters: Lawrence Hurley: Scalia’s Death Boosts Legal Chances for Obama’s Climate Plan, Advocates Say
    Clean Power Plan may survive if appeals court upholds the rule and Supreme Court is evenly divided
    A vote to block the Obama administration’s ambitious climate regulation was one of Antonin Scalia’s last acts as a Supreme Court justice. His sudden death may have opened a new path to the rule’s survival…
    The sudden shift has given a boost to the supporters of the emissions rule…
    “Last week, the Clean Power Plan was basically dead,” said Brian Potts, a lawyer with the Foley & Lardner law firm who represents companies on environmental regulatory issues. “But with Scalia’s death, everything has changed.”…
    “There are still no guarantees, but the Clean Power Plan faces much better odds now than it did on Friday,” said Jack Lienke, a lawyer with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, which backs the regulation…
    One of the Democratic appointees is Sri Srinivasan, a judge many legal experts see as a leading candidate for President Barack Obama to nominate to replace Scalia…
    If Srinivasan were appointed, he would have to step aside on the Clean Power Plan case because of his involvement in the case at the appellate level…
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scalia-s-death-boosts-legal-chances-for-obama-s-climate-plan-advocates-say/

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    pat

    TonyfromOz –

    a week or two ago someone sent me an email stating something like 60 politicians would be retiring because of this change in Super rules for the pollies. don’t know where the info came from – there was no source – so I just deleted it. today I tried looking for a source re the change in Super rules – failed – do you have a link?

    so far, the MSM certainly isn’t making the connection (lol):

    17 Feb: news.com.au: Malcolm Farr: Members of all major parties standing down as next election create headaches
    PARLIAMENT is looking like a departure lounge with a long list of MPs complicating the coming election by announcing they will not recontest their seats.
    So far the national tally of departures is 13. Close to nine per cent of sitting House of Representatives members will be out of the House before a vote is cast…
    But nobody is closing off the list yet.
    Party leaders call it regeneration. In private, party officials call it a headache…ETC
    http://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/members-of-all-major-parties-standing-down-as-next-election-create-headaches/news-story/375ef4699d10508b6a34c1d598d432b4

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    pat

    some may remember this one I posted recently:

    10 Feb: ChinaDaily: Chris Davis: Why spending – not saving – will help make China greener
    It makes sense to worry that weaning China off of king coal will lead to an economic slowdown.
    But a new study – co-written by an MIT professor and scholars at the Institute of Energy, Environment, and Economy, at Tsinghua University in Beijing – shows that China’s newly announced plans to cap and trade carbon can reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions signifi cantly without hobbling economic growth at all…
    http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2016-02/10/content_23448354.htm

    today I found this – some of the same names from Tsinghua, plus plenty of Aussies in the mix!

    PDF: 4 pages: Sept 2014: 2014 Tsinghua–ANU Forum on Climate and Energy Policy Research
    At this forum, collaborative research on current issues of China’s climate and energy policy is presented and discussed, in a dialogue between Chinese and Australian researchers.
    The Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy and the Institute of Energy, Environment and Economy at Tsinghua University convene the forum, with involvement by a number of leading Chinese and Australian universities.
    The forum and some of the research presented is supported by a grant from the Australian government.
    PROGRAM
    WELCOME AND KEYNOTE SPEECHES
    Chair: Prof Xiliang Zhang
    Prof Xiliang Zhang (Tsinghua University)
    Welcome
    Dr Frank Jotzo (ANU)…
    Prof Jiankun He (Tsinghua University)
    Energy revolution and low carbon development in China…
    EMISSIONS TRADING
    Chair: Dr Frank Jotzo…
    https://ccep.crawford.anu.edu.au/files/uploads/ccep_crawford_anu_edu_au/2014-09/tsinghua-anu_forum_program_sep2014.pdf

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    TdeF

    “if we last long enough, technology will make it easy to block enough sunlight to save the Earth from a runaway, buying us another 4 billion years of habitability”

    The ideas and attitudes underlying this nonsense are worrying, especially from a physicist.

    Technology. Stuff. Now we are going to block the sun with a giant parasol in a mere 500 million years.

    However it means in his mind the world will go on in much the same way forever. Everything will stop with our perfect sea level, our perfect temperature, our perfect climate and our perfect way of life. Things must be good in the Climate Change department! Perhaps he should nick down to the zoology people and learn about evolution. Or to the geology department and work out where England will be in 500 million years or for that matter any of the continents. Will we need better sunglasses for our white dwarf sun?

    So all they have to do is stop evolution, species extinction, climate changes, sea level rises, erosion, tectonic plate movement, mountain formation, glaciation and meteor strikes and get a few more Italian restaurants in the neighbourhood. Heaven on earth for billions of years until the end of the universe. The climate in Oxford must be better than I remember.

    No wonder the whole global warming thing exists. These nutty people want to stop the world from changing at all. Ever. Good luck with those asteroids and tectonic plates. Make sure to stock up on a few good movies. The robot in the carpark is named Marvin. He is depressed.

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      “if we last long enough, technology will make it easy to block enough sunlight to save the Earth from a runaway, buying us another 4 billion years of habitability”

      I guess that sounds the death knell for solar power then eh!

      Why am I reminded of cake and eat it too!

      Tony.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      TdeF
      “So all they have to do is stop evolution, species extinction, climate changes, sea level rises, erosion, tectonic plate movement, mountain formation, glaciation and meteor strikes and…”
      …maybe we should study the nematodes more…

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    pat

    this was quite interesting:

    host previews program by saying James Srodes will ask how much oil does it take to make a wind turbine!

    no he doesn’t. his question concerns solar panels, as indicated in the summary:

    Srodes begins 12.39mins in until about 17mins30secs:

    AUDIO: 17 Feb: BBC Business Daily: Aberdeen: Life After Oil
    And Business Daily’s regular contributor James Srodes, an American author and journalist, wonders how much oil is needed to make a solar panel.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03j0k6m

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    • #
      Owen Morgan

      Good luck with “renewables” in Aberdeen. Yeah, there’s plenty of wind. It’s usually blowing a gale; in other words, too much wind for a turbine. A late friend of mine, who was a general practitioner in Shetland, but was brought up in Aberdeen, used to joke that he’d realise, about an hour after arriving in The Granite City, that he didn’t really need to be wearing five pullovers any more. Three would be quite adequate.

      As for sunlight, well, you certainly get lots of daylight in Aberdeen in the summer, but not necessarily so much sunlight.

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    pat

    just noticed SBS 10.05 – 11.45pm tonight has a French documentary, “Banking Nature”.

    Icarus Films: Banking Nature
    A film by Denis Delestrac and Sandrine Feydel
    In Uganda, the film introduces meet men who measure trees to determine how much carbon they store—and a banker from the German firm that sells the resulting carbon credits. Meanwhile, in Brazil, steel giant Vale destroys rainforest, replaces it with tree plantations, and reaps the benefits of environmental credits.
    Once we start measuring the value of nature, we can start turning it into securitized financial products. BANKING NATURE asks whether can we trust the very same people whose management of the mortgage market nearly led to a global economic collapse to safeguard nature by turning it into financial instruments for speculators?…
    Award Winner, Life Sciences Film Festival
    ***Environmental Film Nominee, Byron Bay Film Festival…etc
    http://icarusfilms.com/new2015/nat.html

    ***promising sign that it was only a “nominee” at Byron!

    22 Jan: Redd-Monitor: Chris Lang: “Banking Nature”, a new documentary about putting a price on nature
    Here are a few quotations:
    ◾“We use nature because she’s valuable, but we lose nature because she’s free.” Pavan Sukhdev, CEO of GIST Advisory (former Managing Director at Deutsche Bank)…
    ◾“If we invest money in protecting nature, we’ll earn very, very high financial returns.” Mark Tercek, CEO of The Nature Conservancy (former investment banker at Goldman Sachs)…
    http://www.redd-monitor.org/2015/01/22/banking-nature-a-new-documentary-about-putting-a-price-on-nature/

    links to an April 2015 Redd-Monitor/Chris Lang review in the comments.

    could be worth watching.

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    doubtingdave

    Pierrhumbert is a member of what some refer to as ” the Borg collective ” , so wouldnt it be more appropriate if he named the new epoch as the beginning of the cyborg age . Extrasensory perception is fast becoming a reality , due to recent advances in technology , we can now pick up a mobile phone and communicate our thoughts to almost anyone anywhere on earth , how long before a smart phone type device can be implanted into your Cranium ,” hands free anyone ” they are already talking up the possibility of putting memory chips into childrens brains in order to give them instant recall of their school lessons etc , so maybe Raymond ,who is a fully paid up member of the alarmist Hive , should change his name to Pierrhumborg .

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    Renato

    Pierrhumbert writes,
    However, if we last long enough, technology will make it easy to block enough sunlight to save the Earth from a runaway, buying us another 4 billion years of habitability

    Well, I suppose one day it might be easy to put a planetary umbrella between the sun and the earth – and keep it locked in the right position somehow relative to the earth. Or it might be even easier to put a whole planetary sphere completely around the earth (solves all sorts of planetary dynamics problems).

    However, I suspect that in that distant future period, it might be a whole lot easier to use plain old 1950s nuclear rocket technology, and just move somewhere else. Mars is an obvious place to get an extra few hundred million years living time, before it too fries. But, depending on how fast Project Orion type nuclear rockets can go (I read anywhere between a tenth to a third the speed of light)who knows? Other star systems may not be out of the question.
    Regards.

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    ATheoK

    “Four Billion years to Sol’s red giant phase.
    500 million years — Sun enters a bright phase.”

    Oh! The horrors, especially with rough approximations regarding the age of the sun.

    Meanwhile, in approximately 3.75 million years, our Milky Way galaxy begins a collision with the Andromeda Galaxy. Think of a Camry hitting a full size pickup truck.

    There are assumptions, based on genetics, that ‘modern’ man homo sapiens came into existence some 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. There is better evidence that ‘modern’ man barely survived a near extinction event approximately 75,000 years ago.

    Much as many other critters on Earth, mankind has prospered on an extremely short geological cycle, a mere blink of time. Surviving another 100,000 years should be our goal and then to wonder how we, as fragile Earth creatures, will manage to survive collision on a galactic scale.

    Survive that, and we should have no troubles working out solutions to a bright Sol or Sol’s passing into red giant stages.

    Surviving the next 100,000 years, though, requires innovation, energy and true science.

    CO2 mumbo jumbo is passé as civilized nations again start to closely monitor several large aggressive communist states and many smaller warlike disturbed countries.

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      KinkyKeith

      War

      It doesn’t seem to want to leave us alone.

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      Wayne Job

      It was according to Sumerian texts closer to 300000 thousands years ago,created by a female geneticist as slaves to help in the mining of gold. This was to be used in a fine form spread into their upper atmosphere to protect their home planet from catastrophe, global warming maybe from an over energetic sun. One and a half million clay tablets were found buried and the translation is accurate, I am not making this stuff up, do some research. We appeared suddenly, when we had achieved their purpose they tried to destroy us. Some one in their mob had compassion and warned a select few, thus came down to us the story of Noah. Hybrid mongrels we are a bit of Earth DNA and a bit of something from somewhere else.

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    Latest book and documentary.
    ‘The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science’.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPzpPXuASY8
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO08Hhjes_0
    http://www.drtimball.com

    Debate between Dr Tim Ball and Elizabeth May
    Scroll down to Ian Jessop part 1
    http://www.cfax1070.com/Podcasts

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