Anthropogenic global warming is the biggest hoax since the Cardiff Giant! Anyone with any science back ground at all can see that most climate scientists are not following true scientific processes to reach their conclusions. They use the results of computer models as fact ignoring the garbage in garbage out rules of computing.
Dr. Roy Spencer’s new book, The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists
Dr Spencer has been criticizing climate scientists for years for their lack of understanding of cloud cover. Computer climate models all use the same assumptions where they assign an average amount of cloud cover determined through statistics. Their insufficient knowledge caused them to make assumptions that are not valid.
Another mistake that climate scientists have made is to assume the Earth is very sensitive to heating or cooling by external sources. Recent satellite data shows the Earth is quite insensitive. That poses the question of how can a trace gas like Carbon Dioxide (0.038% of the atmosphere) have any major effect on the climate. Dr Spencer actually states that “reducing greenhouse gas emissions – will someday seem as outdated as using leeches to cure human illnesses.”
While it will take concentration to read and understand the importance of this book, it is worth a read. Nearly half is references. During the read, remember that ill informed politicians are currently spending your tax dollars to prevent a phenomenon of which they have little or no knowledge. Politicians are using AGW to further their political agenda, and we tax payers pay for it!
Something else interesting that I actually found on a comedy website of all places. Turns out we were generally only half right on glacier formation, which means ice core samples and satallite surveys may not be so reliable. Glaciers can grow from the bottom up when over water which could confuse dating and other estimate bassed on ice depth.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/antarctica-growing-from-the-bottom-up-110303.html
I think that we can agree that man might have some localized effects on climate CHANGE, in that where I live, just off of the Gulf Coast, I have seen the effects of both the “Urban Heat Island” effect,and the clear-cutting of trees, which I deplore. But while we might not cut down so many trees, we will still affect the LOCAL weather when you sprread concrete on an area the size of Houston.
I live north of Houston, and I used to see the thunderstorms build along the Gulf, and then move into land during the heat of the day.
Now, when these storms encounter the added heat of the concrete reflecting heat up into the atmosphere, they dump the rain on Houston, and it rarely makes it up here, to the Piney Woods area of Texas.
In that sense, yes, we are affecting the climate- but unless there is a drastic epidemic, there will be more people, not less, so I fail to see how we can mitigate the UHI effect here.
Perhaps if we located some companies to other places, but that would be an economic question.
Unfortunately, “environmentalism” has become a religion and no amount of factual information will persuade the true believers that their god doesn’t exist. The late Michael Crichton wrote about this in Environmentalism as Religion
I believe his speech on this subject is on YouTube.
Michael Chichton was a man who died long before he should have. He was a voice of reason among celebrities.
Randy I saw your writing the other day and figured you should release a reader post on the subject and you did, look at that. I remember that woman who thought it would be wrong to invade Afghanistan because of environmental reasons, don’t remember her name but I think she was in congress. The global warming philosophy is clouding peoples judgment, in dangerous ways. Its not a religion, its a cult. A bad one.
John Cooper,
Randy, good point there, I also believe that MOTHER NATURE has more flexibility than the humans who are trying to condradict her way of doing because they don’t know why she is giving the EARTH
SO MANY DIFFERENTS VARIATIONS OF CLIMATE always to respond to the fluctuations and problems,
occuring du to facts not even explored yet by those trying to sell us their beliefs so banals compare to the diversity that MOTHER NATURE IS CONSTANTLY SHOWING with HER WISDOM ESTABLISHED SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE CREATION, DONE BY A MASTERFULL ARTIST GOD THAT IS.
thank you
It’s a “CULT” with a “GREEN” agenda of “MONEY AND POLITICAL WORLD POWER”!!!!!!
@John Cooper: Talk about hitting the nail on the head….
When I was a young boy in up state NY, I’m 75 now, my day would tell me stories of the Cardiff Giant. His point being that there are people who would believe and fall for the most outlandish hoaxes. Like the global warming scam the Cardiff Giant was exposed as a hoax but it still was displayed by the hucksters and the rubes still paid their hard earned coins to view it.
@randy:
First of all:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/04/review-of-spencers-great-global-warming-blunder/
Second of all, I think that people who assert — absolutely, positively — that AGW is a “hoax” are every bit as bad as those (e.g. Al Gore) who assert that AGW is “settled science.” In point of fact, it’s a theory, and it’s a theory that true scientists may criticize, but do not dismiss out of hand, they way that it is dismissed out of hand by political bloggers.
One of the true heroes of the anti-AGW movement is MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, who critiques many AGW arguments, but doesn’t dismiss them out of hand. In a famous offer to bet on the world’s future temperature, Lindzen was willing to take the “under,” but wanted to receive 2:1 odds.
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2006/08/30/mits_inconvenient_scientist/
Likewise, Richard Muller (a UC Berkeley physicist) “set out to disprove” global warming, but his data came back in support of it.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/04/local/la-me-climate-berkeley-20110404
I personally think that the appropriate way to approach this controversy is from a scientific perspective and not from a political perspective. Or rather, discuss it from a rational scientific and political perspective.
i.e.
1. What is the probability that global warming is occurring? (on a scale of zero percent to 100%)?
2. What is the probability that the global warming is caused by human activity (scale of zere to 100)?
3. What is the probability that AGW, if it is occurring, will cause a serious problem (zero to 100)?
4. If a serious problem were to occur, what would be the magnitude of the least of the problem? The worst of the problem?
5. What is the probability that atmospheric CO2 is increasing?
6. What is the probability that humans are the cause of the CO2 increase?
7. What are the potential environmental and health implications of this CO2 increase, divorced from any climate effects, per se?
8. What would be the actual economic cost of mitigating the above?
9. What the economic and social disadvantages or advantages in mitigating the undisputed increase in atmospheric CO2, even if the climate and/or health impact were to turn out to be trivial?
The point is that CERTITUDE is POISON. In either direction. It’s neither “settled science” that AGW exists nor that AGW doesn’t exist.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
“Anyone with any science back ground at all can see that most climate scientists are not following true scientific processes to reach their conclusions.”
But they are getting their papers peer reviewed and published. That is where the trouble lies, the alarmists can claim ACC is real because the bad science is getting published and going unchallenged.
Where I live many small towns are disapearing, the populations are dropping because the kids are leaving for the big city. These communities are shrinking, but the local cities are growing. Perhaps the small towns disapearing offsets the increases in cities. In other words the falling UHI effect of many small towns might offsett the increasing UHI from large growing cities.
It wasn’t until ”ClimateGate” broke that we first learned how so-called peer-reviews were done.
The AGW’ers had a cadre of buddies who would glowingly ”review” whatever one of them put out.
If a AGW doubter tried to publish he/she could not get a ”peer” to do the review at all.
In other words, AGW was, in essence, consensus science.
And Michael Crichton gave a great speech at Cal Tech about that.
Aliens Cause Global Warming: A Caltech Lecture
by Michael Crichton
A key point:
2003
@nan: You quote a 2003 Michael Crichton lecture. To be fair and balanced, here’s a 2004 rejoinder:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/michael-crichtons-state-of-confusion/
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, climate change is a science but is not treated in a scientific manner. That is what Dr Spencer is alluding to. You fall right into the AGW trap by using a consensus instead of scientific processes and data. If you want to look at the storied history of consensus science, ask Galaleo and the folks who studied science then. The consensus was that the Sun revolved around the Earth. Galaleo proved through the use of scientific methods that the reverse was true.
In the middle ages it was consensus that blood letting was a sound medical procedure. Are you using that consensus science in your practice? Read Dr Spencer’s book before you trot out all of the same tired references you have used before. Read the references he quotes and refers to in the book. Try to understand his point that climate scientists are not using scientific methods and are making conclusions based on the desires of the funding agent rather than real science. Then we can talk!
@klem: Yes, they are getting their papers published. Are they falsifying their data? If they are not, why will the University of Virginia not release documents generated by Michael Mann to garner grants? That information should be available under the freedom of information act but the Virginia Attorney General has had to sue the liberal university for access to those papers. If there is nothing to hide, why are these papers not made public?
Yes, those “climategate emails were damning, but people like Larry dismissed them out of hand. I wonder why? The emails told me that much of the scientific community is publishing papers that are not really peer reviewed. The once respected journals they are publishing in today are not much if any better than the yellow journalism papers at the grocery store check out!
@Buffalobob: The Cardiff Giant was one of the stories I read as a young man. My mother always pointed out that the side shows at the county fair were also just a hoax. They were only out to get your money!
According to dictionary.com a hoax is something intended to deceive or defraud. Now if AGW climate scientists have never considered that climate change is a natural phenomenon, but make claims of AGW to garner grants for further study isn’t that a hoax or fraud? A true scientist would have already looked at natural climate change and showed proof one way or another. There is no money in proving that climate change is natural, so no one addresses it. Seems like that meets the definition of fraud or a hoax.
@randy: I’m not talking “consensus.” Obviously, there’s no consensus. But that doesn’t mean that there’s not a lot of data. For example, CO2 is undeniably increasing in the atmosphere. Number two, it is now higher than it’s been in the past 1,000,000 year history of homo sapiens. Number three, there is a lot of good, solid information to indicate that the earth is, indeed, warming. That much is pretty solid. Now, where it gets gray is whether or not CO2 is contributing to the temperature rise. No one has proven it; yet no one has disproven it, as even critics such as Dr. Lindzen acknowledge.
As I wrote, I’m against certitude, in general.
No, I don’t plan on reading the book. It’s really not my field of expertise and it doesn’t have anything to do with my work. I read general reviews in the lay press. When something that looks like it’s new and important comes out, I read what reviewers have to say about it. So I read your blog about the book and then I read the other side of the story. I am confident that I know enough not to accept that AGW is a “hoax,” just as I don’t accept that AGW is “settled science.”
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
The fact is, that most of those people, like myself, who disbelieve in AGW, do so from a scientific standpoint, as the data presented and used most often violated several accepted, unwritten rules, concerning the gathering and presenting of the data. Those who insist on it come at it from the standpoint of politicized science. You cannot claim a conclusion, and then force the data to conform to it. You cannot claim a conclusion first, so that you gain grants to support it. You cannot reach the conclusion, before you’ve gathered the data. And that is exactly what the AGW proponents have done, and are continuing to do, and then they stand behind the podium of “science” to present their case.
If science were first, foremost, and alone, in the concerns of the scientists studying global warming and it’s cause, that “hockey stick” graph would never have been presented to the world as scientific fact. AGW theory, in today’s world, is as close to ‘wagging the dog’ as I’ve seen.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
That is not exactly true, Larry, and is a simple proclamation by the AGW proponents that is not based on scientific fact, using scientific methods.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/
You said;
Those quotes, and links, that I provided pretty much discount your statement there. As I said in the above post, one cannot claim a conclusion, and then force the data to conform to it, using accepted scientific methods and principles. Those ‘scientists’ most closely aligned with AGW, did just that. They came up with a theory, and then reached a conclusion, and after that they picked the data out, massaged it, to conform to that conclusion. A real scientist starts from a theory, with no conclusion reached, and gathers and interprets the data to see if their theory is correct. That wasn’t done.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, who measured CO2 1,000,000 years ago? There are ice cores that show CO2 has been much higher than today. Please tell me what the normal temperature of the Earth is and I can tell you if it is warming or not. No one can! Show me the scientific evidence? Tree rings? It has been discredited. Yes, there is a lot of data, but if it has not been processed using acceptable scientific methods, it is as good as the newspaper I start my fire with!
Lay people are just that. They are not experts. Do you support “lay” people who use faith healing to combat cancer? Listening to lay people and lay publications get you someone’s opinion not fact! For the life of me, I can not understand why someone who has achieved the success in life that you have would listen to a quack ant think him reliable.
@johngalt: you are correct in your analysis. What Spencer is trying to show people is that the climate change scientists are hardly that. They are only con men slicking tax payers out of their money. If they were honest in their research, they likely would not have a job!
@Randy:
Ain’t it the truth, Randy!
I wonder would cold, suffering Brits like it better if they could grow grapes for wine more easily?
Would Greenlanders like it better if they could graze sheep and grow crops again?
Would the Inuit people like it better if their forests were a bit warmer, longer?
It used to be all of those things for all of those people…..once.
Were they being selfish?
Is it someone else’s turn?
Who sets the agenda?
@randy: I didn’t say “lay people,” I said “lay press” [meaning articles written for lay individuals by scientists, which is precisely what the Roy Spencer book is].
Regarding global temperature increase:
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/apr/04/local/la-me-climate-berkeley-20110404
Regarding CO2 increase:
http://www.cobybeck.com/illconsidered/images/Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide.png
http://www.climatechoices.org/new-site/pix_cc/graph-for-web.gif
- Larry Weisenthal
@Randy:
Well, the fact of the matter is that CO2 measurements mean very little if one shows that temperature changes precede CO2 level changes. The effect of the ocean itself of CO2 levels in the atmosphere dwarf the entirety of the known animal kingdom on CO2 levels, let alone a crackpot theory that man alone is the cause of it.
If the grants for the study of climatology were given based on merit, and not a politicized conclusion presented before the research was even started, I highly doubt that AGW would have any support within the “scientific community”.
@john:
The theory:
What happened in the past isn’t relevant to what’s happening now, because what’s happening now is unprecedented. In the past there would be some “natural” warming event, which would heat up the oceans, releasing water-dissolved CO2 in the same way that heating up a glass of beer releases CO2. This released CO2 then acted as a greenhouse gas, amplifying and prolonging the heating period, until some other “natural” phenomenon (e.g. cyclic variation in the earth’s orbital distance from the sun) interrupted the heating cycle and triggered an ice age.
What’s happening now is that we are releasing, in only a period of 200 years, massive quantities of carbon which have been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years. i.e. this time the CO2 accumulation precedes the warming period.
P.S. To my knowledge, neither Michael Crichton nor Roy Spencer ever challenged the claim that atmospheric CO2 is increasingly rapidly and that man is the proximate cause of this increase.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Uh..oh. We’ve managed to insult Dr. Larry’s religion. If America were Great Britain, it would probably be a crime.
@John Cooper:
My “religion” is that I merely believe that AGW is unproven, and that I fail to believe that it rises to the level of a “big hoax,” perpetrated by a global conspiracy of disreputable scientists, who will stop at nothing, in the interests of maintaining their funding?
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
I actually read the replies to this intersting book review. I was particularly keen on the “Climate Moderates.” You know, those ‘enlightened’ middle-of-the-roaders’ who can see AGW as possible but not YET proven – both sides have validity?!?
I wonder if any of the proponents and agnostics on AGW have ever thought of the debate in this fashion…
If you give me enough of your tax money, I can control the weather.
That’s IS what the debate is all about. Stop CO2 emissions, and the weather is back under human control. Yeah, Right.
Those people remind me of the three scientists in the “In Like Flint” movie who conjured up rain by drilling into the earth’s core. Just cracking up laughing at their unmitigated Chutzpah!
@pat (#29):
It’s not a nonsensical statement.
IF human-generated CO2 is responsible for rising temperatures, then reducing human-generated CO2 should mitigate these temperature rises. It’s not at all absurd.
The questions outlined in my comment #9 are the questions which need to be addressed before there are radical changes in taxation and regulation. I agree that we are not “there” yet. But I am strongly supportive of California’s current experiment with effectively ratifying the Kyoto Treaty. We’ll get the chance to evaluate the costs and benefits (e.g. technology advances), which will be of benefit to future national energy decisions.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, Dr Spencer is not a lay person. He is a noted science in his own right. Listen to the people who are getting their bread buttered.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: larry, when you say “too my knowledge” you are assuming you are the worlds expert? Both have criticized the notion that CO2 caused global warming. Did you even read this post?
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry do you know how ignorant ratifying the Koyota treaty is? It is like signing up to pay billions of dollars to fill up a bucket that has huge holesin the bottom. Koyoto did nothing to reduce the CO2 on Earth. It only moved CO2 generating industry (those that create jobs) from signatary countries to those who were not. It didn’t even address world CO2 levels only spreading the wealth around. The last AGW meeting produced actual statements that spreading the wealth around was the purpose. (Does spreading the wealth around sound familiar?)
@Randy: Spencer is a scientist, but his book was directed at a lay audience. That’s what I was talking about. I do not read original peer reviewed climate science studies, published in Nature. I do read original peer reviewed biological science studies, published in Nature. However, I read climate science articles published by scientists and intended for a lay audience. These latter types of articles are not published in peer review scientific journals. They are published in venues (blogs, magazine articles, newspaper articles, books, etc.) intended for a lay audience, as in the case of Spencer’s recent book.
Neither Crichton nor Spencer ever, to my knowledge, challenged the claims that CO2 levels are dramatically increasing nor that humans are the proximate cause of this. As I have repeatedly said, those facts are not controversial. Nor is the finding that there has been global warming during the last century highly controversial. What is controversial is the theory that it is the human-caused increase in atmospheric CO2 which is causing the warming. This latter remains controversial.
The reason why it was a good thing for California to ratify Kyoto is not that it will alter the earth’s climate, in a meaningful way. But it will give very valuable information on the economic and technologic impacts of controlling CO2 emissions. This will be very valuable information for future policy decisions, no matter how the climate science shakes out.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Here’s another thing to consider, about what has kept AGW alive for so long: we are bombarded with narratives saying skeptic scientists are corrupt. Since those all looked to me to be superficial guilt-by-association accusations, I ignored them for the longest time, but one day I decided to look into it. Long story short, the accusation is baseless, and stems from about a dozen enviro-activists back in the mid ’90s. Please see my Breitbart article from last November, “How an Enviro-Advocacy Group Propped Up Global Warming in the MSM” and click on my name above for my complete collection of writings on this specific problem.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, you cannot claim that what is happening today is unprecedented. To do so, one would need exacting data for all of the preceding years in which man has walked the earth, and that data would have to prove, conclusively, that only the industrial age of man has put such massive amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, and on top of that, that CO2 is responsible for the warming.
You, yourself, stated in your post that natural warming trends, which heated the oceans, is what released the CO2 into the atmosphere. Assuming that were true, which is postulated by many scientists, the cause is the warming, the result is higher CO2 levels. Yet, the AGW crowd says the opposite is true, that the cause is the higher CO2 levels, and the warming is the result. Which is it?
There is, as well, those who state that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere would have an overall cooling effect on earth, rather than the warming that the AGW crowd says is what happens.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/06/physicist-cooling-effect-of-co2-is-100x.html
Now, when discussing CO2 in the world, we must discuss in terms of emission sources and sinks. For example, humans, and our activity, are sources only, while land and ocean are both sources and sinks. And, even without any industrial, or man-made process emitting CO2, we humans would still be a source, albeit not as large. Estimates for human produced CO2 runs around the 6 Billion ton figure, annually. Land use, which includes plants, animals, volcano activity, and the like emits 439 Billion tons, while it takes in, or acts as a sink, for 450 Billion tons. The oceans emit 332 Billion tons while taking in 338 Billion tons or so. Based on those numbers, humans emit roughly .75% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere annually. It is not far-fetched to assume, based on the CO2 sink abilities of land and ocean, that our measely little 6 Billion tons would easily be taken in, without a net positive effect on CO2 increases caused by human industrial and CO2 emitting processes.
So if we follow the cycle, humans emit very small quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere, but the massive sink capacities of land and ocean make up for our emissions. However, if a warming effect takes place, such as from increased solar activity, the oceans emit more CO2 than they take in, causing an overall net atmospheric increase in CO2 quantity. That CO2, in the atmosphere, causes a cooling effect, which we have been in since 1998. Slightly higher CO2 levels will have a positive impact on plant life too, as CO2 is one of the needed ingredients in photosynthesis, the process by which plant life takes in CO2 and emits O2(a process that is reversed at night, although not in the same quantity).
And, related to the previous discussion about CO2 sources and sinks, there is a valid argument that states that deforestation is the cause of the increases in CO2 atmospheric levels. In 2003, it was estimated that deforestation adds 2 Billion tons annually, but that isn’t the big deal of deforestation. Loss of trees and plant life takes away from the CO2 sink capacity of land mass, so that while CO2 is released from the deforestation, the total capacity for CO2 to be absorbed is reduced, which is why the levels have been rising so fast.
Larry, there is much to be concerned with, regarding human activity that causes destruction in our world, but the CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning processes is a minor one, and one that we should not be making large economic impacting decisions on, such as a Kyoto Treaty, or Carbon credit legislation. And the people pushing this are nothing short of con-men who stand to make fortunes by supporting such falsehoods.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
No, Larry, that very fact is controversial, otherwise there would be no push against the AGW crowd. How can you not understand that? Numerous scientists have spoken out, in lectures, trade magazines, and research papers, that human caused CO2 emissions are not the cause, or, are not scientifically shown to be the cause, of CO2 atmospheric level increases. I have given you numerous links, and there are hundreds more out there, that dispute that very claim. By rule, if there are contentions with a theory, then is IS controversial, and not what you keep stating.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, there have been many periods in history where the CO2 levels exceeded .038% of the atmosphere. No one has proved using a scientific method that CO2 causes global warming. You really need to understand the science and stop listening to the lay people and actually read the science. Computer models do not make science. They create theories that need to be proven. Remember the Spotted Owl? Thousands of jobs were lost in the lumber industry to protect the owl. The theory is that the spotted owl can only live in old growth forests. So the environmental lobby succeeded in placing old growth forests off limits to logging. In fact, the Spotted Owl doesn’t care how old the forest is. He just needs a hollow tree carved out by a woodpecker. Old growth forests are much less diversified of animal and plant species than 2nd growth forests. The real agenda of the environmentalists was to stop logging of old growth forests. Now, these old trees die and rot on the forest floor giving back CO2. People are out of jobs and less CO2 is sequestered. This is another hoax that could take up several posts.
Larry, take some time off from posting on AGW issues and read some real scientific papers.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, Dr Spencer oriented his book to “lay” people because they are the voters and bill payers for the hoax. The purveyors of the hoax, Al Gore and his buddies to include the in the UN have placed their unproven data into media that has actually been playing in our schools. Try to pick up a news paper with a liberal twist where there isn’t some reference to AGW. The left picked the battle field. Dr Spencer is only playing on it! Read the book Larry!! Or stick your head back in the sand!
@johngalt: JG you are correct with your post. Observations are that CO2 levels increase one to two hundred years after the warming trend occurs. This has been pointed out to Larry for several years. He fails to understand the importance of warming driving CO2 levels instead of the CO2 levels driving warming.
What is most perplexing about Larry is that he has a science background, yet he excuses those who fail to follow scientific principles and methods.
Randy, I must disagree. Climate is a science: Climate Change is a political ploy. People who study climate are involved in science. People who study climate change collect data to prove a hypothesis and that is not science at all. That is a way to get grant money and stipends from GE. Whatever validity the science of claiming CO2 has been lost in the politicizing of the compound. Carbon and Oxygen, the two elements that are required to produce and replicate life have been persecuted by ignorant people who couldn’t tell you the first thing about the properties of these elements or find them with a search warrant on the Periodic Table.. I speak of people like our illustrious Democrats in the House and Senate and perhaps in the White House as well, but they have become political footballs. Our population is naive and ignorant enough to believe people who destroy their integrity for all of history by repeating lies and clown science. AGW has now become known as the WGH, World’s Greatest Hoax, I saw my first bumper sticker bearing that message today on I10. Once the wizard has been shown to be a pathetic little old man, the lies lose their effectiveness. Now, we have only the most naive and gullible along with die hard party loyalists as the only ones clinging to the hoax, but the hoax is dead. Dead for everything, except as a con game for Obama to squeeze more drops of blood from a middle class that can no longer afford his Socialist dreams.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: You said:
Well, 600 million years ago it was much, much higher and life was plentiful on this big blue marble we call Earth.
You further said:
Um, wrong again Larry.
@Skookum: Skook, it is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when there is so much tax payer money lying on the table for the taking. Actually, GE is one of the guys who has been using the hoax to benifit from the alternative energy result of AGW hysteria. Albert Gore has increased his wealth 100 fold with his investments improved by his AGW efforts. Last time I looked, the water levels are not rising in Florida. Mickey and his friends will be safe in Orlando. Not sure about the Micky mouse folks in washington and California.
When you look at the fact that the magnetic poles have shifted 600 miles in the last 100 years, that might explain some of the weather fluctuations we are seeing- other than that, it is just weather, and weather is what weather does-
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, you will never be able to convince me that Co2 is a “poison gas”, since plant life thrives on it, and gives back oxygen as it uses Co2-
The EPA has been wrong-headed for a long time regarding climate, and just going along with the alarmists who just seek to make a profit off of our fears. That is cowardly money, and all the “scientists” who timidly go along, just so they can suck the tit of Al Gore and others of that ilk, is NOT in any way related to a scientific approach.
Blake that shifting of the MAGNETIC POLE 600 MILES, IS very interesting to know,
is there a way to know which side they went, I am just thinking that it might even shift the
countrys’s limits to benefit others , giving them rights to revendicate their share of added land and sea as ocean’s limits, we all know of the RUSSIANS submarines coming to probe and take maps under the north
waters of CANADIAN’S FROZEN ARTICS LANDS AND SEA.
BYE
Jeez…I’ve been on Accuweather.com blog for years arguing against the Gavin Schmidts and their insistence that we need to go back to the stone age in order to save the world from melting……
Any person with any common sense can see the hoax right up front without needing any ‘scientific facts’ that the whole thing is a hoax.
When Al Gore put out his ‘inconvenience’ ‘documentary’ (false propaganda, I say), it was so crude that schoolkids could see the ‘inconvenience’ of the inconsistencies of Gore’s proslytism of the new religion. He has already profited millions off his scare tactics while leaving a ‘carbon footprint’ 100 times more huge than the average person while he jets around the globe, then turning around and ‘buying’ carbon ‘credits’ from his own companies. Talk about a shell game…..down here in the south we used to tar, feather (or worse), and run out of town guys who tried such crap.
The whole objective is that the greenies, of whom Obama is one, have memories of the dot com explosion during the Clinton administration and the ensuing capital explosion thus the ensuing government revenue explosion that was the primary catalyst of the ‘balanced’ budget of the Clinton years………they hope that if everyone goes overboard on ‘green’ technology and invests heavily in it, we will see another ‘explosion’ of revenues as during the dot coms.
Their only problem is they seem to forget the bottom fell out of the dot com house of cards and things went to hell in a handbasket immediately thereafter though millions got rich but millions lost their shirts.
People also forget the y2k hoax where airplanes were supposed to fall out of the sky. Millions got rich then also, but trust me folks, I don’t want to get rich on a scam by hurting others….do you? Ask Al Gore since he has no shame…
The world has endured for billions of years and likely will endure for billions more, until the sun gives up the ghost. Mother Nature is a strong lady and she’s been around for a long, long, long time and has seen everything that can be thrown at her.
It is the height of arrogance to assume that puny little man can create conditions that will upset the balance of nature to the detriment of the earth’s ability to offset it.
Man may be responsible for his own eventual demise, however, this likely will come from his own polluting of his environment and the associated disease that it fosters. It may come from the release, accidental or otherwise, of one of the many ‘super-bugs’ in laboratories scattered over the planet. It may come from blasting himself to smithereens with nuclear armaments and contaminating the air he breathes for an infinity to come. It may come from all sorts of things other than bringing about his extinction due to an infinitesimal increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere…..
But such has always been used by the Al Gores of the world to lighten others pocketbooks to put the resultant riches into their own….riches going to huge multinational companies like GE and others, and leaving, as always, the ‘little man’ who is expected to pick up the tab..,,,
@Esdraelon: I have to agree with you on almost every point. Man may indeed be the master of his demise, and if so, we deserve it. But if that does happen, it won’t be from Co2- but from clearcutting too much forest, to plant corn in order to make fuel. That is by far the stupidest thing I have ever heard- converting food into fuel-
@ilovebeeswarzone: The shifting has been to the East, I believe- it is hard to tell , when you are on the North Pole, but the poles have shifted before, (generally every 26,500 years, or also known as the Mayan Long Cycle), and this might account for the increased seismic activity.
@Blake: My brother flies for a major airline. He was telling this lady about the magnetic north shifting and the impact it would have on run ways. Does anyone know how much it would cost to move a run way to align with the readings in the flight books? You just change the run way designation.
Years ago Al Gore and others in his inner circle quietly began trying to corner the market in what was going to be FORCED, mandatory ”carbon credit trading.”
It was scary but also really funny to watch as electronic media (not print so much) calculated and then published the ”carbon footprints” of these major hypocrites.
Nails in their coffin as they:
1. jetted to Davos and Rio in SEPARATE jets, so many that some jets had to be parked in other countries!
2. maintained humongous mansions using the carbon of tens, even hundreds of their ”average” neighbors!
3. prohibited anyone but multimillionaires from joining in their green investments.
4. locked poor people INTO perpetual poverty so their low carbon use could be traded upon.
and much more.
It was great to watch these behemoths fall.
Every time people become aware of the white elephant-ness of inefficient ”renewables” I rejoice.
When the so-called ”greenies” become aware of the need for MASSIVE installations of solar and wind, putting their collective feet down against the plans I also rejoice.
Remember, to get 1/6th of America’s 2005 energy use from solar, we would need to cover a land mass the size of Texas!
To get another 1/6th from wind we would need all beaches/oceans all around the whole country set with 8 rows of gigantic wind turbines.
I believe in personal responsibility.
That is why I won an Earth Day Award for a drought-resistant native garden, why I drive a Mini-Cooper, why I recycle, why I have a grey water system like all Israelis do, and so on.
But I don’t believe in fairy tales.
Earth’s temps change over time.
Earth is much more able to adjust to changes than people realize.
Humans can and do live all over Earth, from the Arctic to the Gobi and Sahara Deserts.
We can adapt.
It is what we do.
Animals that don’t adapt as well can migrate.
That is what they do.
Save your money for better things.
Pingback: Official Global Warming thread (merged) - Page 43 - VolNation
@esdra (#47): This is a prime example of certitude of the type which makes a perfect bookend for the polar opposite type of certitude exhibited by Al Gore & Co. It is perfectly reasonable to accept that AGW is not proven; it is quite another to assert, with complete confidence, that it doesn’t exist. Not even the skeptics among real climate scientists make this assertion (e.g. Lindzen, Muller).
Skepticism is fine. Certitude is poison.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/environment/arctic-warming-to-boost-rise-of-sea-levels/2011/05/03/AFbqCgiF_story.html
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Hoax or not to hoax that is the question. Is algore a hoax? Is carbon trading a hoax? I’ll tell you what. If anyone here believes in global warming, or carbon credit exchange, I have a deal for you. I live in a pristine part of AZ, at an elevation of 8050 ft. The Ponderosa Pines on my property are hundreds of years old. I have room to plant more vegetation . Just send me your money, lots of it, and I will plant vegetation and credit you with a carbon credit. You can make a certificate of the carbon credits and show it to your prog friends and feel good, but you will not be able to change the climate with it , hell a whole handful of these credits won’t cause it to rain. In fact the only practical use for them would be a substitute for TP.
@Nan G:
Congratulations on your Earth Day award! That is something we can all look to.
We need to stop the problem that is the real danger to mankind, namely our polluting of the oceans, streams, and the very ground we walk upon.
The Northeast sends out tons and tons of garbage into the Atlantic Ocean each day and, not to be outdone, we have the worlds largest garbage dump, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, in the Pacific Ocean contaminating hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of square miles of ocean. We are burying nuclear waste that has ages of half-life, contaminating groundwater and seeping further and further from the dump sites each year. We have tin-horn dictatorship countries slowly developing the bomb with no qualms of using it when they get it. We have hate and terrorism proliferating throughout the world that will eventually boil out of the cauldron.
We are, in effect, despoiling our inheritance and the stewardship entrusted to us by God.
Yet, we have an untold number of charlatans, and other hucksters, out in full force trying to convince the world at large that we need to penalize the industrial world for it’s ‘pollution’ of the troposphere with a minuscule amount of a life-giving gas called carbon dioxide.
There is no convincing scientific evidence for man-made global warming outside of computer models, which do not agree, and have never agreed, with actual climate data. There is, however, overwhelming evidence to show that temperature increases precede carbon dioxide rises, so carbon dioxide levels cannot be a cause of global warming and any steps taken to reduce emissions are futile.
Computer models as used for generating future scenarios have been unable to reproduce actual climate patterns, and are unreliable in the extreme. GCMs, an abbreviation which has been translated as general circulation models or global climate models, predict uniform warming of the lower levels of the atmosphere as a result of man’s emission of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide, actually a minor greenhouse gas. This man-made warming is predicted to be particularly marked in the last 25 to 30 years, yet actual measurements from satellites and radiosonde balloons show no warming, but slight cooling instead.
Oh, well, maybe cows wills stop their farting…………………..
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Call it whatever, you like. I don’t recall I said a single time in my post that climate change, sic, is not happening, nor any assertion that AGW is not happening, though the debate will continue, powered mostly by the Al Gores and Gavin Schmidts, and maybe wannabe Larry Weisenthal’s? The best you can do is MSNBC, that has about 200 viewers a night, and the Washington Post, of which ‘facts’ have never been a detriment to a ‘good story’?
The Arctic was once much open water and ‘Green’land was green…you don’t still believe the name was given as satire do you?
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Do you understand what AGW stands for?
@Nan G #51: Bravo! Well said. You’re on a roll here!
I, too, am environmentally responsible. I recycle, toss our wet garbage on a compost pile, and replaced my electric water heaters with 86%-efficient propane heaters. I drive a 20 y.o. pickup but only about once per week. I did all that because it saved me money, not because some federal bureaucrat ordered me to. Living in the woods, I have to pay to have my garbage hauled off. Removing all the recyclable stuff keeps my costs down. The propane water heater (s) paid for themselves in less than two years.
@John: (#56). Answer is yes. But I don’t understand the point which you are making ???
As I replied earlier:
To those with the talk of CO2 as a “life giving gas” and “the earth bloomed” when CO2 levels were higher (in the geologic time past), I’ve been through all of this in prior years, on prior threads. I don’t have the energy to go through it all over again.
Human life is different than plant life. The pH of our blood and tissues and cells is maintained within a very narrow range, centered around 7.4. The buffer system which maintains this pH is based on CO2 and bicarbonate.
Here’s the relevant equation:
CO2 + HOH — H2CO3 — H+ + HCO3- (blog software won’t accept arrow heads)
If you add in more CO2, you increase H+ and lower the pH. This is called a respiratory acidosis. It must be compensated for by means of the kidneys secreting more NH3 to allow for reabsorption of more HCO3-
Now, we have absolutely no idea what affect this may have, over a lifetime, on a combined earth population of many billions of people. It’s true that people tolerate exposure to much higher CO2 concentrations (e.g. certain indoor buildings, submarines, etc.), but these are acute experiments and they don’t tell us what happens over a lifetime of unremitting exposure to higher levels of CO2 than we evolved to tolerate. It’s the greatest human guinea pig experiment in the history of homo sapiens and it’s anything but conservative to allow it to continue. Also, we have no idea what affect this may have on animal species, over generations.
The point is, we really don’t know.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: To those with the talk of CO2 as a “life giving gas” and “the earth bloomed” when CO2 levels were higher……..people tolerate exposure to much higher CO2…..
Ever hear of a geological formation called a ”karst?”
http://www.esi.utexas.edu/outreach/caves/karst.php
Photos at Wikipedia.
Researchers looking for ”lost” CO2” found that karsts absorb huge amounts of CO2 out of the air, if given the chance.
See the work of Yuan Daoxian for example.
Earth’s atmosphere is NOT a closed system.
Oceans, forests even limestone rock formations suck up portions of our CO2, more sometimes than less.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: What happened in the past isn’t relevant to what’s happening now, because what’s happening now is unprecedented.
@Nan: I completely agree that atmospheric CO2 is in an equilibrium. Living plants suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. Breathing animals put CO2 into the atmosphere. Dead plants give up CO2 into the atmosphere. When oceans cool, they absorb more CO2. When oceans heat, they give up more CO2. I am now very pleased to learn about a “karst.”
There certainly are ways to mitigate both CO2 accumulation and even temperature increase, should the latter ever prove to be worth doing. I’m in agreement that we need more research. This should actually please climate scientists (more research, because of healthy skepticism that AGW is “settled science”). I also agree that the emphasis should be on more data gathering and on less computer modeling, until we are sure that we are putting in the correct data. So I’m not in all that much disagreement with the people here. The only points that I’m trying to make is that (1) it’s every bit as bad to assert that it’s settled science that AGW doesn’t exist or that AGW is a “big fraud” as it is to assert that AGW definitely does exist and is an imminent threat to the survival of the planet. (2) there are potential health consequences from the undisputed increase in atmospheric CO2 increase which go beyond climate effects and we need to research these, as well. and (3) it is very useful for certain governmental jurisdictions (e.g. California, Europe) to pilot programs addressed at reducing CO2 emissions; so that we’ll have reliable economic impact data, to go along with hopefully more reliable climate and biologic data.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@Randy (#61): What’s unprecedented is the release, over a period of 200 years (the blink of an eye, in geologic time), of massive quantities of CO2, which were previously sequestered within the earth, for hundreds of millions of years. I believe that this is a true statement. If you have information to refute this (rather obvious) assertion, I’d be more than willing to read it.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
I don’t have any evidence to refute those little green men on Mars either……..
And the fact that such release is ‘unprecedented’ ( to note your own dramatics) still does not indicate that we must bankrupt ourselves economically to save the world from itself….
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, generations have lived and died during those 200 years, right?
IF what you believe about the damaging effect of more CO2 on human systems were true would we see a worldwide increase in life expectancy during those same 200 years?
But this is what has happened.
Even 3rd world nations have pretty decent life expectancy compared with 200 years ago.
See the stats here.
I have a brother who is in his early 70′s.
He served in the Navy on board a submarine during the Cold War.
They would go months between surfacings.
He and his ex-mates still get together all of the time.
All are still going strong even though they served 16 years and more aboard their sub.
If high concentrations of CO2 were going to hurt a group, they’d be the ones.
But they have been to very few funerals, I know.
And most of the ones I know of have been due to car accidents and cancer from chewing tobacco.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, at what levels of CO2 does the body suffer respiratory acidosiss? 100 times current levels of .038% ? I doubt it. I smell a red herring Larry! First of all, the normal exhaled breath of a health person exceeds .4% CO2 in most cases. We do that with no health problems. With current CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere that we breath at 380 PPM, normal breath that exhaled is 4000 ppm. Quite a difference Larry.respiratory acidosis is not something that will affect health people at much higher levels. Yes, you can find that a lack of ability to remove CO2 from the lungs causes respiratory acidosis currently in the population, the concentrations of CO2 in the lungs is a result of an inability to respirate properly and the resulting levels of CO2 in the lungs may be as high as 100 times the current CO2 levels that comprise current levels in the atmosphere. Shame on you Larry! You are reaching. At this rate, I expect you to show how the increasing CO2 rates rapidly increases the growth rates of foot fungus.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
1) AGW is a big fraud. Climate change is not.
2) There are ‘potential’ health consequences of cranking up the auto and driving to work each morning…much more ‘obvious’ than the dangers of CO2 since approximately 100 people are dying, and hundreds injured, from car wrecks on US roads alone each and every day.
3) Then let California do whatever they like as long as they pay for it themselves….we are already hearing their screams over here on the East coast….
All those years you argued your premise, you simply argued incorrectly. Instead of your dismissing others points and demanding they refute yours, you might at least give some credible evidence for your ‘potential’ so-called AGW ‘problems’ other than your base assertions.
@randy: If there is a greater CO2 load in inspired air, this will result in greater CO2 in the blood and resultant metabolic compensation. The effect is obviously very small, but it is not zero. It’s a small effect, over a very long time, occurring in billions of people and trillions of life forms. And it’s something that no life form on earth evolved to cope with (all evolved, over the last million years, in the presence of much lower concentrations of CO2). I have no idea the degree to which this is important. Nor does anyone else. To the extent that research exists, there is some evidence for potential concern, though the research is very minuscule — I’ve given references on previous threads — there is some evidence that exposure to higher levels of atmospheric CO2 increases carcinogenicity in experimental animals. If acute experiments can do this at high CO2 levels, then chronic exposure to lower (but still elevated CO2 levels) could have a similar effect in humans. Or not. We just don’t know. In the case of chemical carcinogenesis, massive doses of carcinogens are required to produce tumors within the short life span of animals, but a drug producing tumors in animals at 1,000 times or more the dose exposure level in humans is still considered to be a potential human carcinogen).
@nan: Your brother is an anecdote. And he didn’t spend his life in the submarine. Just portions of his life. Two months is nothing, compared to a lifetime. Astronauts in space lose bone density. It’s survivable, because it’s only months. If a human were born into weightlessness and lived in weightlessness for 80 years, he’d have very soft bones, which couldn’t support any weight, at all. My Dad’s still alive. He’s 97. He got stomach cancer when he was 90. What on earth does that prove about anything?
@Esd:
Number one: straw man. I never said that anyone should bankrupt themselves.
Number two: you are every big of an exaggerated alarmist as Al Gore. Gore claims that we’ll have a global climate catastrophe if we don’t reduce CO2 emissions. You claim that we’ll have an economic catastrophe. Both of you are (probably) equally in error. In any event, we’ll actually get to see about that. As I said, California ratified Kyoto and California voters just reaffirmed this ratification by a large margin, in a statewide vote. So we’ll get to see how quickly California bankrupts itself economically.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Nan G, hi, you are brigning super facts, that surpass any of those for climate change
and global warming, this of yours is a GEM, and nobody can debate it,
thank you
openid.aol.com/runnswim so what you are implying is that you feel that all which was said here to answer your demands was a waste of C O2, because at the end ,you have rejected all the arguments on the comments of this post
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Number one: I did not say you said, simply made a double end statement since to attain what Kyoto states must be done will essentially bankrupt an already bankrupt economy….what else do you suggest when you have a 14 trillion deficit? Throw some more hundred billions into the fire?
Number two: Well, California is welcome to Kyoto, but since California is already running a 42 billion deficit those leftist voters sitting in their beach chairs better attain some smarts very, very quickly…..thus I doubt ‘we’ll see about that’.
Besides, it’s already been estimated what Kyoto would cost the USA, as a whole, which is exactly why it has been most overwhelmingly rejected by the US. California has rarely shown any common sense and this takes the cake.
And yeah, the left has never seen any catastrophe in anything , just raise taxes on the rich another notch…..that’s their solution to everything…
Esdraelon, yes just like the UN is another skeem to cost the USA a lot of tax money that could benefit the pockets of AMERICANS WHO WORK THEIR A..ES OF TO MAKE A BUCK, AND HELP THE POORS
KIOTO AND UN ARE BOTH ALIKE AND FROM THE WORLD ORGANISATION,
CONSTANTLY TRYING TO TAKE, BUT NEVER GIVE ANYTHING TO AMERICA
@Esd: California’s fiscal problems are no worse than those of any other state, e.g. Texas. Our debt to GDP ratio (18.6%) is exactly average (Texas is at 18%). So not much evidence for impending bankruptcy. Total taxes are not much greater than those of Texas, and our per capita income level is higher, which more than compensates. California is a net $50 billion annual donor to the national treasury; if you tell me the state in which you live, we can compare and contrast. But if we could have that $50 billion back, it would more than take care of even the present financial shortfall. In contrast, most red states are net recipients of Federal largesse.
California currently receives just over 50% of the nation’s entire venture capital investment, which are the new businesses of the future, many of them green tech. VCs vote with their pocketbooks. Texas receives only 4%.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
It’s simple, Larry. You stated this;
Your implication, there, is that it’s NOT perfectly reasonable to assert that AGW does not exist. That is completely wrong. I have given you links, above, showing that various scientists believe that increased CO2 causes a cooling effect, and if one chooses to believe them, then AGW is not possible.
Not to mention the backwards thinking of the AGW crowd, which believes that increased CO2 levels precede warming trends, which is the exact opposite of historical models.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, you and I live here (CA) so let’s don’t pretend.
Sure other states like Ill. are in bad shape….too….but according to a report [PDF!] from November 2010 the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO)—California’s Congressional Budget Office—the state’s general fund is heading for a $20 billion shortfall every year until 2016, as far ahead as LAO cares to project.
The LAO does not expect general fund revenues to exceed $100 billion until 2015, so these deficits would be more than one-fifth of the state’s budget for half a decade.
And LAO had not factored in the billions of additional dollars California must devote each year to fulfill pension and health care obligations to public employees who have retired or will in the future!
You know about that.
LAO does estimate that those unfunded liabilities for these obligations amount to $136 billion. California’s “long-term fiscal liabilities—for infrastructure, retirement, and budgetary borrowing—are already huge,” the report states.
“By deferring hard decisions on how to finance routine annual budgets of state programs to future years, the state risks increasing further the already immense fiscal challenges facing tomorrow’s Californians.”
Jerry Brown is doing nothing to fix this.
California’s taxes are among the highest in the USA.
CA also fails to police its ”green” agenda.
Like a few weeks ago when, in Feb., two CA green energy biomass plants were hit with $830,000 for clean air act violations.
Just anecdotal.
Right?
Open your eyes.
It is happening all the time.
@JohnGalt: “Various scientists” believe that CO2 has a cooling effect. “Various scientists” believe that CO2 has a warming effect. I can give you a hundred links for this, and you, of course, know that I can do this. Are your links more valid than mine? Just because your links agree with what you choose to believe? No one seriously disputes that CO2 is rising rapidly and that the proximate cause of this rise is human activity. Virtually everyone now agrees that the earth is, indeed, warming. In the face of this, it is completely unreasonable to assert that AGW does NOT exist and, worse, that it is a “big hoax!”
You would have us believe that it is “settled science” that AGW does not exist. Yet even the most respected and quoted of the skeptical scientists (e.g. Lindzen, Muller) do not go nearly this far. They merely point to what they perceive as flaws or weaknesses in data or models. The don’t begin to reject AGW out of hand, which is what you are doing.
This is a total misrepresentation of what the “AGW crowd” asserts. I have already explained their thinking – TWICE – on this thread. I won’t accuse you of intentionally ignoring this. You obviously have a life and you can’t read every word of minutiae on these threads.
As I replied earlier:
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@Nan: California’s total state and local tax burden is 10.6%. National average is 9.8%. You get what you pay for. e.g. a great state university and college system. great state beaches and parks. And our national per capita income is significantly greater. California’s budget deficit is 30% of the state’s budget. Texas deficit is 22% of state budget. And it’s totally incorrect to say that Gerry Brown (whom none other than Art Laffer — Reagan’s economic guru — labeled “the best Governor in California’s history) is “doing nothing.” As you know, he’s trying to get the GOP to hold a state election in which the voters would decide whether or not to extend the state’s current tax structure (see above, which, as shown, is not that far above the national average), which is about to expire, which is one of the greatest contributors to long term financial stability. He’s trying to get everyone to agree to a balanced program of tax extensions and spending cuts, but it requires a 2/3 vote in the legislature to get anything done, relating to fiscal policy, and that’s been the big problem, all along.
It’s not all that different from the federal situation. Everyone knows it will take a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts, but it will take a down to the wire crisis to get everyone to agree.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Randy, hi, I am wondering if the release in japan of those poisonous gazes du to nucleor explosifs matters that have occur ,
would have an influence on the air flow currents,
I KNOW it has no relation with the post but I just thought to inquire if we know of
that possibility,
thank you
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
gee, Larry, Had you not noticed?
After Obama was dragged, kicking and screaming into extending the Bush tax CUTS the US announced it led to an unexpected EXTRA $150,000,000,000 in tax revenues.
Raising taxes would not have done that.
You know it.
I know it.
Californians who PAY taxes know it.
Those Californians who pay no state income taxes think they’d be able to suck more if taxes go up, so they will vote for it.
But they are wrong.
Through April 12 of this year 69 California company disinvestment events have occurred, an average of 4.7 per week – greater than the 3.9 average per week last year.
That’s going to leave a mark.
Oh, and our little business?
The one that 50 families rely on….
Closing its doors in a few months.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
We aren’t arguing the first point there, Larry. The argument is over what is actually causing the rising levels of CO2, and what effect those rising levels are having. Yet, the AGW crowd, and you, yourself, are claiming that the rising levels are due to man, alone, and that the rising levels are what is causing the temp increase(although the actual temp has been steady to declining since 1998).
http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2007/11/atmospheric-co2-levels-follow.html
Also not clear, is which human activity may be responsible for the increased levels of CO2. Is it the burning of fossil-fuels, or the massive deforestation? And, is either of these enough to overcome the CO2 buffering capacities of land or ocean? You keep stating that certain beliefs are incontrovertible, yet there are many scientists whose statements, data presentations, and research, challenge that. I don’t disagree that you can provide links to support your claims. But the fact that I can, and have, provided links challenging your claims, along with those of the AGW proponents, means that the science has not been settled, and that includes even the individual pieces that make up the AGW theory.
That is what I want you to acknowledge, yet you keep maintaining that some of that science is indisputable. Forget rising CO2 levels. We know that, and most people acknowledge that. That isn’t in question, at the moment. What is in question, is why are they rising, what is the cause, and how much of human activity is responsible for it. The science on those questions is not settled, yet the AGW crowd wants us to enact sweeping economic changes based on unproven theory. Does that sound smart? Or, as some of us contend, is it the greed of people wanting unearned benefits for spouting off unproven theory, simply to fleece populations of their wealth?
@John. Once again, I don’t blame you for not reading every word. This is all very tiresome and non-productive, actually.
In a nutshell, my main point is exactly what you are now saying:
Let’s just leave it at that. The science is not “settled” — one way or the other.
AGW has not been proven. But neither has it been disproven. And there is a lot of evidence to support that the AGW theory, along with evidence which challenges this theory.
In view of the above, I think it’s wrong to characterize it as “a big hoax.” I’d simply call it a “scientific controversy.”
And the fact that some people who support the AGW theory are calling for draconian measures to reduce CO2 doesn’t discredit the point of view of many others, who feel that it’s a concern which should be further investigated and who also feel that there are other reasons, besides AGW, to wish to conserve oil and promote the development of alternative energy sources.
Not everyone who considers AGW to be a possibility is an enviro-whacko, just as not everyone who challenges the pro-AGW arguments is guilty of unwarranted certitude.
I just didn’t like the headline of this particular blog post, is what it came down to.
Certitude is poison. Pro-AGW certitude. Anti-AGW certitude. It’s all bad and gets us nowhere.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, you are finally getting the point of the post. AGW has not been proven. It is not scientific process to prove a negative. Those who profess there is AGW must prove it using scientific processes. They have not! The hoax part is since it has not been proven and these so called scientists and others like Gore and Soros are profiting from exploiting tax payers, that is the hoax and it is fraud. By the way, you do know that humans are responsible for only 1.5% of the annual CO2 generation? If the rate of increase in CO2 is 1ppm/year, that means in 1,000 years, humans will have increased the CO2 content of the atmosphere to .1358% if there is no CO2 taken up by sinks. That level is much less than the breath we exhale! So California is going to save the world by spending billions of dollars on trying to controlling a gas for which they can have no discernable impact. Looks like California is a dictum of the AGW hoax, too.
Larry, this is my last post. If you do not understand after all of this, you will never get your head out of the sand!
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
I can agree with all of that, and have, throughout this discussion. I’ve never called it a hoax, although from my point of view, it certainly is a big scam on people, but that is from my point of view, and what I know about the subject.
As for the legislation that was, and is, pending, I simply believe that it is stupid to enact such legislation that could have a massively negative impact on the economy.
@randy:
Randy,, the numbers don’t match.
This is from the Watt’s Up website (a climate skeptic site):
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/why-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-1/
And CO2 levels have gone up 1.8% in the past 4 years alone! (see graph at above link). This does not square at all with your assertion that
See also:
CO2 has gone up by 22% in only 50 years, and it continues to rise at a very rapid rate. That’s a radical alteration in our atmosphere, all occurring since I was 11 years old. This doesn’t worry you in the slightest? Not even the least bit of doubt that this might not be a good thing?
Just a rhetorical question.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
I see good ole’ Larry decided to ignore it when I proved him wrong on his statement that the earth is warming…
LOL
Much like his hero, Obama, Larry is very transparent!
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Just out of curiosity, based on your background, what do you think is a bigger health threat, specifically cancer, GW or pollution getting into our food and water supply and have you or doctors in your field seen an increase in patients getting cancer that can be attributed to either?
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
“Pro-AGW certitude….Anti AGW certitude”…..certitude…the new word….as I recall, before ClimateGate, the left and proponents of AGW pushed ‘certitude’ to the heights of extremity. Skeptics, were far more analyzed and rational on the subject as they had to be to avoid the customary ridicule by you and yours.
Now that you and yours have been put in your place, you have had to re-group and come up with a new approach…certitude.
Do you guys sit up into the wee hours of the morning pondering upon what you hope to be rational-sounding talking points simply to one-up the opposition? Or does just come naturally?
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, I read that link you presented in your #84 with great interest, however, the author of that post fails to address multiple factors, also of unknown quantity, that must factor into any discussion of the Carbon Cycle. The author does, however, state this;
How can one discuss the carbon cycle, and place numbers into an equation and expect any sort of accuracy, either in numerical form, or simply trend form, when the major components of an equation are absent. To do that, one needs to assume that the total CO2 emissions and the total CO2 intake, of both land mass and ocean mass, would have to be equal, resulting in a zero sum game, where the only variable left is that of human activity. Yet, the above highlighted statement is made. The assumptions present in this posting, by the author, are very big ‘IFs’.
Now, just a few points to ponder about the left out factors that are not discussed;
-Deforestation and the effects on not only emissions, annually, from it, but the net negative effect of loss of CO2 sink capacity from land mass due to it.
-Ocean currents. They can, and do, change, not only from season to season, but also based on atmospheric winds, such as the Jet Stream. This has major impact on specific ocean temperatures, around the world, and the local impact on CO2 atmospheric levels, particularly those around CO2 monitoring points, have never been considered in any paper or research that I have seen. For example, a higher than the normal warming trend for ocean temperature, around a CO2 monitoring point, would have a localized impact at the CO2 monitoring values gathered at that point, much greater than the trend seen in areas where the ocean temperatures have been quite stable. Big point to consider, and one not discussed anywhere.
-Wind currents. The changing winds, such as from El Nino` years, have a big impact on how the localized atmospheres eventually mix with each other, and the directions and locations of their travels. This can have a big impact on the abilities of the oceans and land masses to take in CO2, as well as their emissions. The atmosphere is not like a glass of water, where dropping in a pinchful of salt can have a major impact on the measured salinity within a very short period of time.
-Historical CO2 atmospheric levels, as gathered at Vostok, and similar ice core sample stations, are discussed only in terms of ocean temperatures, and never in concert with historical vegetation mass covering the earth’s land masses. This is a variable of such magnitude that it is difficult to not only predict a moderately accurate picture, in historical terms, but the trending effects it might have, as well. Certainly, as discussed concerning deforestation, human activity, but not in regards to fossil fuel use, has resulted in less overall vegetation mass than previously recorded, or known, and the loss of vegetation mass results in not only the immediate carbon emissions from the destruction, but a lessening capacity, overall, for that vegetation mass to take in CO2 from the atmosphere.
Those are but a few factors left out in that discussion, and nearly every discussion of the CO2 level rises we’ve seen, but they are some of the biggest. And what the majority of the AGW crowd proposes is that only that human activity from fossil fuel use results in the CO2 atmospheric levels we’ve seen. Do you wonder why it is termed a “Hoax”?
The AGW theory HAS been established by fraudulent means, as witnessed by ClimateGate, and thus, fits the definition of a hoax. Whether it has been an act intended to deceive, or trick, has yet to be determined, but that point is moot. Dr. Spencer used the word “Hoax” correctly.
Until a truly scientific research project is undertaken, by examining all possible variables, and their impact on the data gathered, a statement made, along the lines of “CO2 atmospheric level rises are solely due to human activity in regards to fossil fuel use”, cannot be made with any accuracy whatsoever.
You stated;
I think that this is slightly worrisome to all concerned, even the ‘skeptics’ of AGW theory. But that does not mean that one should accept the first claim of doom to come along, nor accept the reasons, particularly when the theory itself is so flawed, and has been presented to the public in such fraudulent means, without true peer review. And, it would be a great disservice to people in general, for politicians to accept that theory, based on its flaws, and to enact legislation impacting the people, based off of that flawed theory. It also doesn’t mean that this ‘worry’, which most people have, is legitimate, as we are not sure, and cannot be sure, that this isn’t simply some cycle of the earth’s atmosphere based off of factors that humans have no responsibility for whatsoever. Simply stating, or cherry-picking data to prove a theory, that man’s fossil-fuel use is responsible for the increased CO2 levels is being intellectually dishonest.
@Nan G:
Nan, so sorry to hear you are closing your business, what’s going down? I’m presently dog paddling to keep my nose above the water…..
@Esdraelon:
We had been considering it since hubby turned 62 when Obama took office.
Our employees took up a lot of his most difficult work, making it a pleasure to keep the doors open til now.
But other businesses, both customers and suppliers have been having so many problems with either paying in full in a timely manner OR getting the products we require on time.
One thing led to another and we ended up paying off suppliers ~$100,000 out of our own pocket.
Now we are realizing so many customers want to get product free that they will never pay what they already owe.
It really is also that a set-aside printing business is almost a dinosaur what with excellent computer printers and word and so on.
If it weren’t for big customers like Vons supermarket, SCE and a few Indian Casinos we would already be closed.
The workers will be using these last months to try to find other jobs, some are already gone.
But, you know, it was just time.
@Nan G:
Nan, I’m so sorry though, however, as you are the one to say it, It’s Time.
I have the same problem: Too many people want something for nothing, but actually such is a denunciation of the present administration that these people are pushed to such. Good luck!
johngalt hi, I just want to include in your very smart detailed comment,
if you also think the the constantly moving of the ocean’s livings being, from all sizes and specialy the mamals along with the big land animal and along the smalls all moving and feeding misplacing
their first layers of land, I include the flying animals and even minuscule insects
would to my mind bring a big equation in the calculation of CO2 contributer and at the same time
repaired makers on land air and sea over the years uncountedable by those who claim to be right on
the destruction of CO2 BY HUMANS AND SELLING US VERY EXPANSIVES ALTERNATIVES
which are not realistic by logic alone not counting false expertises too,
Nan G I sure wish you the best retirement for you and your’s have worked very long and hard to get your employees to make a decent living, They will surely miss you, for having been in a family with all your group, where srong bonds are weaven forever their lifetimes and yours
@ilovebeeswarzone:
Bee, that is an awfully nice sentiment!
Esdeadon, thank you, I have read that you are in busyness also, It tell me that you understand also that family bonding occuring in any company , specialy if they are not under the union clad
@JohnGalt (#88):
Thoughtful consideration/rejoinder.
I’m out of gas on this one (pun intended).
This topic surely won’t go away any time soon.
See you, next round!
- LW/HB
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: RE: Your stance on CO2.
The following is from the American Thinker where they are quoting the United States Dept. of Energy. This pretty much sums up my stance on the preposterous idea of man made global warming.
There you go, Larry. But go ahead and ignore this comment as well. I have noticed a pattern with you, when I present irrefutable facts that show your stance on an issue is wrong, you have begun to totally ignore what I post.
I guess that is preferable to trying to switch the topic.
@Esdraelon: You seem to be saying that it is only our culture, our country, that are the polluters here, and I will challenge you to follow the trail of illegal immigrants, and you wil find the nastiest piles of garbage you have ever seen.
Do we need to to all we can to clean our environment? Hell, yes! But keep in mind the caveat that it is NOT just us that pollute- indeed, most of the other, “poorer” countries do so as well, but on a truly massive scale that rarely gets reported, because it doesn’t fit the progressive storyline.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry- haven’t you gotten the memo? Co2 is good for the earth, and not a “poison gas”, like Those idiots Sebelius and Gore would like you to think- plants actually use that, and trade the Co2 for oxygen, or hadn’t you taken Bio 101 in college- heck even High School?
There are other gases that bother me much more, but you know, people are trying to get it better all the time, even without job-killing regulations promoted by insane little hitlers in the administration.
The problem with you and people like you is your delusion that you are better, more educated, and, by
God, people should just follow you like the pied piper. Now, that’s funny-
Blake I think that we in AMERICA are many times evolved to know how to keep our backyards
clean without trashing the neighbords,yes we are way up in the balance, but they who promote those change are realy out to get the most money they can out of the pockets of taxpayer here,
I beleive strongly that, they are into the WEALTH DISTRIBUTING RELIGION SKEEM,
like THE UN WORLD ORGANISATION GOAL to take away our power and making us submit to their own agenda, this is very dangerous for AMERICA, BECAUSE THEY ARE ADVANCING UNDERGROUND SILENT
UNTIL IT WILL BE TOO LATE TO REACT, AND AS WE KNOW NOW, THEY CONVINCED MANY IN HIGH PROFILE POSITION THEY THEMSELF CONVINCE LOWER CROWD TO GET INVOLVED;
just like a giant PYRAMIDE scam that is unstopable, until one day alone will crash over the people so unaware that they will allowed its power to be installed lawfully,
being backed by the LEADERSHIP BEING NOW AS WE SPEAK VERY MUCH WORKING INTO THAT WHAT WE CALL COMMUNIST MARXIST PATH OF DESTRUCTION WITHOUT ANY RESISTANCE FROM THE PEOPLE.
@antics: Here’s what you are omitting. Of course, most of the CO2 in the atmosphere is not man-caused. Prior to the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuel, the atmosphere was in a perfect, closed system, equilibrium. Trees grow and take up CO2. Trees die and release the CO2 they’ve taken up. There is no big increase or decrease over time, save for periods when the earth warms. This heats up the oceans and releases CO2, the same way that heating beer releases CO2.
Now, what’s happened, at an accelerating rate over the last 100 years is this. Humans are mining and drilling and pumping fossil fuels out of the ground. These fossil fuels contain CO2 which has been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years. This is what is unprecedented and which is why the prior historic relationship between CO2 increase and temperature is reversed (i.e. temperature increases first — because of cyclic variations in the earth’s orbit, mainly — followed by heating of oceans and release of CO2. This CO2 release creates a positive feedback effect, which amplifies and perpetuates the warming — that is the theory).
So, very gradually (well, not so gradually, as in the 25% increase in atmospheric CO2 since I was 12 years old) humans are adding a little more CO2 to an otherwise closed system every year. The article I linked in Watt’s Up shows I was correct in asserting that it is completely unreasonable to dismiss, out of hand, the relationship between human burning of fossil fuels and the 100% documented and 100% accepted increase in atmospheric CO2.
The greater controversy is whether or not this CO2 increase is the proximate cause of the also, by now, relatively non-controversial increase in global temperature, melting glaciers, rising sea level, etc. I am in agreement with all of you that it is wrong to accept this theory (that it’s the CO2 which is causing the temperature increase) uncritically. I don’t believe that it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning that it’s premature for force everyone in the world to reduce their carbon consumption, but I personally believe that a preponderance of evidence does support the theory, while acknowledging that some knowledgeable scientists disagree, while many others do agree.
My strong objection is to the assertion that AGW definitely does NOT exist. Or that it’s all a “big hoax.” As I’ve pointed out, the scientific critics of AGW theory don’t reject it out of hand, the way that so many political partisans do; they simply say that there are weaknesses in the theory and that the theory has not been proven; they don’t claim that it’s been disproved.
As I also keep saying, certitude is poison. In either direction. A closed mind is an unfortunate thing with which to live.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@Blake (#99): See #59
@Nan (#75, #77,#79): Re: Alleged California insolvency:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/may/05/economic-growth-pumps-up-state-revenues/
- larry weisenthal/huntington beach, ca
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Sorry, Larry, but that statement is inaccurate. Many sources of CO2 into the atmosphere, such as volcanic activity, both above ground, and below the ocean surface, forest fires, which not only give up CO2, but cut the capacity of vegetation to act as a CO2 sink, and numerous others. It wasn’t a perfect, closed system, in equilibrium. It never has been, as long as the earth has been around.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Did you read it, Larry?
Brown’s FIVE YEAR PLAN (commie?) includes making deep cuts in education so as to SCARE voters into accepting higher taxes!
Same as he ever was.
Scare-monger.
Creep.
_________________________
Oh, yeah, and Prince Charles is one of the greenest of all world leaders.
Right?
Yet he allowed his son’s wedding to cause – in one day – 12 times more carbon emissions than a whole year at Buckingham Palace.
6,765 tonnes of carbon dioxide – for those of us in the real world comes out to 1,230 times the annual emissions of the average UK household.
SOURCE
When the ”king of green” Charles Prince of Wales tells us what a huge crisis we are all causing with OUR carbon emissions just remember the words, “It’s good to be the king!”
@JohnGalt:
Forest fires, per se, don’t increase CO2, provided that the forests are allowed to grow back (e.g. as happens in the American West). You burn up the trees; they release CO2; then the trees grow back, and CO2 is taken up again.
Volcanic produced CO2 is trivial — really trivial– like 1% — compared to human CO2. The massive eruption of Mt Pinatubo did not even have a measurable increase in atmospheric CO2.
You are correct about permanent deforestation, though. This also disrupts the pre-existing equilibrium, just as does the burning of previously-sequestered carbon in fossil fuels. But deforestation is also anthropogenic, just as is the burning of fossil fuels.
The evidence really is overwhelming that:
1. Atmospheric CO2 is increasing at a very alarming rate.
2. Human activity is the proximate cause of this increase.
What’s controversial is whether this human-produced rise in CO2 is responsible for the warming which has occurred, along with this rise. Jury is out — in BOTH directions.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@Nan (#104): Brown doesn’t want voters to raise taxes; he simply wants voters to extend current taxes which were enacted some years ago as temporary taxes. California is not massively out of line with other states, tax wise, as I showed in prior comments. What’s relevant is that California’s economic recovery is now looking so strong that the Republicans are claiming that the tax extensions are not needed. Brown wisely wishes to extend the taxes because (1) we can obviously afford it, as we are having this very impressive recovery despite the presence of these taxes and (2) Brown wants to put the state on a sound financial footing, rather than having it teetering on the brink.
Of course he’ll use scare tactics. That’s what politicians do. Did you never hear of “death panels” and “generational theft” and whatever. Actually, Brown is the strongest supporter of education that you’ll find. His father’s greatest achievement was creating the world’s greatest public college and university system. Unfortunately, the great UC schools are now financially out of reach for the average family, owing to massive hikes in tuition and fees. If we keep tax levels right where they have been (again, compatible with the current robust recovery), we’ll hopefully collect enough money, not just to squeak by, but to make higher education affordable, once again, fill in the potholes, open up all the parks, and generally restore California to greatness.
You get what you pay for. California’s recovery is heavily tech sector based. I’m happy to have Texas make its money drilling oil and warehousing merchandise. >50% of US venture capital flows to California. 4% flows to Texas. Texas thinks that the path to prosperity is squeezing the public sector dry. I disagree. The future is right here, in California, just as it’s been for the past 50 years.
What California does today, the rest will do tomorrow.
And we even ratified Kyoto! Is the future of energy headquartered in Houston or in Silicon Valley?
The venture capitalists are betting with their wallets.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, forest fires do release CO2, both from the burning, and the dead timber itself, along with the dead plant growth. And it is a loss of the sink capacity of the earth’s vegetation mass, although, in time, it does grow back, if allowed to. And volcanic activity isn’t just a surface phenomenon. Right now, as we speak, there are eruptions that happen daily, under the surface of the ocean, that release CO2, amongst other gases, such as SO2, and it’s greater than that figure that you just put out.
Those prevent a “perfect, closed system”, from being the case. Human activity, that results in CO2 emissions, are not the sole additions to the atmospheric rise. And, as much is still unknown about the CO2 sink and emission capacities of land and ocean, it is entirely wrong to state that human activity is the proximate cause of the atmospheric increase. If it was proven that land and ocean take in just as much as they give off, then your assertion would be correct. But that isn’t the case, and no one has truly studied all the effects that happen, in relation to CO2 emission and intake.
Also, the controversy surrounding whether or not CO2 is responsible for temperature increases is based on fallacy by the AGW crowd. Look at any graph, with atmospheric CO2 level, and temperature, and you see that CO2 follows temperature, not the other way around. And, what’s more, if their assertion were correct, then how do they explain the continued increase in CO2 levels, since 1998, when the temperature has been steady to declining, since that same time period?
As I said, much is unknown, yet the AGW crowd has taken a few, tangible facts, and have loosely related them, in an attempt to prove their conclusion.
No one has doubted that CO2 levels are rising, although the amount of rise is in dispute, as the monitoring stations have their own, inherent, problems due to their locations. What is in dispute, and has been since the day Mann shuffled his graph off to AL, is the reason for the increase, the result to the earth’s atmosphere due to that increase, and the impact that human activity has had. In my opinion, and it is just my opinion, the effects of deforestation, which has increased many times over within the past few decades, has a much, much higher impact on CO2 atmospheric increases than the burning of fossil-fuels does. And yes, it is human activity, however, it has nothing to do with fossil-fuel usage. Just my thoughts.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, Brown’s problem is the same as all up and down CA.
Unfunded Liabilities.
According to a Stanford University study, California taxpayers are facing a pension liability that could exceed $500 billion.
Unfunded Pensions.
Like Newport Beach’s Lifeguards.
While working (until age 50) the full-time staff might make $120,000/year in pay and benefits.
But after retiring they can pull down $200,000/year!
Now, not one of these$200,000/year guys sits in a tower and saves drowning swimmers, mind you…..those are all part-timers. ($16-$22/hour/ no benefits at all….tops!)
These $200,000/year guys are the ones who keep the towers painted, the guys in the towers in swimsuits and the offices manned.
The average city and town in CA spends $.31 of every payroll dollar on pensions.
Fresno spends 53 cents of every payroll dollar on pensions!
Newport Beach is debating cutting back to almost ZERO the number of lifeguards at the beaches because the department (including pensions) costs so much!
There’s ”logic” for you!
Do you honestly see Jerry Brown standing up to the public employee union bosses and bringing some sanity back into the system?
He’s showing no spine on that front.
@John: Everything that dies (humans included) give off CO2. Everything that lives (humans included) take up CO2. So decaying trees and forest fires and dead humans do not contribute to a net increase in atmospheric CO2. They are just putting back into the air what they took up, during their lifetimes. Forests take up CO2. They then burn down, releasing the CO2 that they took up. But they then grow back, and the CO2 is again removed.
It’s only with PERMANENT deforestation (i.e. human produced or anthropogenic) that the equilibrium is disturbed and there is a net CO2 release (i.e. burning or decomposing new carbon — trees — has the same effect as burning old carbon — oil and coal).
With regard to undersea volcanoes, these are accounted for in the article I linked. The most massive land based volcanic eruptions of the past 50 years did not have a measurable impact on atmospheric CO2. Granted there were also underwater eruptions, but, number one, the amount of CO2 released from any volcano is trivial. CO2 is not an important component of volcanic eruptions. Number two, there’s no reason to believe that we’ve had a massively increased amount of undersea volcanic activity over the same time period as we’ve documented a massive increase in atmospheric CO2. In contrast, the massive observed rise in atmospheric CO2 tracks nicely with the amount of coal and oil which has been burned, along with amount of rain forest which has been lost.
With respect to it being “entirely unwarranted” to assert that humans are the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2, I did provide a link to the review appearing on Watt’s Up, where the guy marshaled all the evidence from all the studies and concluded that it was virtually certain that humans are the culprit. Now, if you want to maintain some skepticism, of course, I think that skepticism is very healthy (just as certitude is poison). But it’s way too strong to claim that it’s “completely unwarranted” to conclude that humans are responsible. There is, in fact, a lot of direct and indirect evidence for this. People have even made calculations of how much CO2 SHOULD have been added to the atmosphere, based on how much sequestered carbon has been burned, and I believe that the calculations match up pretty well with reality. The same investigators have also projected what future CO2 levels will be, once all known oil reserves have been exhausted. I really do think that this is very solid, well accepted science, which isn’t challenged even by scientists who don’t accept the proposed link between the CO2 and the temperature.
With respect to timing of past CO2 rises vis a vis temperature rises, I’ve explained this, I think, three previous times on this thread. In the past, an cyclic variation in the earth’s orbit caused the earth to enter a heating cycle. This heated the oceans and the heated oceans released dissolved CO2. But this sequence of events isn’t relevant to the present, because what’s happening now is unprecedented (i.e. massive release of CO2 which has been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years in a period of only 100 years.
I think that we can both agree that permanent deforestation is very important. I think that you can prove, mathematically, that burning coal and oil is very important also. We know how much coal and oil we are burning. We know where the CO2 produced in the burning ends up. We can calculate the amount of CO2 released per barrel of oil or ton of coal or liter of natural gas.
Where we have the greatest disagreement is where the climate scientists have their greatest disagreement. Does the rise in CO2 have anything to do with the rise in temperature? I’ve already acknowledged that I don’t believe that this is anywhere near being “settled science,” one way or the other.
With regard to “1998.” There are certainly other things which contribute to global temperature, besides greenhouse gases. Earth orbital variations are probably responsible for ice age cycles. Solar activity has an impact over short periods of time. 1998 was a peak of solar activity. For a couple of years thereafter, temperatures stopped rising. But there’s a clear trend upward, disregarding 1998, the anomaly of which is explainable by solar activity.
The past decade (post 1998) is the warmest on record. Look at the graphs. 1998 was clear (and explainable) anomaly. But the trend is perfectly clear.
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/zFacts-global-temperature-1860-2005.gif
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@nan (#108): I don’t disagree with you at all about public employee unions and pensions. I agree with Franklin Roosevelt that private sector unions are good, while public sector unions are bad. I agree that Brown is a long way from being perfect, just as are all politicians. They need to cobble together enough votes to get elected and, once elected, they owe a debt to those who were responsible for their victory. I don’t want to debate whether it’s Democrats or Republicans who are more beholden to the most unsavory constituencies. I don’t think that either pot can call their opposite kettle black. It’s just a fact of life.
California has a short term problem (current budget deficit) and it has a long term problem (unfunded pensions). The pensions are not the cause of the short term problem. I think that Brown is actually going to do a good job in solving the short term problem in getting the state’s annual budget back into some semblance of functionality. The pension problem is going to have to be solved over time. It’s very useful that the GOP states are establishing a precedent. I don’t think that public unions here are going to get busted, Wisconsin style, but they will ultimately be brought more into line.
It’s not just the NB lifeguards who have great pensions (both of my kids worked as seasonal lifeguards, by the way. Great job for older high school kids and college kids — $16-$17 per hour). Very tough to get those jobs — hundred kids doing a 1K to one mile ocean swim in 57 degree or so water — no wetsuit, plus combined beach run + swims, for maybe 15 slots. The OC Sheriffs’ pension program looks like it has beaten back all the court challenges. One sweet deal for those guys.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
um… you may be jumping the gun on your “robust” joy and confidence, Larry. The extra tax income where you rest your laurels is increased personal income tax, of which the jury is still out because of the capital gains wild card. Don’t forget, stocks enjoyed a banner 2010 year.. most especially financial institutional stocks… buoyed up on the “can’t lose” policy of too big to fail, Bernanke’s no cost gambling rates and furious money printing, and never ending QE policies. Your own link points this out:
On the flip side, corporate taxes are down, which doesn’t indicate strong recovery. This is also reflected in the still 12% area unemployment rate, which has been that way since Sept 2009.
The industry that seems to be doing well is the tech social media/mobile apps industry, mostly concentrated in the SF/Silicon Valley area. This, however, only makes up about 16% of the California private employed economy. Also, the mean average in wages is up only about .4% Kinda interesting to see who’s had the biggest increases there, tho… models, teachers, agents (presumably film and modeling industry), dentists, marine and naval engineers, athletes, funeral directors, music directors/composers, orthotists and prosthetists, costume attendents, flight attendents, paperhangers, fabric menders and wood modelers.
All in all, if the majority of the increase is stock market based, the other contributions make it a fragile upward trend at best. An Aggie Org May 4th article by Max Rosenblum says California housing is the second unhealthiest housing market in the nation, topped only by Nevada’s worse housing market.
If I were you, I’d keep the bubbly on ice still.
openid.aol.com/runnswim, you mentioned something that let me to beleive in the ultimate stabilisation of CO2, THE FACT THAT WHO DIES BE IT A TREE IN THE CHAIN LINK ALL THE WAY UP TO HUMANS, RELEASE THEIR INDIVIDUAL AMOUNT OF CO2, and who lives take up CO2 INCLUDING AGAIN THE LADDER OF LIVING BEING, plus I will include all the plants we grow for food or pleasure to see,
NOW there is probably times that there more CO2 RELEASING THEN TAKING DUE TO WHATEVER
EVENTS, OR WAR OR SEASON OR SUNRAY OR OR OR. AND NOBODY CAN CALCULATE THAT HAPPENING, BUT ALONG THE TIME INFINITE TIME NOT ONE HUNDRED YEARS OR ONE YEAR,
THE TAKING AND RELEASING GET TO BE BALANCE IN THE GLOBAL EARTH BY THESES 2 EVENTS THEMSELF, BECAUSE THAT IS THE WAY OF LIFE ITSELF REGULATING ITS OWN BALANCE,
LIKE TOO MANY OF THE SAME SPEECHY WILL CONTRIBUTE TO EXTERMINATION UNTIL THEIR IS LESS OF, AND SAME FOR HUMANITY WHICH AT A CERTAN POINT TEND TO ELIMINATED THEIR OWN
BRINGING ANY PURPOUSES OR EXCUSES BUT THE REAL REASON THEY DONT THINK OF,
OR DARE TO, IS THE CLEANSING OF THEIR OWN WHICH HAVE BECOME TOO NUMEROUS TO BE SUPPORTED,
WATCH IN ARABS COUNTRY WHAT IS GOING ON TO POPULATION WHO ARE FORCE TO MAKE
MANY CHILDREN EVEN IN ABJECT POVERTY, WATCH WHAT THEY END IN ANOTHER GENERATION UP TO BECOME SO NEGATIVES AS TO KILL THEIR OWN, THESE LEARNED YEARS AGO FROM THEIR RELIGIOUS LEADER
IN A LIFESTYLE THEY CANT BE HAPPY IN, AND DONT KNOW WHY, AND DONT QUESTION IT
BECAUSE THEY HAVE ONLY LEARNED TO OBEY THOSE LEADERS,
IF THEY WOULD REALYSE THAT THEY HAVE TO LIVE FOR HAPPINESS INSTEAD OF CONQUER THE WORLD THEN THEY WOULD RESTRAINED THEIR PREGNANCY SO TOO NOT HAVING TO STAGE WAR SO TO REDUCE THEIR NUMBERS, IN FUTURE GENERATIONS
IT IS ABSOLUTLY RELATED TO THE CO2 FACTOR AS AN EXEMPLE OF THE NATURE ABILITY TO REDUCE THE EXCESS OF IT’S EARTH LIVING BEING
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: You really ought to stop and think about what you are saying.
The idea that earth’s ecosystem is closed is really very limited thinking. Many, many factors and variables affect it.
Again, I fall back on the Dept. of Energy report that says that CO2 is anything but a man made issue.
Ah yes, bees… population control for climate control. Less people mean less exhaling. Less people also mean less demands on food and their CO2 emissions. If they can’t control industry, they’ll certainly attempt to control population. oops…. silly me. That’s just what the UN Population Fund advocates, even tho they admit they have no idea if it would affect the dreaded climate change one iota.
@mata: Thanks for #111. This Spring, I’m mainly drinking pomegranate juice and Clausthaler non-alcohol beer. Bit of a resolution. So I’ll keep the leaded bubbly in the wine rack, as you suggest.
@antics: I don’t understand this quote at all:
Your Department of energy data does not state what percent of the last 50 year dramatic rise (25% !!!) in atmospheric CO2 is owing to what. If you can give me the link again (I looked for it, but couldn’t find it), then maybe I could figure out what the heck is being talked about here. The paragraph above relates to the question of the link between the known increase in CO2 and the known increase in temperature; it doesn’t clearly relate to the issue of what caused the CO2 to increase by 25% in only 50 years.
I provided a link to a thorough review off all the evidence article appearing on a global warming skeptic web site (Watts Up) and the conclusion was that it was overwhelmingly likely that the observed rise in CO2 was indeed owing to man-controlled causes (fossil fuel burning and deforestation). I’d like to see where your above argument fits in with all of this but I truly don’t understand the point of the quote and I’d like to read the article, if you’ve got the link.
Most CO2 is dissolved in the ocean, but it stays there, unless the ocean gets heated up. The CO2 which is in play is the atmospheric CO2, of which it can be calculated that the amount of coal and oil and gas burned plus deforestation is more than sufficient to account for the observed 25% rise in 50 years. As the temperature warms (and it is warming), the ocean will start giving up its dissolved CO2 and the rate of CO2 rise will increase further. What effect this has on global temperature, many of us will live to see. If you outlive me and global warming doesn’t happen, you are perfectly within your rights to say I told you so.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
MATA, THANK’S, I was making the point to what LARRY’S mentionned , gave me the thought that we don’t need to try to fix it, and there is nothing to fix, and LARRY said it himself in that first sentence of who die release and who live take, and my point took me where the people force to many pregnancys in the poorest situation, are also forcing those baby to a survival strugle for life or death, and that is directly in tune from MOTHER NATURE OWN WAY of correcting abuse of the EARTH ELEMENT,
and I saw a real fact for those selling their pitch to do something inappropriate to supposivly fix it,
when it will be fix naturely, bye
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: You said:
Sorry you are having comprehension problems.
From the US Dept. of Energy:
I hope the table appears readable. I am not sure how it will show, but the table clearly shows that the man made CO2 contributes a whopping .117% to the greenhouse effect.
.
.
.
@anticsrocks:
So, if all humans disappeared tomorrow it would only cut one quarter of one per cent of all greenhouse gases?
0.28% to be more exact.
How much would THAT cost us?
EVERYTHING!
What would be the effect on earth’s climate?
Probably unnoticeable.
@Nan G: Exactly Nan, that is according to our Dept. of Energy and God knows we’ve poured enough tax dollars into that agency, so they had better be right!
@ Bees
The location of the magnetic poles is pretty much continually in flux. The Earth’s rotational axis however is constant and does not change due to magnetic fluctuations.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Yes, but no matter how many times you explain it, it doesn’t change the fact that CO2 levels changes FOLLOW temperature changes. Essentially, the cause is the temperature changes, while the CO2 change is the result. That effect isn’t going to change, just because human activity has added to the CO2 rise in the last century, or so.
Regarding undersea volcanic activity, much of the oceans depths have not been studied, so for anyone to assume, based on what little is known about the ocean, that a measured amount of activity can be true, for the entirety of the earth’s oceans, is just a little bit presumptive. And that is what I’m talking about. The knowledge we, as humans, have of that particular aspect regarding CO2 emissions is a drop in the bucket compared to what is unknown.
And your carbon cycle, in regards to animal life, is wrong, as animals, of which humans are part, do not take in CO2 into our bodies. We take in carbon, and with breath exhalations, the O2 we take in is emitted, partially, as CO2. Plants, during the day, when photosynthesis occurs, are the opposite, and at night, they also take in O2, combine it with carbon, and emit CO2, though the net, overall effect of plant life on earth is as a CO2 sink. Hence, the deforestation activity of humans has a major impact on the CO2 sink capacity of land mass.
#117,#121 @antics @rocks
With regard to global warming ending in 1998, no, it hasn’t. Firstly it’s perfectly legitimate to look at a 20 year trend line. You were the one who said that there hasn’t been warming since 1998 — you can’t say this, when the twenty year trend line (corresponding with massive increase in atmospheric CO2) is clearly upward. Anyway, the atmospheric temperature is trivial compared to true global temperature. The oceans are an enormous heat sink, and you have to consider ocean temperatures along with atmospheric temperatures and the combined ocean/atmospheric temperature record clearly documents continued warming.
With regard to CO2 increase following temperature increase in the past. The past is irrelevant, because it’s not what’s happening now. In the past, natural fluctuations in earth orbit triggered heating which released CO2 from the oceans (the heating beer analogy). At present, CO2 is leading, because we are having an unprecedented, massive release of CO2 from the burning of sequestered carbon, accompanied by permanent deforestation (both anthropogenic).
With regard to human bodies giving up CO2: this does happen with human decomposition. The human body is carbon based. Carbon is the backbone molecule of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. When we die, our bodies are either burned like coal or our body is fermented by microbes. Here’s the fermentation equation:
C6H12O6 → 2 C2H5OH + 2 CO2
With respect to the Department of energy. Your figures (ostensibly quoted from the Dept of Energy) show that humans contributed only 3.2% to atmospheric CO2. This is very misleading. Earlier, I cited a review (on the Climate Skeptic blog “Watts Up” which concluded that the evidence was compelling that the massive recent rise in CO2 was owing to human causes.
With respect to the CO2 greenhouse effect being trivial, no, it’s anything but trivial.
With regard to volcanic activity contributing: I’m sure that you won’t be able to find a credible scientific link which supports this, as the CO2 content of volcanic emissions is trivial. This is one of those blogosphere urban legends.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, it seems that no matter what data is presented to you, you just find a way around it.
When historical data is presented, you state that past activity doesn’t matter.
When current data is presented, you state that it is wrong.
So basically no matter the data presented, you stubbornly stick to your near religious like belief that man is destroying the planet. Never mind that it has been shown that the earth has been cooling for the last 10 or so years. Never mind that in the past CO2 followed heat periods. Never mind that 99.9% of CO2 emissions are natural and not man made. Radiative forcing has been debunked, and by that I mean not that it doesn’t exist, but that it is not the end all and be all of global warming.
You accuse others of not having an open mind, but you sir are the one being closed minded about this.
BTW, from the bibliography of the paper I cited:
From the paper I cited:
But none of this matters to you because the global warming theory fits into your Marxist beliefs that the too few “haves” need to spread the wealth to the too many “have nots.”
anticsrocks says: “Larry, it seems that no matter what data is presented to you, you just find a way around it.”
I don’t want to be an “I told you so”, but I told you so. Just like you can’t teach a pig to sing, you can’t employ reason and logic with cultists. It doesn’t work and it just annoys them.
Speaking of annoying, in Dr. Larry’s honor I went out this morning and torched off a huge pile of brush, cardboard boxes, used pallets, and old polyethylene sheeting that I’ve been saving for a special occasion like this. Yup, I poured gasoline on it and lit if off. It was very satisfying to release all that carbon back into the atmosphere so the trees and plants can use it.
For an encore, I fired up my chain saw (more CO2 and VOCs), and cut down a couple trees to burn in my Rumford fireplace next winter. Cultists like Dr. Larry blather about “sustainability”, but they never engage in it, do they?
Come on now Larry, admit it; If I were your neighbor, you would have called the police on me by now. In fact if you Gaia cultists had the power, you would no doubt have me drawn and quartered just like the high priests used to do to non-believers in the dark ages. It must be very unsettling for you to realize that with all your education, training, and good intentions – you’re still subject to the same hatreds and irrationalities as the priests of The Spanish Inquisition.
ditto, thank you, am I wrong to think that if the EARTH axle doesnt change with the pole ‘s moves,
and going EASTWARD, that eventualy the NORTH POLE WILL END UP IN THE EASTOF THE THE EARTH, WHICH DOESN’T FOLLOW IT BUT STILL ROTATE INTO HER AXLE, telling me that the now location of the POLE will be replace by the PACIFIC OCEAN, AND LATER BY CHINA.
ON a lighther note, that could be why CHINA is bying so many lands in CANADA and immigrate more in the west OF CANADA because they might know they will own it and, just [ joking]
bye
John Cooper, hi, from what you mention of your work on your land,
that makes me think, OF that is probably the end game of the GOVERNMENT WHICH IS PUSHING THE CO2 factor along with the WORLD ORGANISATION AND THEIR SUPPORTERS,
and their combined end game will be to tax everyone on a fix amount of how much you burn or discard in any other way on your land, they might be elaborating a way to calculate all the new taxes they could bring in their coffer, and which way to calculate the amount of each person, to base themself,
I already heard of their talk to reduce even the CO2 exaled by farm animals!!! so we are not far from it to be true in the future, what will and how far will they go for getting your money for them to spend
@Randy: I would suspect, knowing the government, that just changing the runway designations (repeatedly, since the magnetic poles have NOT stopped their migration) would cost quite a lot, if a hammer can cost $500.00- and since you would have to change EVERY runway designation, kind of SNAFU things pretty well, don’t you think?
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Once again, this time with FEELING- Say it with me, “Co2 is NOT a poison gas, and Kathleen Sebelius is a know nothing crone.”
You can do it, I know you can.
Mizz Bees: You’re right, they want your land. The way it works is they file lawsuits which force the federal government to regulate your land so as to make it unprofitable to farm, ranch, or grow timber there. When the price of the now worthless land falls, groups like the Nature Conservancy and the NRDC step in and buy it up. We saw this in the Klamath Basin in Oregon ten years ago and it’s going on now in the Western San Joaquin Valley of California. In both places, the environmentalists got the water cut off and the farmers and ranchers had to move out.
The environmentalists are cowardly terrorists. They don’t have the guts to destroy property and throw people off their land themselves, so they let the courts do the dirty work for them.
JOHN Cooper, I believe that those envirementalist groups, have it completly upside down,
and in the time we are living now with the extraordinary never seen, high prices of the food; TO shut a farmer’s access to water for his animals and agriculture land developping the food for people of this NATION and therefor forcing the farmers to leave, this isAN ACT OF TERRORISIM,
AND THEY SHOULD BE DELT WITH AS IT IS VERY SEVERLY, AND DENIED THE LAND THEY HAVE BOUGHT!!!It goes as far as commiting treason against AMERICA being short of another farmer,
which are so precious for the PEOPLE to consume their own food grown in their own AMERICA;
no wonder you see and in the larges and small alike, so many produces which come from other
COUNTRYS, that always astound me to observed, like GHINA’s garlic piling over CALIFORNIA”s
succulent garlic I used to find eazy, but now they monopolyze the shelfs wth a big amount of their chineese garlic grown who knows how, we cannot go check in there, and the president of the
SUPERMARKET DON’T KEEP CHECK EITHER CONSTANTLY,
this is just one of forhein produce that could be grown right here in AMERICA BY AMERICANS,
and toses jobs to AMERICANS THAT ARE MISSING NOW MANY FOREVER BECAUSE OF
HAVING CUT THE WATER OR WHATEVER OTHER PRESSURE HAS BEEN GIVEN TO
THE PRECIOUS FARMERS OF THIS LAND,
DON’T THE GOVERNMENT KNOW WHERE TO HELP? THEY ARE WRONGLY TARGETTING THE WRONG PEOPLE BY ALLOWING THOSE ENVIREMENTALIST TO GET RICHS ON BUYING LANDS TO CHASE OUR GOOD FARMERS AWAY OR STRESS THEM TO THAT END.
@ Bees
As I noted, the Earth’s axis (the geographic poles) is completely separate from it’s magnetic poles.
Due to the shape of the earth, (a slightly flattened sphere) and inherent gyroscopic stability, it would be highly unlikely for the axis to shift more than extremely, infinitesimal amounts. If the axis were to shift noticeably, there would be cataclysms on a grand scale.
The magnetic poles are in flux because they are created by geomagnetic activity within the molten outer core. This outer core of the earth is an electrically conductive fluid and acts as a dynamo. The outer core rotates relative to the earth’s rotation along its axis and moves across existing lines of magnetic force. The magnetic field is thus regenerated, using the fluids energy of motion. Shifting of the magnetized portions of the molten outer core creates perturbations in the magnetic location of the dipole fields. Cooling and heating of the outer core also has an additional effect.
Ditto, WOW, that is an incredible explaination, for me to understand better, I appreciate you taking the time for me, yes I can see th e magnetic base retaining the pole and preventing it to shift too fast to an insignifiant pace, while being disturb by those inner and outer forces, It makes more sense to visualy have a mental pattern,
what It also remind me is of the WISDOM of the CREATER of it all, and reenforce my believe that,
it did not just happen by itself, but was very well thought of by a super mind over any other minds
thank you so much
@nan, @mata: re: California’s future
http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/08/the-next-10-years-will-be-great-for-both-founders-and-vcs/
Remember, California gets more than 50% of the nation’s VC investment; Texas gets 4%. Did you know that California’s business tax rate is lower that that of Texas?
@John (#124): Credit where credit is due. This one was inspired genius. I literally laughed out loud.
@John, Antics, Randy, etc.: Currently traveling (now in FL, and have been unable to provide the thoughtful response now required. Shall do so, when able). While on my weekly Sunday AM 10 mile run, I think I thought of a way to bring us slightly closer together. Look forward to sharing.
- Larry Weisenthal/FL
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, I just had to see if this thread was still alive. I guess you just keep it going. When you state that forest fires do not add to Co2 accumulation, then why was the US required under the Koyoto Protocol to count the CO2 generated by forest fires as part of the CO2 emmissions? If a forest takes in CO2 for 100 years and gives it back in a few weeks, that doesn’t contribute to CO2 levels?
The fish are biting, but it is not snowing here.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry- if Cal.’s tax rates are so low, why are more companies seeking to move to Texas? Are they tired of the Cereal State (fruits, nuts, and flakes) as it is, or perhaps there are more onerous taxes there than you attempt to portray?
“We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public’s imagination…
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts…
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
- Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue.
Even if the theory of global warming is wrong,
we will be doing the right thing in terms of
economic and environmental policy.”
- Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…
climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
- Christine Stewart,
former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations
on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.”
- Prof. Chris Folland,
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions
that provide something very useful.”
- Dr David Frame,
climate modeler, Oxford University
“It doesn’t matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true.”
- Paul Watson,
co-founder of Greenpeace
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to
frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.”
- emeritus professor Daniel Botkin
“We are on the verge of a global transformation.
All we need is the right major crisis…”
- David Rockefeller,
Club of Rome executive member
“In Nature organic growth proceeds according
to a Master Plan, a Blueprint. Such a ‘master plan’ is
missing from the process of growth and development of
the world system. Now is the time to draw up a master plan for
sustainable growth and world development based on global
allocation of all resources and a new global economic system.
Ten or twenty years form today it will probably be too late.”
- Club of Rome,
Mankind at the Turning Point
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable,
indeed a sacred principle of international relations.
It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to
the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.”
- UN Commission on Global Governance report
“The emerging ‘environmentalization’ of our civilization
and the need for vigorous action in the interest of the entire global
community will inevitably have multiple political consequences.
Perhaps the most important of them will be a gradual change
in the status of the United Nations. Inevitably, it must
assume some aspects of a world government.”
- Mikhail Gorbachev,
State of the World Forum
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
- Maurice Strong,
founder of the UN Environment Programme
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the
United States. De-development means bringing our
economic system into line with the realities of
ecology and the world resource situation.”
- Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another
United States. We can’t let other countries have the same
number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US.
We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
- Michael Oppenheimer,
Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty,
reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
- Professor Maurice King
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the
worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
- Jeremy Rifkin,
Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
-That’s enough for now….
Patvann, hi, yes It is very noticeble how the words “world ” and “global”
showing up so many times, with thoses promoting the WORLD ORGANISATION to control
all the NATIONS, AND YES THEY ARE GOOD AT IT, BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN MISGUIDED
to believe the rhetoric of the organisation; as we see they blinly joined, to become
the new fashionable traitors of their COUNTRY, THEY ARE TRYING TO RUIN AND DEMOLISH TO SURRENDER IT TO THE UN ORGANISATION OF A WORLD GOVERNMENT,
YOU ARE RIGHT TO BE CONCERNED, their jobs is to gather more AGENTS in the right position
of influence to join in and continiue the rise of the pyramide, so to cease power so much eazyer
having insiders open wide the door for them to enter as CONQUERERS WITHOUT A FIGHT FROM THE PEOPLE. SUCH IS THE DANGER AMONG OTHERS FOR THE PEOPLE OF
ALL THE FREE NATIONS OF THE EARTH TO NEVER ALLOW IT TO HAPPEN,
WHEN THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE FOR DISMANTLING THOSE ENNEMIES; AND RID THE GOVERNMENT CMPLETLY FROM THOSE WHO HAVE JOINED AND ARE HELPING TO DESTROY THE NATION.
@Patvann: Awesome list, Pat!! Thank you.
@Patvann: If you take all the quotes you have provided, all that it equals is a new religion, worshipping Mother Earth, or Gaea, or whatever they choose to call it- but in this case, the “high priests” all get lots and lots of money and power, whil;e, as they say, the rest of us have to become poorer in order for there to be “s ocial justice”- what a load of crap- it is good for US to be poor, but also good for THEM to be rich? I don’t think so.
Regarding the damning quotes: They are all over Internet (as a collection). Try as I might, I can’t find the original sources (to determine context). I think that unsourced, out of context quotes (which may or which may not be accurate and, in any event, are out of context) are no more valid than the typical Daily Show montage of Fox News out of context quotes.
Last summer, I went to a lecture (at the Chautauqua Institute) given by the CEO of Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest power companies, which mainly runs coal fired plants. His lecture was about the importance of reducing CO2 emissions and the steps his company was taking (scrubber and sequestration technology for coal plants; building more nuclear, alternative energy, etc.). The lecture was 98% about the policies in the context of CO2 and climate change, but, at the end, he made a single statement to the effect that, even if the climate science turns out to be totally wrong, his engineers and number crunchers came to the conclusion that Duke energy would still benefit, long term, from following the exact same policies. So you could just quote a single phrase out of a single sentence out of context and it would look like the Duke Energy CEO was just another climate fraud.
If anyone has links to original, in context, sources, I’d like to read them.
With respect to CO2 and forest fires, yes, forest fires are carbon neutral, as long as the forest is allowed to grow back. Trees take up carbon when they grow; they give it up when they die. They give it up whether they decompose or whether they burn up. If they are allowed to grow back, they take back the CO2 they gave up.
With respect to California companies moving to Texas; this is largely a myth. I gave a link earlier. And, anyway, California business taxes are actually lower than those in Texas. California personal taxes are slightly higher, but California taxes are about average for the nation. The biggest problem for businesses in California is the very high real estate prices for workers. Houses in California sell for multiples of the prices of comparable houses in Texas. Many workers just can’t afford to live near where they work. Not because of taxes, but because houses here are (still) so expensive.
With respect to me being a “gaia cultist,” no, I’m no more a gaia cultist than the mainstream climate skeptics, such as MIT’s Lindzen and Berkeley’s Muller. My position is that atmospheric CO2 is dramatically increasing and that the increase is due to human activities and we have no clue what effect this increasing CO2 will have on planetary (including human) biology, quite apart from climate effects.
My position is also that the preponderance of evidence points to continued global warming (and assertions that warming has stopped in the past decade are incorrect; I provided links to this effect). I’ve explained the fact that prior instances of CO2 following temperature increases are irrelevant to what is happening now, because what it happening now is completely unprecedented in the history of the planet. I’ve also provided links to this. I also provided links to disprove the hypothesis that volcanic eruptions (either on land or undersea) are a potential source for the observed rise in CO2. I’ve asked for others to provide credible links to the contrary, but none have been provided.
None of my above positions have been refuted by any arguments, data, or links provided on this thread.
I don’t know if the observed increase in global temperature was caused by the observed (and human caused) rise in CO2. This remains a hypothesis, and I don’t believe it’s appropriate to make any political jurisdiction do anything it doesn’t want to do, CO2-emissions-wise. But Europe and China have voluntarily decided to take measures to reduce CO2 and so has the State of California. California has every right to do so and is doing a great service to the rest of the country by serving as an “incubator” test case, just as Massachusetts is doing a service to the nation by piloting ObamaCare. It’s all just more data, which will be useful for formulating future policies. For example, if California really goes bankrupt on account of restricting CO2 emissions, this will be useful information. If California thrives as a green energy technology center (analogous to Silicone Valley), then that will be useful, as well. By that time (say ten years down the road), the state of climate science in general should be much clearer than it is today.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach
Not every ”tax” is called a ”tax.”
And nowhere is that more especially true than in California.
Who remembers AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act from 2007?
AB 32′s regulations carry a multibillion dollar price tag and are the largest tax increase ever imposed by unelected regulators in California — call it the “global warming tax.”
Green jobs by 2010 composed less than one percent of California’s economy, only 42,000 green jobs.
Since 2000, California has lost more than 600,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs.
Even green industries are choosing to expand outside California.
Think that’s ”just anecdotal?”
Think again.
Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute examined the consequences of government regulations and policies in California that have made the state a high-cost place to do business.
Malanga pegs the column to a recent visit to Texas by California state legislators and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom to investigate how the Lone Star State has done so much better in job creation than the Golden State.
And for all the state’s emphasis on “green jobs,” companies that manufacture environmentally oriented products are escaping California, as well.
For the past ten years, California’s Governors and Legislatures have focused on spending cuts and tax increases as the solution to our state’s economic woes. There is a third leg to that stool, an aggressive plan for economic growth. If job creation is truly our highest priority, then let’s create a plan to grow jobs. Look to the future as Governor Perry did in 2003, set job creation goals for the next 15 years and develop a strategy to achieve those goals.
openid.aol.com/runnswim, hi,
the real problem is that they are selling the idea for self profits,
and you dont hear about the specific of what human do to as they claim rise up the CO2,
and no comparison on what human do to diminsh that CO2, because they cannot
do it, and all the money they want to spend is not right to demand the TAXPAYERS TO GIVE,
IN OTHER WORDS, THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO IT, AND THE PEOPLE CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY,
IN THESES HARD TIMES , THE GOVERNMENT SUCCEDED TO RUIN THE ECONOMY,
so they should stop trying to find GiMIC to get more money from the people who are sweathing to survived some day by day, not knowing the tomorrows,
and most of it playing the waivers gifts on their own favored who have vote for them,
bring more suspicion from the AMERICANS TO BELIEVE THEIR RHETORICS.
@Nan. Those are ANECDOTES. Businesses make decisions for lots of reasons. Most doctors (and most voters) in Massachusetts are very happy with RomneyCare (the prototype for ObamaCare). Virtually all of their patients now have good health insurance (>98%, state-wide). But some doctors are very dissatisfied. Listen to them, you’d think that RomneyCare was a catastrophe.
You can’t draw any conclusions from anecdotes. Despite you saying that it’s not just anecdotes, that’s really all you have presented — anecdotes. I previously linked an article which showed that the alleged massive transfer of jobs from CA to TX was a myth. Yes, it is true that energy regulations can cost money. We pay more for gasoline here in CA, because of formulation restrictions to reduce smog. But most people agree that this is worth it.
We’ll all see how California’s anti-CO2 initiative plays out, long term. But, even short term, we are really doing pretty good. And, remember, the anti-CO2 laws weren’t foisted upon us by Democratic politicians. California voters supported both the original initiative and then re-affirmed this, by lopsided margins, despite huge spending against it by the petroleum industry. So we Californians are getting exactly what we voted for.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/us/17california.html
Yes, we do have an employment problem, with respect to workers in the Portland cement (and similar) industries. Some companies (and workers) really are better off locating (and working) in other states. Perhaps you remember the “rust belt.” Times change and economies adapt and evolve. What a great country, to have BOTH Texas AND California! Something for everyone. It would be both boring and unhealthy to have a uniform political and economic climate across the country.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, I apologize in advance, I never read any link from the NYTimes since they started charging.
Sure, they give you “X” number of free links per month but then the charges kick in.
Forget it.
You are learning the strawman fallacy from the master: Obama.
You wrote:
I never meant to claim that EVERY business that leaves CA goes to Texas.
That’s a misunderstanding.
Straw man actually.
But CA has 12 percent unemployment, 4.7 businesses leaving California per week (up from 3.9 per week last year)
Here’s the fact:
14 out of 70 from Jan 1, 2011 to April 22, 2011 went to Texas, not all 70.
That’s NOT anecdotal.
But this is:
Carl’s Jr. has built its last restaurant in CA.
As Hardee’s it will continue to build in Texas.
Why?
It takes six months to two years to secure permits to build a new Carl’s Jr. restaurant in the CA, versus the six weeks it takes in Texas.
California is also one of only three states that demands overtime pay after an eight-hour day, rather than after a 40-hour week. Such rules wreak havoc on flexible work schedules based on actual need.
If there’s a line out the door at a Carl’s Jr. while employees are seen resting, it’s because they aren’t allowed to help: Break time is mandatory.
“You can’t build in California, you can’t manage in California and you have to pay a big tax,” Mr. Puzder, CEO of Hardee’s, told the legislators.
Now, I happen to like Carl’s Jr.
But at least I can go right across the street and buy nasty, filthy fruit ices, fly infested corn on the cobs, tamales with who-knows-what in them and so on from the unlicensed vendors who sets up shop after the Public Health agency inspectors all go home for each weekday.
But no new Carl’s Jrs.
PS, not one of those unlicensed vendors is paying fees, taxes or anything.
But their families are SUCKING the system dry of Food Stamps, Housing, Welfare and free schooling and health.
They probably are getting a federal ”tax refund,” for being so poor, too.
@nan:
I apologize for the straw man. It wasn’t intended. I hate straw men, myself. I didn’t intend my comments as a straw man. I was merely saying that the claims of a major job migration from CA to TX have been grossly exaggerated. I previously provided a link to support this statement.
Here’s the NY Times story, from a different source.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/revenue-spike-cuts-calif-budget-gap-to-108-bln-2011-05-16?link=MW_latest_news
Based on deficit to GDP ratio, we are probably doing better than Texas, state finance wise. The unemployment stats are simply one metric of the overall economy. The overall CA economic recovery is probably outpacing that of the nation. As I keep pointing out, the forecasts for the future are for a major venture capital, new business boom and CA is getting >50% of the nation’s VC, compared to the 4% share for TX. So our future looks bright, conservative doomsayers notwithstanding.
Yes, I understand that California is not the most favorable place for Portland cement and for certain fast food businesses which don’t like paying time and a half to minimum wage employees who work more than 8 hours in a day.
I don’t know where you live, but there are very few Californians who have to drive very far to find a Carl’s Junior. The nearest one to me is 1.5 miles.
P.S. I just looked a couple of things up. First, Hardee’s and Carl’s Junior are owned by the same company. Second, CA already has 700 Carl’s Jr restaurants. Texas just got its first in 2008 and there aren’t plans to go beyond 300 at present; so we’ll still have more Carl’s Jr than TX, even when they finally get built out. I’d say that the big reason they are expanding in TX, rather than CA, is that the choice locations in CA have largely been saturated, while TX is virgin territory. Businessmen can play politics as well as politicians, a lot of the time.
I heard a business story this past week on the radio. Don’t recall when/where. But they were saying that businesses very seldom move because of tax policy differences. There’s always something much more important. If houses and real estate in general cost much more in CA than in TX, that’s incentive enough to move headquarters, for e.g.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Nan, I refrain from eating out to avoid sickness, (It’s fairly effective according to my anecdotal system of accounting) but when I must eat out, Carl’s Junior is my poisoner of choice. Oh! don’t fret my friends, I have eaten at the top end places and the humble places as well.
@Skookum:
Me, too.
BTW, how about a $50 100-watt light bulb?
Congress passed a law in 2007 mandating that bulbs producing 100 watts worth of light meet certain efficiency goals, starting in 2012.
Conventional light bulbs don’t meet those goals, so the law will prohibit making or importing them.
The same rule will start apply to remaining bulbs 40 watts and above in 2014.
Since January, California has already banned stores from restocking 100-watt incandescent bulbs.
75-watters are hitting the shelves this year. Osram Sylvania will be selling them at Lowe’s starting in July. Royal Philips Electronics NV, the world’s biggest lighting maker, will have them in stores late this year for $40 to $45.
To stimulate LED development, the federal government has instituted a $10 million “L Prize” for an energy-efficient replacement for the 60-watt bulb.
Philips has been selling a 60-watt-equivalent bulb at Home Depot since December that’s quite similar to the one submitted to the contest.
But it’s slightly dimmer, consumes 2 watts too much power and costs $40, whereas the L Prize target is $22. Sylvania sells a similar LED bulb at Lowe’s, also for $40.
See, not enough idiots were buying into this whole AGW fraud so CHOICE was taken out of people’s hands.
Lucky for the rest of us, there seems to be enough rich idiots who will buy Priuses, Volts and other waste of good money for nothing cars.
oops… got caught in Larry’s word parsing game, Nan? LOL
But of course it’s not just Texas. There’s software giants like Adobe, gamers EA Games, and online retail outlets like eBay abandoning CA for Utah for more inviting business climates. Guess they didn’t get the silicon valley memo that Larry was touting last week or so, eh?
But it doesn’t end with Utah…. since you can bring it down to almost “anywhere but California” for others. As the “Government in Exile” blog noted in fall of last year, the list of CA exiles grows daily. The link above contains a list of the companies that have bolted the Golden State for more “golden” business opportunities in the past decade…. compiled by an Irvine business location specialist.
MATA, you said test, but it’s not here, I recieved it on my site, and came here to check on you,
and your test is not at FA
BYE
@Mata: To put things in perspective, 2.3% of California’s job losses were caused by corporate migration out of state. At a current unemployment rate of about 12%, this means that, absent out migration, the unemployment rate would have been 11.85%, rather than 12.0%. It’s utterly trivial. As for reasons for relocating, start with housing costs. Do some Zillow searches on Mountain View and Cupertino and Palo Alto (Silicone Valley cities) and compare not just average home prices but home prices of truly comparable homes and lots with those in Texas and North Carolina. Tax codes and regulation have virtually nothing to do with it.
What’s vastly more important than in migration and out migration is the creation of new businesses, growth of existing businesses, balanced by failure of existing businesses. By this metric, California is doing very well and has a brighter future than that of any other state, because the new business money continues to flow here, to a far greater extent than anywhere else.
The stuff you are quoting comes from a guy in Irvine who makes his living helping companies relocate. He’s based in California and it is in his best interest to tell the story in the way which most helps his own business.
By the way, the job losses from California to other states is a small fraction of its losses to Mexico, under NAFTA (which had the enthusiastic support of most Republicans — I supported it, also).
http://www.bizjournals.com/losangeles/news/2011/05/09/calif-has-lost-most-jobs-since-nafta.html
P.S. Just heard this morning that Pabst Blue Ribbon is relocating corporate headquarters from the Midwest to Los Angeles.
So there. Another fact: low tax, low regulation Nevada, proud recipient of California’s Portland cement industry, has proportionately lost more jobs to outmigration than has California. As I said, it’s got way more to do with things such as housing costs and general cost of living than it has to do with taxes and regulation.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Just what do you think it is that affects housing costs and the general cost of living? Taxes are self explanatory. Regulation, however, is an indirect, but significant contributor to the general cost of living, and that is anywhere one can go in our country. And……………government regulation doesn’t just affect products that one can purchase, such as food or even the lightbulbs we use, but it affects the services we require as well, such as oil changes on our vehicles and maintenance on our heating/air systems at home.
From your #140;
That is a dishonest statement, Larry. You are implying that all of the links that we, myself, antics, Randy, another veteran, and Nan G, have provided are worthless, while the ones you cite are impeccable, and unimpeachable. And it appears that the only standard you apply to links provided are that those supporting your position are of high value, while those disputing your assertions are of low, or no, value at all. Very dishonest.
A casual reader who comes here might, without the benefit of perspective, believe that your posted comments are the truth, while all others are of no significance, and merely the arguing of the ignorant “skeptics”, if all they read was your post #140.
@JohnGalt:
As to my statement that “I’ve asked for others to provide credible links to the contrary, but none have been provided,” I was referring specifically (re-read my comment) to the claim that volcanic activity could plausibly explain the 25% rise in atmospheric CO2 over the past 50 years. To date, no such link has been provided. If you can provide such a link (to a credible, science-based source), please do so, and I’ll take back the statement.
As to the following statement:
I’m sure that even Mata would agree that housing costs in California have virtually nothing to do with taxes and regulation. The replacement cost of my house, should it burn down, is 1/3 or less even the currently depressed value of my house (which is on only a 7,000 sq foot lot — the 7,000 sq foot lot being worth twice the value of the house which sits on it). Houses cost so much here, because there’s not enough choice land, in choice locations, for the number of people who want to live in said choice locations.
Real estate taxes are very low here, by the way — much lower than in most parts of the country. Perhaps you remember the groundbreaking “Prop 13?” Overall taxes are about average for the nation. Business taxes are also about average (and, as noted, actually lower than in Texas).
As for “regulation,” concerning running either households or businesses: well, I’ve been a homeowner in California for 32 years and I honestly can’t point to a single “regulation” which has in any way constrained my freedom or cost me any serious money. Same thing for my business (and I even own my own commercial building). Yes, I had to get building permits. Yes, I have to have a certain number of fire extinguishers and sprinklers and I have to pass fire inspections and state medical lab inspections. I can’t burn my own trash. I have to document safe disposal of biocontaminated waste. I have to meet OSHA standards and payroll standards. I had to install an energy efficient lighting system. I had to build out my rest rooms to accommodate wheelchairs and provide a handicapped parking space and I can’t build a backyard fence more tha 6 feet tall and I had to replace my cedar shake roof (when it needed replacing) with non-flammable materials. I have to get my vehicles inspected for smog emissions. I still get occasional $37 tickets for forgetting to move my car on the twice per month street cleaning days. But it’s all eminently reasonable. I get the point of all of it. And I’m a good enough businessman that I can deal with minor annoyances and run a successful business.
Plus, I get to live in California. I travel the country and the world — literally. But, as the Beach Boys said, “I can’t wait to get back to THE state…”
I realize that it’s not for everyone. Fortunately, as I wrote previously, we have a country which has not only California, but also Texas. Something for everyone. What a country.
Non-Californians seem to have this need to see us get some sort of come-uppance. Somehow, I think that there will be a lot of smug satisfaction, outside of state borders, when the Big One finally hits us.
But I do understand. As Yogi Berra said, “nobody’s human.”
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
A house owner in California that hasn’t a clue about the various Props (regulations) mandated by law to ensure housing is built to specific codes (sometimes not helpful nor safe to the consumer or community, aka underbrush elimination near property.) Really? I’m only 29 years old and I have been kept aware of the various Kansas statues, including State and City regulations and policies related to use variou luxury items such as open pit wood fire grills and material incenerators to prevent fire damage in a serious drought (which Kansas is facing now.)
anticsrocks, hi, I picked up a thought from the sentence from the GEOCHEMIST
SAYING THAT: the air reaching GLACIERS during the last ICE AGE,HAD LESS THAN HALF THE WATER VAPOR CONTENT OF TODAY…
AM I wrong to add to it, that the GLACIERS OF THE ICE AGE where logicly higher too,
and the air being thinner the higher you go, might have produce less vapor content,?
thank you for that revelation so important to the people who are confused with the pushing in their
brains that they must pay more and consume less in order to save the planet,
while they are the one to be exposed of their waste of fuel and co2 realease.
bye
Dear Mr. Irons (#153):
Firstly, hello. Pleased to meet you. It’s great to be 29. Enjoy.
Perhaps you can cite a specific example of “specific codes (sometimes not helpful nor safe to the consumer or community).”
The only “code” you cite is “underbrush elimination near property.” I’ve lived in my California house for 32 years, and I’ve never had a single inspection for this sort of thing. Yes, we do have very strict building codes — we do live in an earthquake region. It wouldn’t surprise me that regions of California which are at risk for wildfires might very well have inspections for “underbrush” or other unsafe conditions, just as my business has inspections to insure proper storage of flammables, electrical wiring, etc.
Anyway, various building codes are not the prime determinate of the high cost of housing in California, as I explained. For most houses in the parts of the state where most people wish to live, by far the highest cost is for the land that the dwelling sits on, and this value is determined by the law of supply and demand, as opposed to state or local regulations.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/05/15/former-alarmist-scientist-says-anthropogenic-global-warming-agw-based-on-false-science/
Now lets see how larry dismisses this expert. Will he revert to the consensus gambit? Will he try to claim he’s been bought and paid for by “Big Oil?” Or will he ignore him altogether?
Hard RIGHT, HI, I realy like the link, you brought, It is very logical and come from the mouth of the horse, who’s informed with years of knowledge not EARSAY, which make the difference,
and more truthfull than those exposed quoted by PATVANN which are a bunch of dangerous lyers.
thank you for showing this very important link
bye
@Hard Right: I saw this last week. There are many more like him.
Glad to help Bees.
Randy, I agree there are more like him, but folks like larry will find some way to dismiss them. I’ve done the “expert” dance with larry before.
@Hard (re: “former alarmist scientist – David Evans being his name): This is old news. The arguments of Evans have been considered and rebutted:
But the larger issue is this: There is nothing at all in the writings of David Evans or in your posts which is in conflict with any of the points which I’ve made here. You grossly mischaracterize my climate-related points on this blog.
I’ve — NEVER ONCE — used the “consensus gambit.” In fact, I have attacked the “consensus” argument, not only here, but also on pro-AGW websites, e.g. (see comments #27 and #36 on link below):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-many-climate-scientists-are-climate-skeptics.html
Likewise, I’ve never once attacked the argument of a scientist simply on the basis of who funded him — whether “Big Oil” or NASA or the NSF. What’s relevant are data and arguments and not funding sources.
With respect to the former “Alarmist Scientist” (David Evans), note that he did NOT challenge my assertion that atmospheric CO2 is increasing at an alarming rate and that it is increasing because of human activities. He did NOT challenge my observation that homo sapiens has never before lived with CO2 levels this high and that we have no clue of what sorts of changes to global biology (quite apart from climate change, per se). He did not challenge the assertion that global temperatures are, indeeed, continuing to increase. He did not challenge the assertion that CO2 is, indeed, a greenhouse gas.
The only thing he challenged (and these challenges have been extensively rebutted ) was the hypothesis that it is the rising CO2 which is causing the rising temperatures. I have repeatedly acknowledged that I totally agree that this remains an unproven theory.
What I strenuously object to is the assertion that it has been DISPROVEN that the rising CO2 is responsible for the rising temperatures and I particularly object to the characterization of AGW as being a “hoax.”
Unproven theory? Yes. Proven “hoax?” No.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry when an unproven theory is presented as fact to bilk tax payers out of their money, that is the definition of hoax! Thanks for finally proving my point!
@Randy: Scientific data is one thing; what use politicians make of such data is quite another.
There are a great many reasons for supporting legislation to reduce carbon emissions, quite apart from global warming. John Anderson was a GOP congressman who ran a high profile 3rd Party Presidential campaign in 1980. A centerpiece of his platform was a 50 cent per gallon increase in the gasoline tax. This was decades before Al Gore showed his first PowerPoint slide. I mentioned in a previous post the statement by the CEO of Duke Energy (a gargantuan power company, which mainly uses coal-fired plants) that he and his team determined that all the things that Duke Energy was planning to do to reduce carbon emissions would still make bottom line sense to his company, even if the CO2/global warming connection were ultimately disproven.
Do politicians ever make misleading arguments in the pursuit of goals? Certainly. A great example is the utterly fallacious assertion that increasing domestic oil drilling will moderate the price of gasoline at the pump. No, it won’t. But I agree that there are other good arguments for increasing domestic drilling, e.g. jobs for US oil workers, balance of payments, taxes to the federal government, royalties to the State of Alaska, profits for shareholders. But the GOP isn’t making these arguments; they are saying that we should drill to reduce the price of gasoline, because that’s the argument which most resonates.
Likewise, reducing gasoline and coal consumption would reduce pollution, reduce balance of payments deficits, conserve our own oil reserves for future use by future generations, encourage use of lighter vehicles (which reduces wear and tear on the nation’s highways and bridges), encourage development of green energy alternatives. But this isn’t nearly as sexy as saying that we have to prevent inundation of our shorelines; so I’m not surprised that politicians add in the global warming argument to everything else and actually put it on the top of the pile.
I’m not arguing the politics of global warming here; I’m restricting my arguments to the science of it.
1. The link between rising CO2 and rising temperatures has NOT been disproven!
2. The suggestion that the rising CO2 is causing the rising temperatures is NOT a “hoax!”
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@ilovebeeswarzone: You asked:
I have no idea hon, but that seems like a sound assumption on the face of it. Maybe someone here at FA with more knowledge in this area can chip in.
I think, though that the gist of the report was that water vapor and NOT CO2 has much more of an impact on global warming / cooling.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, it is not the suggestion that CO2 is raising the temperature (if it is rising at all) it is all of the environmental groups, the IPCC, and all of those cap and trade advocates want to control CO2 emissions which are the result of economic success. They want the spread the wealth around by limiting the economic development of industrial countries by forcing industry to those developing countries. It has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with spreading the wealth around. That was even a theme at the last climate conference. The bad part is that people like you Larry are buying a ticket to see their HOAX!
@antics, re water vapor:
Water vapor (e.g. clouds) does have a greater effect, but here’s the theory:
The amount of water on the earth’s surface, between ocean and atmosphere, is in equilibrium. So, on average, the amount of water vapor should not be increasing, over time. What is increasing, however, is atmospheric CO2 (which David Evans doesn’t dispute as being a greenhouse gas).
The controversy is whether the amount that CO2 has increased is sufficient to explain the amount of warming which has occurred, coincident with the increase. Here’s where the “feedback” controversy comes in. If you get a little bit of warming from a big rise in CO2, then this will increase evaporation and increase water vapor and increase warming, which will, in turn, drive even more CO2 out from the oceans (where most of it is stored), just as CO2 is driven out of a beer or a soda, when heated, and you have a vicious cycle — three different things, all feeding back to increase temperature. CO2 –> slight temperature increase –> more water vapor in atmosphere –> more temperature increase –> more CO2 driven out of the ocean and so on.
What’s controversial is exactly how much of this feedback is actually going on. Evans says “not so much.” The AGW proponents (who have sharply rebutted Evans’ arguments) say “quite a lot.” I personally consider it to be very UNSETTLED science.
@Randy, re politics. Again, I’m not into arguing the politics of it. Only the science part of it.
My own view of it, politically speaking, is probably not totally different from yours. I’m against forcing any individual states, much less the whole country, to do anything radical regarding carbon emissions, until we have more definitive data. I’m very enthusiastic about allowing individual states to serve as pilot study “incubators,” to determine the feasibility and impact (both economic and environmental) of enacting regulations to reduce carbon emissions. As I wrote before, this is something that the voters of California decided (and reconfirmed) that they/we wanted to do. So let them/us do it and let’s all see how it goes.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Ah yes, realclimate, the home of fervant believers. Shocka! Larry believes his experts because they support his view.
Realclimate-where they claimed the Climategate scandal was no big deal and accused those quoting the emails of having “cherry picked” and taking them out of context. In short, the standard response of the left when caught red handed.
Let me pull a Larry about experts:
Hmm, not a climate scientist… After reading thru his blog, found him not to be credible. He likes to try and play games with numbers/statistics and dazzle you with BS.
A student? Does he have a degree? Despite searching, I can’t find that he has one. Per Larry’s standard set in previous threads, he’s not an expert and not credible.
Much better. Too bad that after seeing someone who really knows his stuff take him to task, it became clear he’s a true believer and doesn’t worry about little things like facts. He likes to point out his books and “peer reviewed papers”. The problem with that is when like minded individuals are doing the reviewing… He even cites work by Hansen, a known fraud to those who haven’t been duped. Objectivity? He doesn’t know what that is. To be expected when the person makes an entire career of pushing their religion.
Gee, another non-climate expert and drone of Al-Gore. The left likes to say follow the money and he did just that.
On his site, here is who he’s aligned with.
http://www.coal-is-dirty.com/who-we-are
As for Evans, I see they attacked his claims and claimed he was wrong, but I’ve also seen charts that prove him right.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Quite a theory on your part, Larry. However, when the United States Dept. of Energy says that 99.72% of ALL CO2 is from NATURAL causes, then what man is pumping into the atmosphere at this point is, well pointless.
I guess what you are saying is that our global ecosystem is so fragile that man, while putting only .28% more CO2 into the atmosphere is going to send us into catastrophic climate failure and heat the earth up to the point that life is endangered??
Really?
Then why, when volcanoes literally covered the earth over 450 million years ago did they trigger global cooling? Yes, you heard that right, the volcanic period triggered the Ice Age.
Please explain.
.
.
I think that if the VOLCANOES ARE going to all the trouble to spout their inner core out,
full of [got you] full of CO2,
well it must be , because we needed more.
kidding or not, that is for y’all to tell me.
openid.aol.com/runnswim,
another thing that we overlook maybe, in case you’re interested to know,
is, in times of poor economy, when the people have to personly in their own house,
cut some where to distribute their lower income, to survive a crisis as it is right now,
most will cut on the energy they normaly use without thinking, meaning use more,
so realy, nobody need the rules and regulation from the GOVERNMENT TO MAKE IT HARDER
FOR THEM INSTEAD OF SAVING MONEY ON WHAT THEY ARE OBLIGE TO CUT, THEY ARE PAYING THE GOVERNMENT TO TAXE THEM FOR IT.
and to say that all this multiple restraint from millions sel doing, is itself reducing the CO2, THAT YOU ARE CLAIMING TO BE THE REASON FOR CLIMATE WARMING AND VAPORS MAKING,
SOeither way, is not to worry, because it’s rectifying it’s problem by itself, without having to spend billons to build robots to heath the mansion and the pool where you live, and in the same time protecting the most vulnerables of life on earth, I am naming the BIRDS WHICH ARE TURN INTO BURGER BALLS WHEN THEY IMMIGRATE IN YOUR PATHWAY.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Sorry, but I don’t believe that anybody made that claim here. I think you are grasping for something, but coming up empty.
Come on, Larry. You aren’t that blind, are you? Yes, I realize that in housing, location, location, location, plays a major part in the cost of a house, but that is more due to where the land is located, not necessarily the house. But even then, location determines the amount of regulations, fees, licenses, and permits required to build a home, which adds cost to the price of a home. That is partially why, where I live in Indiana, the actual build cost of a new home is much less than a few miles to the west, in Illinois.
And the main part of my comments, that you highlighted, refer to the cost of living in an area, compared to another. Taxes and regulations play a big part in that. Your comment to Mata, I believe, is wrong. I’m not interested in getting into the details concerning CA and other states, or the details concerning the issue itself. All I will say is that you are crazy if you think that taxes and regulations have not affected you, or limited your freedoms and liberties, or those of the people around you.
As for me personally, I have little desire to visit the “land of fruits and nuts” for the people. Certain landmarks and scenic parks interest me though.
@antics:
The math is really very simple.
Current atmospheric CO2 is 385 parts per million. In 1900, it was 295 ppm. In 1957, it was about 310 ppm. Atmospheric CO2 has gone up by nearly 25% in just over 50 years.
The earth’s atmosphere contains 720 Gtons (Gton equally a billion metric tons) of carbon. Human carbon release into the atmosphere from previously-sequestered fossil fuels is currently 7 Gtons per year. If all of it stayed in the atmosphere, atmospheric CO2 would go up about 1% per year and, therefore, should have gone up by 50% in the past 50 years. The fact that it only went up 25% may be explained by diffusion into the ocean and other natural carbon “sinks.”
As far as why volcanoes triggered an ice age, that’s simple. Volcanoes emit virtually no CO2, relatively speaking. That’s why the great volcanic eruptions (e.g. Mt. Pinatubo) of the past several decades did not produce a detectable rise in atmospheric CO2. What volcanoes do emit is ash. Ash reflects sunlight back into outer space and literally forms a sunshade over the earth’s surface. So volcanic eruptions tend to cool the earth.
@johngalt:
Quoting me:
JohnGalt says:
See #97, #103, #107
With regard to the fact that housing costs in CA truly do have nothing to do with taxes and regulation and your comparison of “build cost” between Indiana and Illinois, what you don’t realize is that the actual cost of the dwelling, in the parts of California where most people want to live, is only a fraction of the cost of the land that the house sits on. I live in a relatively modest 1,860 sq foot house, built in 1963, with 2 baths and 3 bedrooms and a 2 car garage, sitting on a 7,000 sq foot lot. It is really a very modest home, not nearly as nice as our first house (in Ann Arbor, MI, which we purchased when I was a medical intern and my wife was a medical technologist). As of today, the California house has a zillow.com estimated value of $775,000 (which is down from $1.15 million, just before the real estate crash, but up from the $153,500 we paid for it, back in 1979. The house is simple frame and stucco, sitting on a slab (no basement). There is nothing at all fancy or upgraded about it. It could easily be re-built for less than $200,000. Houses in my tract are commonly just torn down, when a new owner buys the property, and a new house put up. A comparable house in a comparable neighborhood in Texas or North Carolina would cost less than $25o,000. I am managing a house for my Dad in Louisville, KY, built in 1993, which is much, much nicer than my home in CA, and my Dad’s house is currently worth less than $200K. I just looked up our original house in Ann Arbor on zillow.com. It’s 1,886 sq feet, on a 10,500 sq ft lot (both larger than our CA house). It was built in 1975 and is in a very nice neighborhood in a beautiful university town. It has a current estimated value of $238,000.
This is the biggest employment/business problem in California — people can’t afford to live near their workplace. So you have young families, working in Orange County, but buying houses 50 miles away in Riverside County, and enduring 90 minute one way commutes. That’s, by far, the biggest reason for business outmigration. Anyway, as I reported (and linked) earlier, outmigration of businesses has had a negligible effect on both the general economy (which is recovering quite nicely) and employment (which is still high, but California has had the nation’s largest job loss to Mexico as a result of NAFTA, which has cost the state vastly more jobs than has business outmigration).
@Hard:
The only times I have asked for so-called “experts” have been with regard to assertions that (1) the CRA played an important role in the financial meltdown (no, it didn’t), and (2) tax cuts pay for themselves and do not increase debt (no, they don’t pay for themselves and yes, they do increase debt).
With respect to the current climate debate, you cited the opinion of an electrical engineer and I countered with the opinion of a bona fide climate scientist (in addition to the lay, armchair analysts also appearing in the link I provided). For purposes of the current discussion, I’m not even going to claim that “my” expert is right and “your” expert is wrong. As I wrote, I believe that the link between the massive, human-caused rise in CO2 and the documented rise in global temperatures remains unsettled and controversial (as explained in #165).
But you guys are just as bad as Al Gore. Gore asserts that the link between CO2 and temperature has been proven. No, it hasn’t. You guys strongly imply (“fraud,” etc.) that the link between Co2 and temperature has been disproved. No, it hasn’t
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, #97 does not have even the remotest link to volcanic activity and CO2.
As for the other two posts you listed, they are mine, and in neither one of them did I ever make the claim that volcanic activity can account for the entire increase in CO2 over the past 50 years. Maybe you should go back and re-read what I posted. In short, though, I was presenting examples of other CO2 sources. In the one post, I also used volcanic activity to show that the earth’s atmosphere was NOT a perfect, closed system prior to man, like you stated in a previous post. Now you’ve taken what I’ve stated, and added your own spin to it, to present it as something that I never intended, nor implied. You lied. Again. To serve your own purposes. My respect for you, which at one time was great, is quickly diminishing.
As for your other rejoinder to my post, I do not have the patience at this point to discuss it with you.
@Openid
The Truth about RealClimate.org
Oh, and UN IPCC Scientist Richard Courtney now calls climate models “fundamentally wrong” and that that Joe Romm’s article was ‘nonsense.’ http://climatedepot.com/a/1497/UN-IPCC-Scientist-Rejects-Romms-Claims-as-nonsense-on-all-countsNASAs-predictions-of-next-solar-cycle-have-all-been-wrong
And then there’s this: U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Scientists Continue to Debunk “Consensus” in 2008 &
2009
On the anti-AGW side we have Israeli astrophysicist Nir Shaviv who labels realclimate.org’s “” as “bleeding hearts and intellectual lightweights”
Solar activity appears to affect climate.
THIS JUST IN: GOP rejects EPA’s climate claims! Rejects claim that ‘evidence is compelling’ for AGW; Rejects claim that ‘public health is threatened by global warming’
Randy, thank you for this POST of you’res, It enable me to learn so much from it, and even take my chance on giving an humble ignorant thought just because it has supplyed thoughts for people like me to better be equipt to judge which is true or false, I hope other readers from outside would come here in the open and give their input on the subject of your POST, and what are the thoughts that has developped in their mind from the rich comments freely delivered from our guest participant,
bye
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
“Modest home?”
Larry!
You could fit THREE of my homes inside of yours!
610 square feet.
Very, very efficiently designed in the late 1960′s.
27 units, refitted/replanted to use the water of only 7 average units, and I was winner of the Earth Day Award in 2008 for planning it and doing it.
No Earth Day Awards for you!
Just what is your personal carbon footprint?
We took a test about how long we could live if we used an AVERAGE carbon footprint for a person on earth…..the answer was ”you should live to be hundreds of years of age.”
Yet we live in CA, not some backwoods 3rd world country!
@JohnGalt:
You are making an enormous mountain out of a tiny mole hill and are, once again, misusing the verb “to lie.” This is utterly outrageous. I will endure all manner of criticism of my ideas or interpretations or opinions, but I will not stand for being called a liar by some anonymous pseudonym. In addition to #97, #103, #107, there’s also #121.
Here was my original statement (from #140):
This was part of a comment which summarized all of my replies on this thread. I was reviewing the major arguments to date, in a point by point fashion. This particular point was relating to the alternative suggestions which had been offered to explain the rise in CO2 from sources other than humans. To my knowledge, the only sources brought up for serious discussion were (1) forest fires and (2) volcanoes. Volcanoes were brought up repeatedly, e.g. #97, #103, #107, #121.
Here was my follow up statement (#152):
To which you replied:
(#170)
Then I provided the list of comments which pertained to this (see above), and you replied (#172):
What you are using as an excuse to attack my integrity is the word “entire.” It’s sort of a gotcha. Look, from my point of view, I recalled two plausible sources for non-human CO2 which were offered up. (1) forest fires and (2) volcanic activity. Volcanic activity was raised several times. I explained how forest fires simply give up CO2 which was taken out of the atmosphere by the trees in the previous 50 or 100 or however many years the trees were alive, and how trees give up CO2 when they die and decay, and how the CO2 gets taken back up again, so long as the trees are allowed to re-grow. So that left the volcanic activity. That’s what I was thinking in my mind, and my statements were in no way intended to deceive.
Let me presume to explain to you what a “lie” is. A “lie” is where someone intentionally states a falsehood, with the intent to permanently deceive and not get caught. I’m a real person with a real name and a real reputation. Everything I write on the Internet is permanent, forever, and can be checked, sourced, refuted, and discredited. I would never intentionally state anything I knew to be false, because I would anticipate being discredited and my reputation and good name tarnished. There are certainly times when I’ve made statements which I believed to be correct, which were later shown to be incorrect. These are errors, mistakes, blunders, asinine assertions, or Kool-aid delusions (take your pick). What they are NOT, are “lies.”
If you want to turn what started out as an exchange of ideas, data, and opinions into some sort of a personal feud, I can’t stop you, but I respectfully request that you not use “that” word. I’ve never once used “that” word on this blog, in all the arguments which I’ve had, since September 2008. I presume that everyone here is stating the truth, as he or she perceives it to be at the time, whether or not he or she turns out to be right or wrong.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
@Nan: Good for you. I think that my home is pretty modest, considering that we raised two kids, one dog, 4 cats, and several turtles in it. The point was simply that the actual value of the dwelling is a fraction of the value of the land; so that the high home prices in California are a function of supply and demand and not of regulation and taxes (real estate taxes here being low, compared to most parts of the country).
As far as carbon goes, we don’t have air conditioning and we only run the heater in the winter when we are actually at home; otherwise, it gets turned off. We live 3.5 miles from where we work and we carpool in a Mazda3. I do have a fondness for long, hot showers after I’ve swum in the cold ocean. Though not up to your standards, we are probably above average, just like the kids from Lake Woebegone.
@Ditto: The problem which I keep encountering on this blog is that it’s like I have to play chess against a half dozen opponents at once. You raise interesting and debatable points, but I’ve just run out of time; so you get the last word. I’m sure that we’ll have the chance to revisit this some time in the future. It’s a topic which isn’t going away.
P.S. My daughter just emailed me the following link to a youtube video from a group of people who would appear to be on the pro-AGW side of the debate. Even if you don’t agree with their point of view, you have to admire their energy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiYZxOlCN10
- Larry W/HB
Here’s a wonderfully hilarious economic analysis of wind power by Lord Christopher Monkton: CO2 Mitigation: It’s Dopey
It’s an interesting connundrum you bring up, johngalt, since there is a combination of truth, embellishment and widespread ignorance on the deforestation issue. For example, I laugh my tuckus off at the Oregonians, planting trees to “save the planet”. If any of them had a clue, they’d know the effect of temperate and boreal forests on CO2 and carbon levels is insignificant, even by the envirowackos standard.
The greatest effect seems to be from tropical deforestation. And not necessarily because you can’t cut forests. However change in land use… i.e. from forest to agriculture, modern development (roads, homes, infrastructure)… the simple needs of the tropical denizens for things like ag land and wood for heat, plus the method used in clearing the land may affect the emissions.
On one hand, cutting and replanting is still an effective balance of tropical forests. However burning… whether natural or used to clear the land for farm use… can exacerbate the carbon emissions.
But what are some of the options? Are those that live in the tropical forest regions relegated to little or no farm land and food source to “save the planet”? Is the reality they have little education in crop rotation and soil management also to blame?
And then, for the political end, why is the US the bad guy for emissions if the bulk of CO2 emissions is emanating from the equator belt?
A March 2010 study for CRS, by Ross W. Gorte and Pervaze A. Sheikh is an interesting read for the curious. And I will tell you, this was penned by active enviros. One only needs to read their “conclusion”… which states:
Those impressive large percentages mask the actual fractional percentage of CO2 increases that are measured. i.e. 70% of .001% isn’t much of a number. But it sure sounds better this way, don’t you think? Riles up those in need of a cause, and a reason to halt advanced civilization.. or at least in selected areas.
Since planting trees is the US does nothing for the deforestation effects, they concoct legislation like the Tropical Forest Conservation Act of 1998… where a developing country’s debt is exchanged for local conservation funds to conserve tropical forests. Yet we come back again to the need for the cutting to begin with… need for more farm land? Development for more civilized amenties… roads, power, small urban centers?
It seems that much emphasis is placed on “don’t cut your forests, and your food demands and modernization be damned” attitude. In fact, if one took enviros seriously on deforestation, they want to keep the tropical belt dwellers barefoot and pregnant by restricting civilized development that would require deforestation. But then, without modern developments like power plants, etc, they end up burning their natural resources and clearing just to survive with heat and food.
My thoughts? I still believe that the earth always goes thru climate change. Mother Earth is probably laughing at these gnats on her surface, saying “thank you for noticing”. It’s cyclic, and always has been. I believe that man’s contribution to that cycle is the equivalent to a gnat on an elephant’s butt. He cannot control it, nor change it’s course.
They would use their chicken little mentality more wisely if they just attempted to accommodate for what areas would be rendered less inviting for human consumption with the cyclic change, than playing the political game of controlling industry, development, population, and legislation meant only to enrich the game players.
@mata:
What do you mean by this? I think that I disagree with you, but your statement isn’t clear.
No surprise you’re starting from the negative, Larry. LOL
I’m speaking of the only thing that matters to the AGW types… the ‘airborne fraction’. Or the amount of human CO2 that remains in the atmosphere.
Considering that even the IPCC admits that there is no significant trend in the CO2 ‘airborn fraction’ growth rate since 1958 …. or that the ‘airborne fraction’ has shown little variation … we’re talking about an imperceptible measurement of difference since measurements were kept that constitutes the “estimated 75%-80% of global CO2 emissions stemming from industrial sources, specifically burning fossil fuels” these guys referred to. Unless, of course, you’d like to say that global warming was hot and heavy in the 50s.
@mata:
I’m still not clear. You said:
You seem to be saying that CO2 is not increasing in the atmosphere. But it is:
http://mattrhodes.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Keeling-Curve.png
And all the climate scientists (even the skeptical ones) concede that this rise is human-caused. (I provided previously a link to a comprehensive review appearing on the climate skeptic Watts Up website).
It’s simple to calculate why this is so, as I did previously on this thread (#171):
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
No, Larry. That is not what I’m saying, but it seems to be what you are hearing. As the civilized world develops, there are more emissions. Albeit the locations of those may have shifted over the decades as the industrial nations have shifted in power, and even a mean increase is tempered by newer and cleaner technology.
But what is the only concern is the airborne fraction… or the amount of emissions in the atmosphere that cannot dimish… and loiters, thus contributing to the AWG end of the world as we know it theory. Or more simply put, what can the earth take care of disposing of, and what can’t she?
As Anthony Watts noted back on Nov of 2009, the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now. This flies in the face of the claim that the ecosystem’s capacity to absorb said emissions is lessened as CO2 emissions rise. oops…
Unfortunately for the enviro AGW researcher who discovered this inconvenient truth… ahem… he attempted to back track on the results, and instead wanted to focus on why what he so believed would happen, ain’t happening.
@MataHarley: Mata, what the environmentalist also fail to understand is that if the forests are cut and the wood is used for homes then there is CO2 taken out of the cycle. Instead, they want forests to remain uncut. That means forests as a net CO2 sink means nothing. All of the CO2 that is taken up by the trees is given back when they die and decay. This applies to all forests to include tropical forests. It is another cycle of nature like the weather.
@ilovebeeswarzone: Thank you Miss Bees.
@mata (#183): I believe that the interpretation of the study you quote is a red herring. To my understanding, it’s an armchair interpretation of a study with which the study’s authors don’t agree. It also flies in the face of all common sense logic (see below) and, anyway, it’s refuted by another, contemporaneous study:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n12/full/ngeo689.html#
Although the relationship between CO2 accumulation and temperature increase is not a settled issue (one way or the other), the fact that CO2 is increasing at an astonishing rate and the almost universally accepted hypothesis that humans are behind the increase are as close to being settled as anything you’ll find in all of climate science.
Here’s the comprehensive review, appearing on the Watts Up site, AFTER the blog post you cited:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/why-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-1/
Quote:
If you disagree, you’ve got to explain the following:
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has gone up by 25% in the past 50 years. If humans didn’t put this CO2 there, then how did it get there?
The amount of CO2 humans have put into the atmosphere in the past 50 years is well known. It accounts for almost exactly twice the actual increase.
If all that extra CO2 didn’t go into the atmosphere, and a lot of it remain in the atmosphere, you have to account for where it went. So you are saying that all 350 Gtons went into oceans and plants and didn’t stay in the atmosphere? And you are then saying that there is some mysterious source for the 175 Gtons which DID go (and remain) into the atmosphere?
The simplest explanation is almost always correct.
Facts:
Humans put about 350 Gtons of CO2 into the atmosphere in the past 50 years.
The atmosphere accumulated an extra 175 Gtons of CO2 in the past 50 years.
Most probable explanation:
1175 Gtons of the human CO2 stayed in the atmosphere. The other 175 Gtons got absorbed into the ocean and into green plants or whatever.
If you don’t agree, then can you offer a more plausible explanation?
This really isn’t controversial. Lots of climate stuff is controversial; not this.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Larry, you stated;
I take that to read that I somehow have stated, somewhere here in this topic, that volcanoes are the source of the CO2 rise. Am I misunderstanding your statement there? I don’t think so. You have misrepresented what I have stated, 3 times now, and you have the gall to act hurt that I called you a liar? Please!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie
Have you not created a false, or misleading impression of my statements? Yes, you have. By definition, you have told a lie. And by further definition, you are a liar, as a liar is defined as one who tells lies. Tell me I’m wrong.
Do I need to go through and point out my exact wordings and phrases regarding what I have stated about volcanic activity, and atmospheric CO2? I shouldn’t have to, as you should go back and read again what I’ve stated, and how it applies to my complete postings, in the context that I’ve discussed volcanic activity.
I didn’t start out here to get into feuds with anyone, and I do not want to get into one with you, however, like you, what I comment on, and post on, is based on beliefs, those I know to be true, and those I believe are true, based on facts. Regardless of me not putting out my real name, I do not desire to be known here, under my pseudonym, as one who postings are ones to be ignored, either because people think I tell lies, or that I’m a crazy internet guy ranting about stuff that I know nothing about. I respect everyone here, even you, Rich, and Gaffa, and do not intend to be known as an argumentative fool. I will not, however, stand by while someone impugns my reputation here, by misrepresenting my stated comments, whether intentional or not. I don’t demand an apology. It’s not my place to do so. I do, however, demand that if you choose to converse, or have a discussion with me about a topic, that you represent my statements accurately, and factually. It’s up to you.
I’m not really sure what you miss about what the earth can absorb, and what the earth cannot absorb, Larry. If the earth can dispose of increased CO2 naturally, and the airborne fraction is indiscerable since the mid 19th century, sounds to me like you’re grasping at straws.
Outta here….
@MataHarley:
I read your comments on deforestation with interest. I was not necessarily thinking of those fruitcakes in the Pac NW, who believe their loss of forest land is a major culprit to CO2. I was thinking more of the tropical forests, which you discussed. It is an interesting conundrum, as we cannot very well ask those living in the tropics of SA and Africa to cease and desist cutting down their forests, to use the land for other usages.
What I don’t believe is twofold. One, that fossil-fuel usage is THE major contributor to CO2 atmospheric level increases, and Two, that CO2 causes warming of the planet. The only thing that I know for sure is that I think their needs to be REAL scientific investigation on this issue, not just some pseudo-scientists fitting their cherry-picked data to fit their conclusions. The whole process was done backwards, and without any peer review, simply to obtain continued grants and government funding.
JohnGalt:
I apologize for creating the false impression that the commenters on this blog post implied that the ENTIRE rise in atmospheric CO2 was owing to volcanic activity. It was never my intention to do so.
In retrospect, I could have said: “I was referring specifically (re-read my comment) to the claim that volcanic activity could plausibly explain a meaningful portion of the 25% rise in atmospheric CO2 over the past 50 years.” This statement would have accurately conveyed my thinking. You must realize that I scribble this stuff in between projects at work. I’m an a hurry, most of the time (such as now), and I don’t carefully consider the wording of each and every sentence.
I explained what was going on in my mind when I made the quoted statement, to wit, there were only two plausible sources extensively discussed (forest fires and volcanoes — the latter being the issue most extensively discussed and defended). Since I felt that forest fires could be dismissed out of hand, that left the volcanoes. That’s what I was thinking as I wrote the quote, above.
That said, if you insist on labeling me a “liar” over misunderstandings of this nature (as you have now done — twice, in two different threads), I would like to propose that we simply avoid engaging each other, to the extent that this is possible. Life is too short for stuff like this.
By the way, your definition of “lie” is incredibly misleading. You are misusing the dictionary to create your own false impression. You make a literal quotation, to wit:
“to create a false or misleading impression.”
Now, what is missing from that statement is the term “intentionally,” as in “to intentionally create a false or misleading impression.”
This is (or should be) completely understood, as being self evident.
Have you never been wrong about something? Have you never phrased a sentence in a way which conveyed a meaning which you did not intend to convey? Have you never — unintentionally — created a false or misleading impression?
These are examples of mistakes or errors or simply poor communication. If we go around labeling people as being “liars” in these situations, we strip the word “to lie” of its true meaning. It’s an important word. A synonym is “bearing false witness.” So lying is breaking one of the Ten Commandments. It’s a big deal. Its meaning should not be cheapened by use in situations like this. Which is why I think that the word should be used only in those occasions where the use of the word is clearly merited.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@ mata (#188):
This wasn’t a serious response to my #186. You don’t understand this issue. What the heck do you mean by the following? —
The “airborne fraction” has increased dramatically since the mid 19th century, and virtually everyone — including climate skeptics like Lindzen and Muller and the link I gave on the Watts Up site — acknowledge that this is almost certainly due to humans burning fossil fuels and the amount of fossil fuels burned tracks perfectly with the CO2 rise and there’s no other plausible source which anyone has been able to offer to explain this increase (please see again #186).
What’s with this “grasping at straws” stuff?
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
I will one more time repeat, and was also confirmed by several studies, that the airborne fraction of residual emissions has not discernably changed since 1850. Not only via that researcher I linked earlier, who merely said “gee… I’ll guess we’ll have to figure out why the earth is still cleaning it up for us”, here’s the same from ScienceDaily.
In 2007, the IPCC also said the same.
A 2009 study, “Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide (Le Quere 2009)”, which factored in volcanic activity and other natural events still came to the same conclusion as Knorr.
What Mother Nature appears to do historically is ramp up, and down, her ability to absorb and disseminate correspondingly with CO2 so that it generally remains constant around 40-45%. This has not changed with the advent of the 20th century industrial era. Period. End of story.
So no, you are incorrect that the AF has “increased dramatically”. However true to your general method of operation in debate, I’m sure you’ll stick to your inaccuracies as your form of truth.
Now, what you may attempt to argue… and for me, it will fall on deaf ears from you… is that the increase of CO2 – which makes up 0.0360% of the atmosphere, of which about 64% (or .02304%) *may* be attributable to fossil fuel emissions (depends on if that figure includes water vapor)… makes that consistent and natural earth AF clean up percentile as precariously dangerous.
I see it as a mountain out of a mole hill, and grasping at straws. With faulty modeling, dire predictions that haven’t come true, and a bunch of politically oriented scientists, diving at int’l government money, not even figuring out until 2009 that AF has no discernable change in 150+ years, why on earth would I accept their chicken little hysteria as substantiated?
But gee… why bother having a discussion with someone who simply says “you don’t understand this issue”. I might say the same about you, and your inability to grasp AF, nor to admit to even what AGW enviro wackos have confirmed is true. So my suggestion is you exercise your distinctive brand of pomposity on someone else, thank you.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: You said:
Um, no. The volcanic ash had little to nothing to do with it.
You are, as usual on this subject, completely wrong.
Let me educate you –
Admittedly, I set you up on this and asked you this question to do one thing – demonstrate that you have no idea what you are talking about, Larry. Sorry.
As to your off the wall claim that volcanoes emit no CO2 –
Again, wrong.
Look, it has been proven that the earth is cooling – has been for the last decade or so. It has also been shown that 99.72% of CO2 put into the atmosphere is NATURALLY OCCURRING.
So why the hand wringing over AGW?
Instead you should be asking yourself what the ultimate goal of the left is on this issue. Do you really believe that we ought to divert our money to third world countries on the basis that we caused global warming? Should we regress back to the stone age and give up our cars, homes, air conditioning, factories, etc…?
Man only puts a tiny, tiny fraction of CO2 into the air, so anything we do to change that will make no difference at all.
.
.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
I do not wish that, as I truly enjoy our discussions, for the most part. Perhaps I was a little harsh in my condemnation of your comments. From this point, if you mislead, intentionally(which I never assumed of you), or unintentionally, I will simply point it out, and request you make a correction. Fair enough?
You shouldn’t, however, question a source such as Merriam-Webster on definitions of words. The definition I copied was not taken out of context, but lifted in it’s entirety.
I consider the matter closed, as the other one was. I know that you expect those of us here, who engage in discussions with you, to treat your statements fairly, and accurately. We expect the same treatment. I am hoping we, you and I, can move past this. Again, Larry, I have respect for you, and your opinions and views, even if I feel that they are wrong.
johngalt, I knew you would come back for this one, I was just waiting till you found the moment,
YES, you would make a real good PRESIDENT, KNOWLEGABLE, PROWD AND ABLE TO HUMILITY, INTELLIGENCE TO SEE THE DIFFERENCE, AND A JUDGEMENT TO RENDER THE BEST JUDGE JEALOUS,,
and a love for AMERICA and the laws of the land,, there’s more to find,
bye
@mata:
You truly don’t understand your own sources…really. I don’t expect you to understand this, but I’m sure that everyone else will — including JohnGalt and Antics and even Hard.
Let me explain it, using the least pompous language I can.
Let me quote from your own Science Daily article:
Now, let’s start with that 45% figure. What does that mean? It means that 45% of human-produced CO2 goes into the atmosphere and stays there. 55% gets absorbed (e.g. by the oceans and by green plants).
Let’s go back to my comment # 186:
Now, isn’t it interesting that my rounded off numbers (50% remaining in the atmosphere; 50% going into the oceans and green plants) is very similar to the very numbers in the very articles you are citing (45% atmosphere; 55% ocean/plants)?
You obviously don’t have a clue what you are talking about. You don’t understand the very point of the articles you cite. Let me continue to explain:
There is a theory, promoted by “warmists,” that the percentage of human-generated CO2 which is emitted into the atmosphere is increasing. In other words, instead of only 45% remaining in the atmosphere, this could increase to 50% or 55% or 60% or 70% and so forth. The reason why this could happen is that the CO2 “sink” (ocean and green plants) is starting to get saturated. But your Bristol paper and your IPCC report do not agree with this point of view. They say that the proportion of human produced CO2 which remains in the atmosphere is the same 45% that it’s always been.
But that has nothing whatsoever to do with the established fact that humans dumped 350 GTons of CO2 into the atmosphere in the past 50 years and that nearly half of it stayed in the atmosphere and that nearly 175 GTons which remained in the atmosphere precisely accounts for the 25% increase in atmospheric CO2 which has been documented to have occurred during the past 50 years!
There is no contradiction in data. There is no inconsistency. Everyone finds the same thing.
1. Atmospheric CO2 is rising at an alarming rate (25% in 50 years).
2. The amount of CO2 which humans have dumped into the atmosphere during this time is just about twice as much as has accumulated in the same time.
3. The “extra” CO2 went into the earth’s CO2 “sinks” (oceans and green plants).
The only little itty bitty controversy, which your papers/citations/links address, is whether the “sinks” are starting to be saturated. Some say yes; some say no (your links). But this is a relatively unimportant argument. What virtually nobody is arguing about is that (1) CO2 levels are increasing rapidly and (2) humans are the ones who are putting the new CO2 into the atmosphere.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@John (#194): Thanks for that. Truly. I agree with everything in your post. Let’s just chalk it off to the fog of war.
For my part, I am sorry, and I’ll try to be less cavalier (and careless) in the future. – Larry
openid.aol.com/runnswim,
best to you, I enjoy your comments
@antics (#193):
Like Mata, you don’t understand your own sources:
Here’s a crystal clear explanation of the effect of volcanic eruptions on climate:
Excerpt:
I stand by my statements that (1) the contributions of volcanic eruptions to atmospheric CO2 is trivial and (2) the most important effect of volcanic eruptions on climate is the cooling effect exerted by reflection of sunlight back into outer space from the volcanic ash and the umbrella effect of said ash.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@ilovebeeswarzone:
Ms. Bees, thank you for your vote of confidence, however, I wouldn’t want the job if it was handed to me on a silver platter. It takes more energy than I have to give, and my life is mine at this point, with no one snooping around to say “Aha!” at every little move I make. I’d probably end up a combination of Ford and Clinton. Playing golf to escape the pressures and duties of the office, and gaining tons of weight from eating to relieve the stress. It takes a special kind of individual to even want to be President, and the current occupant is showing that he isn’t one of them. I think he wanted it, without understanding what it would mean to be President.
Then again, I’ve often heard that sometimes the best person to be a leader is the one who doesn’t want to be one. Still, not for me, lol. Thank you again, though. I appreciate it.
johngalt, too bad, I HAD A GREAT CREW PICKED TO HELP. BYE
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
In general, concerning CO2 emissions, while it is somewhat accurate to assume a figure that humans emit from fossil fuel usage, I still contend that there is too much unknown on the planet, by scientists, to figure all the emissions from other sources, and that includes volcanic activity.
For example;
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/exploration.html
Now, how can any accuracy be placed upon the effects of volcanic activity on CO2 emissions, when only around 5% of the ocean’s floors have been mapped? And, as the ocean comprises 70% of the earth’s surface, that means that, in totality, 2/3 of the earth’s surface remains unexplored, unmapped, with unknown numbers of underwater volcanic rifts, cones, and breaches in the crust of the earth. Simply put, to place any accuracy on a scientist stating, unequivocally, that volcanic activity is 150 times less than human activity is pure speculation on their part.
And as for the CO2 “sinks”, I think that using the word ‘saturated’ is misleading word usage. I state this because the ability of the ocean, and land vegetation, to act as a “sink” for CO2 changes constantly, depending on numerous factors, including, current season, ocean currents, air currents, temperature of the water, and many, many more factors.
And when you bring all that together, it doesn’t make any sense to force changes to people’s living conditions based on unproven, and at this current time, unprovable, theories. The AGW crowd wants the skeptics to prove them wrong, but when they cannot definitively prove their theory, how can they expect the opposite? The short answer is that they cannot, so they engage in subterfuge, as ClimateGate showed, in order to further their cause.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
problem with your Watts quote- you left out the part that undermines your arguement. An honest oversight, I’m sure.
@Larry, I guess pompous was being too kind. You have proven yourself to truly be an arrogant ass. What a pathetic backtrack of your own device.
May I repeat your original ignorance? When I first mentioned the AF, you came back with the blithering idiot interpretation, insisting that I was saying that there was no more CO2 emitted now than in the 19th Century.
When I corrected you in my comment #183, you come back with the following.
I again corrected you. The AF has NOT increased since the mid 19th century.
What has become obvious in your tentative responses is that you didn’t have a clue what the AF measurement is. It’s a scaling ratio based on amount of emissions vs natural dispersion. That ratio of emission to dispersion has not increased in over 150 years. It has been consistent, whether there was less or more CO2 emissions.
Apparently, Mother Earth finds it quite normal to look at CO2, clean 55% of it, and leave another 45%… for whatever reason and under all of man’s heinous circumstances (during the period we could measure).
Therefore, physician, check in the mirror and heal thyself of your accusations… it is you who didn’t understand the source because you were clueless to just what the AF measurement was from the start. That is the only logical explanation for your really bizarre intepretations.
Twice now you have latched onto a deliberate misrepresentation and decided you will claim it’s truth to the death. Personally, I think johngalt has labeled you quite correctly, and I see no reason to change my mind about your propensity to continue to parrot mistruths.
Alarmists, such as your emotionally fragile self, tend to believe that the ecosystem has been losing that capability…. erroneously. And in fact, whether or not that ability has been increasing has been their assumptive theory prior to being shown the light in 2009 by the various studies.
Therefore your condescending and utterly insulting school girl explanation was not only quite unnecessary, but shows a side of you that you should be embarrassed to reveal anywhere but in front of a mirror. It was you, Mr. Weisenthal, who thought that a consistent and stable AF meant there was no increased emissions in the air. I didn’t need that explanation.
Or perhaps this is your roundabout way of telling us you finally figured out what it is?
Since I knew what you were getting at, tho you couldn’t communicate it within the framework of the AF historic measurements, I then pointed out that what you could argue that leaving 45% of x tonnes is certainly less than leaving 45% of x squared tonnes.
But what you cannot argue with a modicum of credibility… nor can your alarmist buds, with any convincing evidence… is that the small percentage of the atmosphere that is comprised of CO2 is anywhere near the end of the world you portray in impact. Nor can you predict with any certainty just when Mother Nature’s natural scrubbing is insufficient.
In fact, were nature’s cleansing history to be taken into consideration, add another x billion tonnes on top of the ga’zilling tonnes, and still only 45% of that would remain as the data shows as of today. We have no reason to believe otherwise, and ample reason to believe in it’s consistency.
Which means that when you willy nilly types start tossing out numbers for fear propaganda purposes, you don’t even realize that more than half of that will be normally dissapated by our ecosystem. Kinda throws off all those climate models, eh? AF is an important element in those climate models, which were proven flawed before, and even more so now.
So would the additional, minus that 55% nature cleans, be “the breaking point”? You are convinced yes. Hey, I can’t help it if you’re a pushover for what you believe is a lofty cause.
But fact is, you are clueless because even the scientists are clueless. They can only speculate, using flawed data and flawed modeling. They have been speculating wrong for a few decades now. You remember them.. the same bunch crying about the imminent “ice age” some 20-30 years back?
No matter how you boil down all your respective and collective paranoias, the percentage of the atmosphere affected is not going to change what is a natural cycle of the planet’s life. Nor can any legislation or mandates by man plausibly alter any climate change outcome.
What I find truly the height of arrogance is that only creatures of science, like yourself, carry such a pius opinion of your import as a life form. You cannot fight and win with Mother Nature. Hang, you’re not even important enough to piss her off.
For that matter, you’re not important enough to piss me off either.
MATA, hi, that is a good explaination, What I take from it, is that Probably MOTHER NATURE want to keep that 45 per cent up there for saving it for some kind of reason she alone know best, just like we put our meat in the fridge to save it for the cooking time,
bye just a thought
bye, thank you for all the explaination eazy to capture on a science that has so many controversy
@Mata:
Nice try. But no cigar.
And sticks and stones may break my bones, but the only name which hurts me is the “L” word — which I won’t take from anyone.
You jumped into this thread in #179, and made a very confusing statement.
I asked for clarification:
You responded (in #181):
Let’s stop right there. You said: “Airborne fraction,” qualified as “the only thing which matters to the AGW types.” Further qualified as the AMOUNT (not fraction/not percentage, but AMOUNT) which remains in the atmosphere. Actually, what matters to the “AGW types” is the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere — not the fraction of CO2 which remains in the atmosphere, relative to the fraction which finds its way into the carbon “sinks” (ocean/green plants). In other words, the AMOUNT of human-generated CO2 which is in the atmosphere.
In the context of the previous discussion on this thread, we were talking about the fraction of the atmosphere which was CO2, i.e. the increase from 285 ppm to 385 ppm in a little more than a century and the increase from 315 ppm to 385 ppm in only 50 years.
Reinforcing my view that this is what you must be speaking about was your following statement:
Now, global warming has nothing to do with the ratio of human-generated CO2 distributed in the atmosphere versus the ocean. It has everything to do with what percent of the atmosphere is CO2. What fraction of the atmosphere is CO2. What AMOUNT of CO2 is in the atmosphere. So this is what I thought you meant when you were talking about “airborne fraction.”
The teensy-weensy dispute about whether it’s always been 45% of the total human CO2 released each year which ends up permanently in the atmosphere or whether it was previously 43% and now it’s 45% is of relatively trivial importance. If humans are dumping 7 Gtons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference if 43% stays there or 45% stays there.
So what on earth was your point?
Now, Mata’s statements, quoted above, were incredibly confusing — especially in the context of everything which had been discussed before in this thread. Is there anyone else who can interpret what Mata was trying to say here? I mean, is it clear to anyone? It seemed to me that Mata was trying to argue either that there had been no increase in atmospheric CO2 since 1958 or else that humans were not responsible for any meaningful portion of the increase.
I mean, what on earth was the relevance of a little esoteric point about whether there was an increase of the percentage of human generated CO2 distributed between the air and the ocean in the context of the existing discussion? It had no bearing whatsoever on:
(1) whether atmospheric CO2 has been increasing at an alarming rate (which it has — by 25% in only 50 years)
(2) whether humans are responsible for this increase (they almost certainly are, as the numbers match up perfectly and as there has been no other plausible source identified and as even Mata’s own cited sources confirm that 45% of all human CO2 put into the atmosphere each year remains in the atmosphere).
I have read and re-read your (Mata’s) comments (above), and I still can’t figure out what point you/she was trying to make.
Let me ask you (Mata) point blank. Do you or do you not agree that atmospheric CO2 has increased by 25% in 50 years and do you or do you not agree that — by far — the most plausible source of this increased CO2 is human activities (burning of fossil fuels and permanent deforestation)? If not, what do you propose is the source for the sudden, dramatic increase in the atmospheric CO2?
Rather than trying to come up with ever more creative phrases to express your indignation, why not just stick to the actual subject matter of the debate?
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@hard (#203):
We are actually not in disagreement, at this point. You are objecting that I left out the sentence in bold, from my quote on the Watts Up blog:
I totally AGREE. I have been making the same, few points, over and over and over:
1. Atmospheric CO2 is increasing at an alarming rate (25% increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past 50 years).
2. This increased CO2 is almost certainly the result of human activity (though I acknowledge JohnGalt’s arguments that there’s a whole lot we don’t know, the numbers do match up perfectly and the simplest explanation is almost always right, and even the climate skeptics, from among the bona fide climate scientists, don’t dispute the likely human causation of the CO2 increase.
BUT, 3. “That doesn’t mean that the increase has a tremendous effect on the warming of the earth’s surface, as that is a completely different discussion.”
I totally and completely agree with point #3. The relationship between the CO2 increase and the temperature increase remains unproven — one way or the other.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
The following is just a somewhat related issue:
Here’s an inventor who has a cool idea for a new type of roadway. About a 3 minute video.
http://www.wimp.com/solarhighways/
It was funded by a US Department of Transportation R&D grant.
Here’s the question. Good expenditure of public funds? or Bad expenditure of public funds?
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
I’ll take a mea culpa for making it more confusing for you with that language, Larry. I take it my language and assumptions of your familiarity is where you first tacitly admit you didn’t know what the hell you were talking about when you insisted that the AF had “dramatically increased”… All because you thought it was a measure of the amount specifically, and not a ratio of the amount, based on what I said.
Hey, how was I to know you were utterly clueless to what AF is. It’s part and parcel of some of the very basics of the AWG battle, so maybe it’s you who’d better go back to the ABCs here, and stop telling the rest of us we don’t “understand” the source information.
My point? Nature has it’s own formula for cleaning the air. And it seems that it’s been doing that for as long as we can measure… despite low CO2 or high. The ratio remains consistent. Even more important to note is that when we dump less CO2 in the air, she doesn’t clean any more of it. What ever, and why ever that ratio exists, we don’t know… as even Knoff admits. It may actually just be the point of atmospheric balance that nature deems is correct.
I take it you can’t figure out how that has any relevance. Well… let’s give it a whirl, shall we?
Even the most hardcore AGW worshipper knows you will or should never remove all CO2 from the atmosphere. The argument is not even about the numbers that you so love to toss out, tho it’s what you all love to pretend it’s about. That’s because you think numbers impress and alter opinions. Funny, it doesn’t do that with the trillions and tons of zeros for money….
There is no determined magic number or ratio where they know the world’s environment will turn to sheeeet, and the end of the world is nigh. They speculate with faulty models, speculative assumptions and erroneous databases. It’s not at the breaking point now with these levels, and we don’t know that it will be at a breaking point at other levels. In fact, it’s not been at the breaking point in any of our recent AGW hysterical past, tho they warn us constantly of it… with promises of global warming or ice ages.
What the argument between the AGWs and skeptics really IS about is whether the CO2 level significantly alters the climate…. or does climate alter the CO2… and whether climate is caused, or can be controlled by man.
So let me put this debate to bed with you, right here and now. End game. Period.
Does CO2 significantly alter the climate? In my opinion, no. Especially not a gradual evolution of emissions. Now in the case of an instant overload of CO2? Perhaps. But that’s not what’s happening. Just as humans and lifeforms evolve to changes, so does our ecosystem.
Does climate alter CO2? I’d say they are somewhat interrelated, but not to the degree posed by the AGW alarmists. Again, the same as above. As gradual changes of emissions up or down go, the ecosystem adjusts/evolves to keep what it’s thinks is the proper balance of the atmosphere elements it’s receiving.
Is climate caused by, or can be controlled by man? Only in your wildest fantasies. This is a deliberately perpetrated fraud for wealth and power gain only, and kept alive by the gullible.
As to your questions, I do not deny that we are emitting more CO2 now than 150 years ago. Why would I? I also don’t deny that the weather patterns are changing. So what’s your point? And what has that got to do with the price of a loaf of bread? Just because I see both these items doesn’t mean that I believe the climate wouldn’t have gone thru a cycle even if we were still living in the dark ages and rode horses. oops… methane. Damn horses…. LOL
No one, anywhere, has convinced me the historical rise and falls of CO2 levels, or even weather patterns changing, has whit to do if man drives cars, erects factories, or uses incandescent light bulbs.
The planet has been going thru cycles long before we were around, and will continue to long after we are extinct. Chutzpah to think we are anything more than a gnat on an elephant’s butt. That doesn’t mean we don’t attempt to keep air breathable, clear and as toxic free as possible from our industrial endeavors. But the latter is a more pleasant and healthy quality of life. AGW is just mankind’s over inflated view of his impact on the planet.
Surely you don’t think I spent time thinking up “creative phrases” to express my “indignation”… LOL Larry, I type and write like I speak. What I mostly have to correct is spelling errors since I rarely have the patience to proof read before I hit “submit”. What rolls off the keyboard, rolls off the tongue the same way.
Nor did you make me “indignant”. I already pointed out you’re not important enough to piss me off.
However when you say things like “You don’t understand this issue.” followed by “You truly don’t understand your own sources…really. I don’t expect you to understand this, but I’m sure that everyone else will — including JohnGalt and Antics and even Hard.”, I assure you I will respond to your debasement with equal, or more, disdain than you delivered. You deserve no courtesy, nor respect, when you give none to others.
@mata:
You said:
Many a beautiful theory has been ruined by an ugly fact (a favorite expression of mine). The fact is that atmospheric CO2 levels are now higher than they have been in the entire history of homo sapiens. And that rise has occurred in just 100 years (especially steep in the past 50 years). And this rise PRECISELY mirrors the amount of CO2 which humans have dumped into the atmosphere, minus that amount which goes into the ocean and trees.
The constant 45/55 split (atmosphere/ocean+green plants) isn’t “nature” taking care of herself; it’s simple distribution, the same thing as a fart filling up a room and then a house. The gas molecules just migrate all over the world and distribute themselves between air and ocean and plants, with 45% of it ending up permanently in the air.
Sure, the planet went through cycles before and after humans. The type of life on this planet millions of years ago, when there were CO2 levels this high, was vastly different than the life on this planet today. Of course, life will go on. No argument. And I’m far from convinced that the rising CO2 levels will lead to catastrophic rises in global temperatures. Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. We don’t have enough current reliable data to say, one way or the other.
I’ve written a whole lot of words on this blog, simply to defend three specific points, which I fully expected to be non-controversial.
1. Atmospheric CO2 is rapidly increasing.
2. Human activity is almost certainly responsible for this increase.
3. Whether this CO2 increase will lead to a meaningful rise in global temperatures is presently unknown, one way or the other.
These are not radical, whacko-environmentalist statements. They are eminently supportable, not merely through the assertions of so-called experts, but also with some very hard, very firm and very clear cut and easy to understand data, not requiring any computer modeling at all.
With regard to the following quotation:
You fail to consider what preceded this. To my knowledge, in the entire period of our debating, I’ve only once been to first to toss out a tart rejoinder (this was my “whatever” moment of extreme annoyance). When you start to needle me, I will eventually needle right back, however.
Here’s the trail on this thread:
#188 (Mata)
Now, we were previously having a dispassionate, objective discussion, to this point. Your statement above was condescending, confusing, and probably erroneous, since you were clearly implying that the earth just clears the CO2 humans dump into the atmosphere (no, the earth doesn’t; it only clears 55% of it, leaving 45% of the yearly dumping to circulate permanently in the atmosphere and accumulate over time, to wit by 25% in only 50 years).
So I replied:
191
Do you see that I was readily admitting that I didn’t understand what (the heck) you were talking about when you used the term “airborne fraction” in the context of our discussion? Do you see how this tart rejoinder was simply an in kind response to your tart rejoinder?
You proceed to escalate:
192
This, then, led to my own escalation, as you’ve quoted.
Since it seems sadly inevitable that we’ll be on opposing sides of future debates, I’ll make you a one-sided deal (meaning that you don’t even need to agree). I promise never to be the first to make a personal, snide remark. I’ll attack your statements, if I feel they deserve attacking, as you’ll surely attack mine, when you feel that this is warranted. But I won’t attack you or attempt to demean or diminish you, on a personal level. I won’t ask that you reciprocate, but, should you be the first to “go negative,” then I’ll just point this out.
- Larry W/HB
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Except that you said volcanoes don’t put out CO2:
From MY source –
I would say that 3 plus million tons a year is definitely putting CO2 into the air…
@OpenID
Uh huh, Right…
Larry, rather than only scouring your usual Pro-AGW sources to debunk those who argue against you, you should really act like a student-scientist and study the the research by all professional scientists who actually know their fields of study. The true scientist is only after the truth, even if it disproves his own theories. It is the false scientist who relies only on peer consensus, who treats anything that disproves the current popular consensus as heresy, and who will be remembered for their obstinacy to uncomfortable facts.
@ Randy (re 184)
Not exactly. Trees and plants only convert CO2 to oxygen while photosynthesis is active, (i.e. when there is sunlight). At night (or when there is unsuitable amounts of light,) photosynthesis stops and the plants will emit CO2. This is what, in the right conditions, creates the fog-like haze over some dense forested areas (the Smokey Mountains were named because of said haze, by it’s settlers).
It goes without saying that there must be enough of a CO2 content (and Oxygen) in the air for photosynthesis to occur, otherwise plants will not be able to create carbohydrates. Photosynthesis is crucial for maintaining life on Earth; if it ceased, there would soon be little food or other organic matter on the planet, and most types of organisms would disappear.
http://ecosys.cfl.scf.rncan.gc.ca/images/sch_photo_resp_e.gif
Uh-oh. James Hansen, one of high priests of Global Warming, had just admitted what the rest of the world has known for years – that his computer models suck. Friday Funny – Hansen’s Horror Scopes
@Ditto: I am aware of the cycle. What I was refering to is the CO2 that is sequestered in the plants/trees themselves. That is what is refered to as the sink. Unless that CO2 or C is taken out of the cycle, it continues to be recycled into the atmosphere with no measureable sink effect.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
Interesting video in #208. I like the idea. It will take more years, though, to ensure the panels can withstand what our current roadways withstand on a daily basis. Very cold temps, very hot temps, heavy vehicles, constant vehicular traffic, etc.
My answer is no. It is based on my belief that the federal government has specific items in which it is allowed to collect money for, and to pay money for. The Constitution is very specific about this, despite the wide interpretations given it by politicians. The idea, if sound, and demonstrably better than the current system of forming roadways, and provides benefits the current system of roadways does not, will allow itself to build up to the point where it is used in place of current roadway tech. Let it the idea stand, or fall, on it’s own, without our tax dollars going to fund it.
In your post #210, to Mata, you state;
The only point there which can be considered non-controversial, is #1. However, even then it is debatable on whether it is “rapidly increasing”, or simply rising higher than normal.
The 2nd point is still based on theoretical models, and not proof. It is quite presumptive to state that “human activity is almost certainly responsible”. A better statement would be, “Human activity may be the major cause of this increase”. Anything else is based on theory, and not fact.
And your 3rd point, is disproven by the graphs showing that temperature precedes CO2 atmospheric concentrations. This effect isn’t going to change based on where the CO2 comes from. The graphs show that temperature change is the cause, and that CO2 level changes are the result. No where, within the time periods of the different graphs showing temp and CO2 level, does it ever show that CO2 change is the cause of temperature changes. As that is the case, one cannot make the determination, even if one believes that CO2 levels are increasing due to human activity, as you do, that the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels will result in higher temperatures. The graphs have shown no correlation between the two, to that effect.
So, your first point is arguably correct, while your other two are not.
MEMRI.Org has found a beauty which combines the hoax/fraud/political game but this time as done by Iran’s President Ahmadinejad.
I’ll link to the video and transcript, but here’s some of the transcript:
That’s the level climate hoaxing can fall to when the public is ignorant.
Shades of Cheney and his ”weather machine in the basement” of the VP’s residence.
Your point? Even you, yourself, admit you haven’t a clue as to whether a rise in CO2 will bring on climatic Armaggedon. One could spend a great deal of time speculating about the accuracy of ice cores affected by chemistry of ice at either of the earth’s poles vs, say, the Mauna Loa levels which we used in more recent history. aka that pesky hockey stick… But why bother if, in the end, it’s relevance about the prime result – Armaggedon – is speculation at best?
Here’s the bottom line. You exercise a lot of your valuable time postulating on CO2 levels. I’ve told you I don’t care about the CO2 levels and their claims that this has some earth shattering effect on the weather patterns.
Sounds to me like a waste of both of our times.
As far as the AF measurements, seems we have a failure to communicate. Perhaps if you had just asked “what is airborn fraction”, I would have known that you didn’t know about this, or it’s relevance in the AGW theories. Obviously, were it a moot and unrelated point, there would be no studies as to the historical measurement, or puzzlement that it is not reacting the way they assumed it would. Speaking of that, you said:
You’re nitpicking, and somewhat inaccurate. There is a wide dispersion involved, however the cleansing is absorption… not “thinning”. Thinning doesn’t remove it from the atmosphere. Just makes the particle concentration smaller in a larger area space. Even the author of the study, Knorr, described the process as
Mother Nature, “providing a free service, soaking up our waste carbon” is indeed the ecosystem… a living form… taking care of itself. Why you felt the need to assail that analogy must just have been a testy mood, I guess.
Should you desire more technical language of the atmosphere-ocean-biosphere absorption methods, formulas and rates, you can read it here. There’s a flow rate of man created CO2 to both the ocean and the biosphere. The rate to the biosphere “is some unknown function of the atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide.“ The rate to the ocean “is forced by concentration differences between the equilibrated surface water that secondary currents bring into contact with the bulk. “
Frankly what we don’t know about how CO2 interacts in the ecosystem, including other events that affect our atmosphere (sun spots, other extraneous factors), far outweighs what we do know. Which makes the AGW alarmists’ attempts to predict drastic weather climate changes, based on a CO2 residue concentration they cannot predict with any accuracy, nothing more than an elaborate fraud for politics, power and wealth.
But if you’re happy with a fart analogy, have at it.
Oh my, Nan G…. you mean that the middle east, which has pretty much been a desert for the past 2.5 million years at least, only just got that way with those mean Europeans, “emptying the clouds”?
There’s a sucker in every audience…. Ahmadinejad is counting on it.
@MataHarley:
Yup, he was counting on it, Mata.
But wasn’t Al Gore at his most rabid no worse?
I remember his Inconvenient Truth film with his use of the scenes of special effects from a disaster movie where huge tidal waves and freezing storms hit all at once.
And there are plenty of younger people (who were impressionable students at the time his Inconvenient Truth movie was played in public schools) who, to this day, have nightmares about what we are doing to this planet.
Remember the last IPPC gathering where they played the video of the poor little girl almost drowning after the world apparently goes underwater?
People are not necessarily ”suckers” so much as brainwashed.
Our public schools have done a bang-up job of denigrating ”old” math, reading comprehension/spelling, and all other forms of traditional education in favor of two things:
1. teaching to the test, and
2. brainwashing young minds.
@mata:
The importance of CO2 being higher than it ever has been in human history is two fold. Firstly, there’s been a 25% increase in only 50 years. It’s continuing to rise at the same rate. Mammalian bodies (including our own) maintain pH with a bicarbonate/CO2-based buffer system. When you breathe in more CO2, you excrete more nitrogen (in the form of a protein/amino acid breakdown product), via your kidneys. Quite apart from climate effects, we have absolutely no clue what effects this might have on mammalian (including human) biology and disease. It’s not the sort of thing which keeps me awake at night and I wouldn’t force anyone to do anything, because of it, but it’s a big unknown which indicates that it’s wrong to have a cavalier, what me worry attitude towards it.
Even after all this back and forth, I still don’t understand what your original (and continuing) point was, regarding “airborne fraction.” How does this have any relevance at all to the debate ongoing at the time or even as a new topic?
O.K., the distribution of CO2 between atmosphere and ocean hasn’t changed in 200 years (it’s actually still controversial, but, for purposes of this discussion, I’ll stipulate that this is true). So what on earth does that have to do with man-caused CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere or anything else of practical relevance? As I explained, this is a highly esoteric controversy.
Some people think that the distribution of yearly human-produced CO2 which permanently stayed in the atmosphere versus ocean (+ green plants) used to be 43/57 and now it’s 45/55 and that’s a little alarming, because it means that slightly more of the yearly human produced load will stay in the atmosphere, as time goes on. Other people think that it’s always been a 45/55 distribution and is likely to stay there. But, in either case, humans are continuing to add 7 Gtons of CO2 per year to an atmosphere which has about 730 GTons, with about half (actually 45%) remaining permanently in the atmosphere. Even if the percentage remaining in the atmosphere remains at its current level of 45%, that still means that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will continue to go up at 1/2 percent per year (or 25% in 50 years, as it did in the past 50 years), with no end in sight.
So what was the point you were trying to make, when you introduced the topic of “AF measurements?”
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
openid.aol.com/runnswim, hi,
you mentionned that when we bread more CO2, we excret NITROGEN.
COULD IT be the cause of human being borned in hate fill COUNTRYS THAT STRIVE IN CONQUERING BY VIOLENCE AND HATE ACTIONS, THAT we see how they are monopolyse in those EASTERN REGIONS,
and also on a smaller scale we notice how that negative over powering the positive in brains
of our FREE WORLD’S NATIONS OF CRIMINALS’S MIND TURNED TO EVIL DESTRUCTIVES PLANS
MORE THAN THE NORMAL HUMAN in control of those 2 forms of thinking,
and to go further up on the effect of nitrogen, what come also to mind is the unexplained factor that has been told of some human being self ignited suddenly for not yet xplained reason.
just made me think that anger has seems to have grown bigger on some humans who use it
more evidently as we learn now with the NEWS every day. and
ANGER MANAGEMENT BUSYNESSES ARE OPENING EVERY DAY,
mean the need is there, proving maybe my assertion,
I always equate NITROGENE with explosion of.
bye
Obviously, Larry, you place more import on that small percentage of the atmospheric composition than I do. Suggest you find other things to fret about and get some sleep.
Everything about this is predicated on the advancement of the theory that CO2 is a harmful and dangerous element (added.. that will affect the planet’s climate). Unless we come to terms of agreement that it is… which you believe it is and I don’t… we have nothing to discuss.
If you don’t understand the relevance of AF and what appears to be a steady and natural balance of the atmosphere after my attempts to explain it in #209, I really don’t know where to go. THe percentile of AGW CO2 is so small of all the elements, and the ecosystem evolves and adapts with constantly changing emissions over the course of history.
What scientists were assuming is that increased emissions affected the ability of the ecosystem to absorb those emissions.
oops…
As the Science Daily article pointed out, following Knorr’s inconvenient findings, (which I already linked, but you apparently chose not to read, which would have answered your relevance question…) the earth has a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 changes than previously assumed.
As NOAA states, “AF is a key property of the carbon cycle for climate policy. It is vital that we monitor it and understand changes in it.”.
My response to that is.. uh, what changes?
Since you’re so all fired worried about the amount of residual, unabsorbed AGW CO2 in the air, you would think that the news the earth adapts to increased emissions with capabilities they didn’t know existed would ease your troubled mind. The fact that this is a “key property”, their erroneous assumptions affect climate modeling – which must have a formula for speculating how much residual AGW CO2 would be absorbed – calls yet again into question their hyperbole over CO2 “skyrocketing” out of control because of the planets inability to cope with it naturally.
Relevant enough now?
@mata:
O.K. That’s helpful. Now I know how to respond.
and:
Firstly, what you call a “steady and natural balance to the atmosphere” simply means that the percentage of human produced CO2 which remains in the atmosphere (relative to diffusing into the ocean and taken up by plants) remains constant, at about 45%. It doesn’t mean that the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere remains constant — it doesn’t; it has gone up by 25% in only 50 years and it will go up another 25% in the next 50 years, meaning that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will go up by 50% in only 100 years — to levels far beyond those in which humans evolved to live.
Now, as I’ve explained, Dr. Knorr’s work doesn’t say that atmospheric CO2 is not increasing at an astonishingly precipitous rate (it is). It doesn’t say that humans are not responsible for this increase (they almost certainly are). It simple means that, if Dr. Knorr is correct and the other investigators are wrong, the rate of increase of CO2 in the atmosphere won’t accelerate beyond what it already is (i.e. an increase of 1/2% per year).
Now, as to the importance of this CO2 increase, the only difference between your position and my position is this:
You take it on faith that there will be no adverse consequences, either climate-wise or biology-wise, to this increase. I think that both climate effects and biological effects are unknown and deserve intense continuing and future study. I certainly don’t agree that AGW is a “hoax.”
I do agree that various people have exaggerated the certainly of what is known and have exaggerated the likely consequences, but this is simply human nature. I think that acupuncture has legitimate medical applications, but there are a lot of charlatans who exaggerate its effectiveness, for their own gain. The fact that such charlatans exist does not discredit the entire field of acupuncture. The fact that Al Gore and some loudly assertive scientists exist does not discredit the fields of climate and biological effects of increasing atmospheric CO2.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@Larry the Warmer: You said:
Higher than ever in human history? Do you have a link to a credible scientific study showing that?
Here is a link showing that in earth’s past, CO2 was much, much higher and good old Mother Earth survived.
As I repeatedly say… who the heck cares? Again, if you and I do not agree that CO2 is a heinous element that will bring on climatic Armaggedon, we have nothing to talk about. You are arguing with yourself in circles. Your entire discussion revolves around my acceptance that CO2 is hazardous, and a harbinger of the end of the world.
But considered yourself more informed as to how and why the AF measurements, and the earth’s unexplained and unknown capacity to absorb larger amounts of CO2, are relevant to the discussion.
@mata:
The only difference that I can see between your position and my position is that you are CERTAIN that there will be no ill effects on climate or mammalian biology from continued massive accumulation of CO2 as a result of human activity and I believe that plausible effects are unknown and are deserving of continued study.
With respect to this statement:
Here’s what I’ve learned.
You think it might be a big deal, had the percent of human-caused CO2 which remains in the atmosphere permanently increased from 43% to 45% in 200 years, but since other people think it’s remained constant at 45%, it’s not such a big deal.
You considered this esoteric controversy sufficiently important to introduce it into the ongoing commentary and to infer from it that human produced CO2 isn’t a problem, because the amount which would permanently remain in the atmosphere would be only 45% of the amount released each year and not go any higher than this — meaning that the atmosphere would continue to accumulate CO2 at the same precipitous rate of increasing by 25% every 50 years, but that’s OK, because it wouldn’t increase by 26% for the next 50 years and then by 27% for the 50 years beyond that.
Don’t you see how the “AF measurement” controversy of is trivial importance to the issue of atmospheric CO2 accumulation, with associated potential climate and/or biological implications?
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, you are growing more like the Al Gore types every day. When you get cornered, you go off on another tract. Take the suggestions of other people who post here- act like a scientist and use the scientific processes to address issues. If the Hansons of the world would do that, this issue would have been relegated to some dusty file cabinet. Since your heros are being paid to show APG, they will continue until the money runs out. The you and Greg and Rich will be looking for the rest of us to spread our wealth around with the bozos who cried “the sky is falling!”
@Larry the Warmer: You are getting your knickers in a twist about this. What level of arrogance does it take to convince someone that mankind can actually affect the climate of this planet?
I have put up study after study that shows man’s contribution to CO2 is negligible, yet you continue crying that the sky is falling. Even when our own US Dept. of Energy states that 99.72% is from natural causes, you ignore that fact.
In order for your theory to make sense, our global ecosystem would have to be so fragile that a .28% increase in CO2 would send us into climate chaos on a planetary scale.
In earth’s past, CO2 rose and fell with regular cyclical gyrations. Plants, animals and eventually humans flourished, yet you say none of that matters because it was in the past.
Please answer me on this, do you really feel that our global ecosystem is that fragile?
@Randy: LOL, in my post above I too used the phrase, “the sky is falling!”
Looks like GMTA.
anticsrocks, hi, you mentionned the 7000 ppm of CO2 on CAMBRIAN period,
IT made me think that maybe it was the cause of unexplained GIGANTISEM IN ANIMALS ,
in those times that decreased over the subsquent years to minimyse the all spechys because the CO2 decreassing over the times,
just thinking of causes and effect
bye
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, you continue to youe the word massive when refering to increases of CO2 in the atmosphere. A change from .035% to .038% is massive? A question you should be asking is if CO2 increases its percentage, what else is reduced? (Since the atmosphere components can not exceed 100%) Your reference to massive increase is like adding a few more grains of sugar to your coffee.
@Randy: I really do enjoy discussion/debate, but I need to know what I’m debating.
I don’t understand:
Firstly, where/when/how have I been “cornered?” To what are you referring?
Second, what “other tract” did I go off on?
Third, how have I not “acted like a scientist?” (specific example). I have been very careful to speak in terms of specifics: How much CO2 has accumulated in the atmosphere. How much humans put into the atmosphere. Where that CO2 goes. How well does the amount of CO2 put into the atmosphere by humans compare with the actual measured increase in CO2. I even addressed Mata’s “AF” issue on a scientific basis, provided links to a prominent study which didn’t agree with hers, but also explained how this particular controversy is of trivial importance to the issue of CO2 accumulation and human causation.
Fourth, my “heroes” are scientists who are trying to shed light on unanswered questions, among which are what effect the massive increased CO2 is having on climate and what effect it is having on mammalian biology.
Your statement implies that there is no need to perform more research, because we have all the answers we need. We already know that CO2 accumulation is not harmful to the planet or to mammalian biology, so let’s just not pay any more attention to it.
I have stated repeatedly that the available information do not justify forcing the whole country to take measures to control CO2 emissions. I’ve simply defended the need for further research and I’ve defended the right of the people of California to do their own “incubator” experiment to determine the actual (not theoretical) economic consequences to putting into place carbon control measures.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Oh noes! Now we have climate change on Saturn!. Must be those SUVs…
@anticsrocks: Actually Anti, that is one of the points that Spencer points out in his book. The computer models that AGWers use rely on a premise that the Earth systems are fragile. Their models have the oceans reaching equilibrium within a few years. That is the basis for their results but none of them knows. When I get into an argument with lefties and stubborn non-scientific types like Larry, I always ask them what the normal temperature of the Earth is. I have never had an answer. Larry should read Spencer’s book and reassess his position.
@ilovebeeswarzone: You never know, beezy. That could have had something to do with it.
DOES any scientists know or have calculated how much CO2 are in a human body, where is it or could it be located most, why there more than other organs, and would CANCER CELLS be stimulated by it’s ecsesses if there is, and how much CO2 would be an overdose for HUMAN, and if so does the CO2 stay in for how long of a period or just stay and depart shortly, and if we release the CO2 what is the diffrence between the intake and release? and where would be the lowest location to live under a minimal intake
or the worse location to live under the maximum intake?
just thinking
@various guys:
I carefully considered your “study after study” and then explained to you how you were misinterpreting each study. If you want to go through this all over again, I am game for it. Let’s go through your “studies” all over again, shall we? Or else just go back and read what you wrote and how I responded.
Here’s an extensive review of all the studies which pertain to the issue of how much human produced CO2 is in the atmosphere (I provided this before — several times; but it’s a problem when I’m debating 8 people at once and each person is jumping in and jumping out and missing all of the intervening discussion).
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/05/why-the-co2-increase-is-man-made-part-1/
Where on earth do you guys get the idea that I’m a “warmist.” The only difference between you guys and me, as far as the “warming” side of it goes, is that you are dead certain that there is no relationship between CO2 increase and temperature increase (in other words, you consider it to be “settled science”), while I think that a definite link has neither been proven nor disproved and that further research is needed.
You are the ones with climate “religion,” not me.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
John Cooper , you said climate changes in SATTURN,
It made me think that it could be due to the RINGS LEADER
using too much RPM ON HIS RINGS
BYE
anticsrocks, that made me think, that the bigger and taller you are, the more CO2
you posess in your body. hum hum, a cause for reflexion,
just thinking
bye
What you should have learned, Larry, is the same lesson you need to learn with johngalt. Stop telling us what we said because you are incorrect 99% of the time. Now of what you say I said above, none is an accurate interpretation. And since having a conversation with you is like playing the children’s game of “gossip”, I shall be refraining.
Another of your 99% failures. There is no argument, save in your own opinion, that the AF factor not changing for 150 years is of “trivial importance” to the larger argument of climate changed caused by increasing CO2.
Your problem is you focus on one thing only… the number gets bigger. If that number is bigger, you consider yourself right, and your paranoia justified.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Would you please stop bloviating and answer these questions?
1. Do you think that CO2 is driving climate change?
2. Do you believe that our global ecosystem is so fragile that a small (on a planetary scale) increase of CO2 will throw it into chaos?
3. How would you propose to make changes to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?
4. Do you support the position taken at the last climate conference in Copenhagen that the “rich” countries need to give billions of dollars to the “poor” countries as reparations for “destroying” the global ecosystem?
5. If you do support that, will giving third world countries billions of dollars do anything to change the climate?
——————–
I know you probably won’t answer these questions, but on the off chance that you do, please take them seriously and give me your honest thoughts on them.
@ilovebeeswarzone: LOL! I love the way your mind works, beezy!
@Mata:
So please explain what precisely I should have learned about your “AF measurements.”
Explain the importance of the difference between an atmosphere/”sink” ratio of 43/57 and 45/55, with respect to anything of more than trivial importance to the topic of AGW.
I’ve re-read all of your comments on this thread, relating to the “airborne fraction” and it’s perfectly clear to me that you didn’t understand what it was about, when you first cited it, and, ever since, you’ve been scrambling to cover yourself by tossing out red herrings.
If I am wrong, then please explain, clearly, to all of us here, precisely what you consider to the the most relevant, most important aspect relating the “airborne fraction” to the current discussion of the massive, continuing, human-caused increase in atmospheric CO2. You’ve never done this. You simply say that, well, if it isn’t obvious to you, then I’m not going to explain it. You say that, because you didn’t understand it when you first cited it and you can’t make a case for how it has any meaningful importance at all as far as arguing against the human contribution to the recent massive increase in atmospheric CO2.
Here’s your chance to back up your claim that I’m “99% wrong.” Go ahead. Back it up.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Nope, Larry, I won’t do it yet again. Been there, done that. When you latch on to that frisbee notion you’ve built up, and the “red herring” argument where you rest your sleepless nights of increasing AGW CO2, you’re like a bull dog.
If NOAA considers it a “key property” in climate policies, then your straw man that it’s trival is proven to be an absurd misconception.
I understand exactly what the AF measurement is, and how it is integral in the climate change debate as it relates to AGW CO2. That you don’t seem to get it, isn’t my fault.
@antics:
You ask:
I don’t know. I’ve stated this before. It is a long way from being settled science and there are valid arguments to be made on either side. I’m in favor of more research, with an emphasis on data gathering, as opposed to computer modeling with existing data.
So you are talking “ecosystem,” as opposed to climate, with this question.
Firstly, the increased CO2 isn’t small — it’s huge. 25% increase in the past 50 years. Another 25% in the next 50 years. I have no idea what effect this will have on human health and well being or on any other component of the ecosystem. As I wrote, however, I’m not losing sleep over it and I don’t think that we should do anything beyond doing some serious research.
I don’t propose anything, beyond two things. First, let’s continue to do research and get more data. Second, let’s allow those political jurisdictions which decide to reduce carbon just go ahead and do so. I view this as economic research. Just as Al Gore scaremongers regarding climate effects, so do climate skeptics scaremonger over economic effects. So let’s just wait and see, for example, if California goes down the tubes or whether it prospers, following its effective ratification of the Kyoto Treaty.
No.
I have no idea. That’s why we need to do research.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
@mata:
You could have ended this long before and you could have put me squarely in my place by simply answering the question. Right from the very beginning, I asked for a simple explanation and clarification of how you viewed the “airborne fraction” issue to have any relevance to the discussion at hand.
Re-reading your comments, you essentially stated that human produced CO2 isn’t a problem, because the earth buffers a lot of it in various “sinks” (ocean, green plants) and that the “sinks” aren’t being saturated, as some investigators have asserted. But this is a misleading argument, in view of the fact that 45% of all human emitted CO2 does permanently stay in the atmosphere and that amount of CO2 contained in this 45% perfectly explains the entire CO2 increase which has occurred since the industrial revolution, which greatly accelerated after WWII and which continues to accelerate.
If I am wrong in summarizing what you “essentially stated,” kindly correct me. As I said, I asked for clarification from the beginning. You avoided clarifying. I am not stupid. I am capable of understanding your point, if you simply state what your point is.
As far as NOAA (and Dr. Hansen) goes, they are obviously trying to muster every last bit of ammunition that they can get to bolster their contention that there is a climate crisis at hand. It would help their case if they could state that the CO2 sinks were being saturated, but the magnitude of the (disputed) saturation was utterly trivial (i.e. change from a 43/57 distribution to a 45/55 distribution over more than a century). So it’s an issue of vastly more political importance than of actual scientific importance. Whether or not this saturation were beginning to occur, the impact would have been completely trivial, going both backward and forward.
To wit: As humans are putting 7 Gtons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, it doesn’t matter all that much if 43% of that CO2 is remaining in the atmosphere or if 45% is remaining there. Either way, the CO2 content of the atmosphere owing to human activity is going up at a rate of close to 1/2 % per year, which is a truly enormous amount. My father is currently 97. If I were fortunate enough to live to that age, CO2 would have gone up 50% in the span of a single human lifetime. That’s enormous. And we are not close to understanding what effect this will have on either climate or biology.
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
You really enjoying banging that kepi of yours against that brick wall, don’t you Larry? LOL
Your continued error is rephrasing, saying I “essentially stated” something I did not. You take two separate belief sets, the AF measure, then pile on that with something I didn’t say… that the “sinks” aren’t being saturated… and then use that combo as the conclusion for my reasoning that CO2 isn’t the boogie man you make it out to be.
Talk about a misleading argument. Do you ever get tired of telling people what they are saying? You really have a cyber hearing problem, Larry. Or else I haven’t found a language yet with which we can successfully communicate.
My belief that AGW CO2 isn’t a problem has nothing to do with the AF or carbon sink saturation.
I don’t buy into the theory that CO2 is a harmful element that drives weather patterns, and will evoke a climatic Armaggedon. Period Even if I *did* buy that bogus bridge in Brooklyn that AWG CO2 is the catalyst for armaggedon – *which I don’t* – the percentage of all CO2 in the atmosphere that can be attributed to humans is too small a percentage of the atmosphere to warrant this chicken little reaction.
Pocket that, remember it, and stop badgering me with your paranoia about how much the CO2 man is pumping into the air. I don’t care. I’m not part of your panicked peers. That is my belief set, and is not linked to factual information I impart.
You have three arguments causing your sleepless nights, Larry. That CO2 is increasing, that the increase is attributable to man, and that you are clueless what this means to global temperatures (or climate change?). Of course, considering you tell us over and over how “massive” this amount is, and remain fixated on that singular issue totally belies your third supposed openess to AGW fraud.
No one argues that the CO2 trend is increasing, or suggest that man’s industrial revolution is excluded from that increase.
Who in sam hell cares, other than the alarmists who believe CO2 to be the evil gas that will be the end of days? The amount of CO2 emissions that man can control, without sending everyone back to the dark ages… where they also had climate change… will not alter any major climatic cylical shift because of it’s small percentage of the entire atmosphere. To believe we can “control the weather” is a bit too grandiose in self import for me to swallow.
Considering this is at least my third attempt to “clarify”… which you label some tangent… I’m hardly avoiding clarification. So I’ll thank you to cease and desist your false accusations.
I am not calling you stupid. I’m calling you paranoic in focus on what you consider “massive” amounts of what constitutes less than .03% of the atmosphere. And I’m also calling you pig headed and stubborn when you refuse to recognize the import of AF in the climate change debate. And oh, BTW, NOAA’s statement about how AF is a “key property”, combined with the actual historic measurements, does not “bolster” their case. Many researchers have based their models around the erroneous dataset that the AF has been increasing, and thereby telling us that doom is upon us.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, you cpntinue to misunderstand what we say about CO2 causing AGW. We continue to say that there is not one study that shows CO2 causes AGW. It is the warmists like you who continue to state time after time that CO2 is causing global warming with no proof! It is the warmist who are trying to legislate regulations to control CO2 and call it “settled science”. Please do not continue to insult my intelligence by playing these games!
@MataHarley: Mother nature doesn’t care whether the CO2 is generated by humans or natural causes. She maintains a balance. If Larry weighs 200 lbs and .035% of his body is fat, then if his body fat content increased from .035% to .038% is that a massive increase? Larry’s fat increased from .07lbs to .076 lbs. Is that a massive increase over 25 years?
@MataHarley: Here! Here!
Happer on The Truth About Greenhouse Gases via Watts up with That? William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
@John Cooper: Does that mean AGW due to human generation of CO2 is a HOAX? Seems so!