Tucson Citizen.com
Wry Heat - by Jonathan DuHamel

Responses to comments on recent posts, causes of global warming

by on Nov. 09, 2011, under Climate change

If you have been reading my recent posts on climate change, you will have noticed that there have been many comments by Dr. John Parsons taking me to task about those posts.  I have been in personal contact with Dr. Parsons; he has been cordial, but he won’t tell me who he is or his credentials.  Be that as it may, here, I will respond to some of his comments in no particular order.  Note, the linked dates will take you to the post and the full comments.

Comment: November 3rd, 2011 on 8:05 pm “Jon, In glacial time frames CO2 does indeed lag temperature (T), but on historical time frames it definitely does not.”

Response: see graph for example of CO2 rise following temperature rise in historical times.  The rise starts before 1890, notice too that 1940 and 1978 temperatures fell while CO2 rose (of course most of the rise after the mid-forties was due to increased burning of fossil fuels) :

Here is another version from the Pew Center.  It can be interpreted that temperature leads carbon dioxide or that there is no correlation except by coincidence.

Comment: 2011/10/28 at 7:31 pm  “Jon, Now that I’m aware that you are a scientist I’m very surprised to see you make a statement like, “…if all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions were suddenly stopped, it could reduce global warming by 0.003 [degrees] C.” How can anyone reading that statement know if you mean that the world temperature would suddenly drop 0.003 degrees C, or it would decline by that much per year at a steady rate indefinitely, or each month or each day. Would it decline 0.003 degrees C the first year then an additional 0.003 degrees C more each year? If so for how long? What feedbacks could we expect from such a forcing? As a scientist, you must see that that statement is practically meaningless. Could you please explain your intended meaning.”

Response: OK, point taken, I was not clear.  In the original post to which this refers: Your Carbon Footprint doesn’t Matter I went through the arithmetic to show that all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, in absence of any feedback, could potentially be responsible for no more than 0.003 degrees C per year of temperature forcing.  That number, to me, is insignificant, and probably undetectable. Therefore all this fuss about carbon dioxide emissions is nonsense.

Preface to next comment: Since Dr. Parsons appears to be firmly in the AGW school (human carbon dioxide emissions are causing significant warming) I asked him to provide some physical evidence that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing significant warming.  Here is his comment:

2011/11/04 at 9:22 pm

“Jon, You wanted some empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions have a significant impact on Earth’s climate. Here’s a small sample to begin our discussion:

Our planet is suffering an energy imbalance and is steadily accumulating heat (Hansen 2005, Murphy 2009, von Schuckmann 2009, Trenberth 2009)

Animal and plant species are responding to earlier springs. Eg – earlier frog breeding, bird nesting, earlier flowering, earlier migration of birds and butterflies (Parmeson 2003)

The distribution of tree lines, plants, birds, mammals, insects, fish, reptiles, marine invertebrates are shifting towards the poles (Parmeson 2003)….” and more of the same.

Response: These references refer to warming and its effects but provide no physical evidence of causation.  About the “accumulating heat” see: Missing Heat Hides From Climate Scientists  

Dr. Parsons has yet to provide convincing physical evidence that human carbon dioxide emissions are significantly affecting global temperature.

Comments 2011/11/08 at 3:08 pm, 2011/11/08 at 8:46 pm,  2011/11/09 at 2:29 am  The gist of these comments was that the Medieval Warm Period 1,000 years ago was a local, northern hemisphere phenomenon.  I responded that papers reviewed on CO2Science.org showed that it was global.  Parsons alleged that CO2Science had received funding from oil companies and therefore was not to be trusted.  (He later backed off that.)

Response: CO2Science reviews the scientific literature.  They have a MWP project and say “Was there a Medieval Warm Period? YES, according to data published by 1018 individual scientists from 586 research institutions in 44 different countries … and counting!… To access the entire Medieval Warm Period Project’s database, click here.”  The papers reviewed in the project show that MWP occurred globally.  CO2Science’s policy on funding can be found here.  The source of funding has been a red herring used by AGW proponents to deny studies that go against their claims.

Comment: November 5th, 2011 on 7:08 pm:

“Many of the points you have raised in your attempt to deny the significance of AGW were at one time important issues that needed not only clarification but in some cases a much deeper level of understanding. But I must say that these issues have now been investigated thoroughly and the mechanisms underlying them have become well understood. I’m trying to find a polite way to say your arguments, so far, have been rebutted years ago and have become settled science.”

Response: The one thing a scientist should know is that the science is never really settled.  Anyone who thinks it is settled is practicing religion, not science.

“There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”  ~Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1883

“To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth”.  ~Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science, 1995

“Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.”  ~Thomas Henry Huxley

An end note: I take a geologist’s perspective about climate.  The same natural forces than have been working for billions of years are still working.  The Earth is resilient and has many feedbacks that eventually correct imbalance.  Humans have affected Earth’s habitats, and land use changes may influence regional weather, even climate.  Certainly the heat island effect in cities affects local weather.  I doubt, however, that we are powerful enough to overcome the many natural cycles that control Earth’s climate short of global thermonuclear war.

Geological time scales are one thing; human time scales are another.  Parsons mentions that scientists think we must keep the additional global warming below 3 C (5.4 F) to be safe.  But people don’t live in the average global temperature.  We live in places with temperatures that vary from much below freezing to very hot.  We endure daily, seasonal, and regional temperature differences  that are far above the 5 F. For instance, tropical forests have average temperatures of 80 F, mid-latitude areas have average temperatures from 43-56 F, and high-latitude tundras have average temperatures near 15 F.  And that doesn’t mention the extreme temperatures for these regions.   Here in Tucson, the daily temperature variation is normally 30-35 F.

In my opinion, the greatest danger we face from global warming is politicians having the notion that they can do something about it.

Copyrighted by Jonathan DuHamel. Reprint is permitted provided that credit of authorship is provided and linked back to the source. Check the ARTICLE INDEX page for more posts on geology, natural history of the Sonoran desert, climate change, and energy. Also check the BOOK REVIEWS page.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 at 8:10 am and is filed under Climate change. Tags for this post: , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • mojo

    Is “John Parsons” the same John Parsons at MIT (i.e. the economist promoting “global warming”?  Or is it someone just using his name?

    • Dr. John Parsons

      Is that mojo the same guy as from the song? JP

      • mojo

        Why are you using someone else’s name? Perhaps to lend an air of authority to your silly beliefs?

        • Dr. John Parsons

          Mojo, That’s my name. I’m not an economist. JP

          • Richard H

            You mean there are TWO John Parsons promoters of global warming?

            • Dr. John Parsons

              apparently

              • Richard H

                JP, you trying to sell me my own car?  Hope you don’t take it too personally, John,  but I think you are in the wrong business.  With your perseverence and spin you could prosper in the real world  peddling something of value rather than crunched over your computer performing as  Elmer Gantry of the Church of Perpetual Myth.   That said, why waste your time occupying the comments section of a small, independent blog site frequented by skeptics when, with your own site  you could sell your myth to the gullible and superstitious ?   

                • Dr. John Parsons

                  I’m here to tell the truth, in the face of falsehoods. JP

                  • Richard H

                    There are no “truths” in science, JP;  there exists only that which may be disproven.
                    On the lighter side of things, have you heard the late George Carlin’s take on “people who worry about everything”?  Think you’ll enjoy it.

                    http://junkscience.com/2011/07/11/high-extinction-risk-from-climate-change/

                    • Mark B. Evans

                      F=ma

                    • Dr. John Parsons

                      I didn’t say there were truths in science. There are falsehoods on websites to which the truth can be spoken. I try hard to write carefully, Rich, so please take equal care in reading. Funny bit, by the way— thanks for the link. JP

              • Richard H

                 ”Apparently” what?  That you are also a promoter of global warming? 

                • Dr. John Parsons

                  AGW needs no promoting Rich. Facts are funny that way. I was asked if there were two Dr. John Parsons’s, as there is one from MIT who is an economist. Not being “that one” I answered the man’s question. JP

                • Richard H

                  JP: “I try hard to write carefully”.  So, then I presume you really meant it when you  wrote  “the science is settled”?

                  • Dr. John Parsons

                    Rich, We’ve sliced and diced that pretty well and I agreed that I would not use that phrase any longer. And you are correct, that is an example of an instance where I failed to be precise. I’ll keep working on it. That’s a promise. JP

                  • Richard H

                    A valid hypothesis can stand on its own, without endless, aggressive  diatribe.  You are clearly on the defensive, John, and  in attack mode. Could it be that public opinion is waning, in the wake of climategate, failed cap and trade, outrageous scandals in the subsidy-dependent  renewables industry?  Worried that your grants might dry up?    Wake up, JP, the temple is collapsing and you are going down with it.

                    • Dr. John Parsons

                      Polls show that public is indeed less convinced of the argument for the AGW hypothesis. It’s interesting that this is the case only in the U.S. The fact that we now rank 28th in the world in educational achievement may have something to do with that. I think that all those news stories you mentioned are part of the reason. That I’m concerned about losing grant money is not. What mode would you be in if the most precious thing in your life was threatened? JP

                    • Conrad Dunkerson

                      “You are clearly on the defensive, John, and  in attack mode.”
                       
                      Well, who could argue with THAT logic. :]

  • Conrad Dunkerson

    1: In the glaciation cycle CO2 was released by warming from orbital forcings… it therefor perforce HAD to begin after the warming. You can’t have effect before cause. However, warming then continued for thousands of years in conjunction with (and largely due to) the rising CO2 level. In cases where the CO2 rise was NOT caused by warming it preceded the warming… for instance the late palaeocene thermal maximum (about 55 million years ago) was caused (and preceded by) the flood basalt event which produced the North Atlantic igneous province.
     
    You asked for, “some physical evidence that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing significant warming”.
     
    2: That the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels has been caused by humans is established by multiple lines of evidence. Amongst these are; carbon levels are increasing in both the atmosphere and the oceans, leaving carbon extracted from land (i.e. fossil fuels) as the only remaining source, atmospheric oxygen is decreasing at the same rate that CO2 is increasing – demonstrating that the CO2 is being generated by combustion, the isotopic mixture of carbon atoms in the atmosphere is changing as more pre-nuclear (i.e. fossil fuel) carbon is added – and this rate of change matches the rate of total CO2 increase, the rate of CO2 increase is less than the rate of human CO2 emissions – indicating that natural sinks are absorbing an amount equal to all natural emissions PLUS some human emissions and thus leaving the remaining human emissions as the sole cause of the increase, et cetera.
     
    3: That the increase in atmospheric CO2 levels is causing warming has also been established by multiple lines of evidence. Amongst these are; John Tyndall proved in the 1850s that CO2 and other ‘greenhouse gases’ absorb infrared radiation – this PERFORCE indicates that increases in these gases will cause warming, satellite measurements of outgoing radiation show that infrared radiation at the wavelengths CO2 absorbs is decreasing, ground measurements show that ‘downwelling’ infrared radiation at the wavelengths CO2 absorbs is increasing, the observed temperature anomalies are consistent with predictions of warming caused by CO2 and inconsistent with any combination of known natural cycles, and the WAY that the planet is warming is consistent with an enhanced greenhouse effect and not with any other known forcing (i.e. just as it is apparent that a hotdog burned on one side except for regularly spaced lines and uncooked on the opposite side has been cooked on a grill rather than in a microwave so to is it demonstrable that the observed tropospheric warming combined with stratospheric cooling, a decrease in the diurnal temperature differential, and Winter temperatures rising faster than Summer temperatures are indicative of greenhouse warming rather than, for instance, solar warming (which would produce the opposite results on all three counts)).
     
    4: Citing CO2science’s funding policy as evidence that they have not received funding from the fossil fuel industry is rather like accepting the word of a suspected criminal on whether they are guilty or not. The CO2science website lists Craig Idso as their chairman. The website, the ‘CO2 Science Magazine’, and the ‘Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change’ are all operated by the Idso family and have all received extensive funding from ExxonMobil and other elements of the fossil fuel industry. Google ‘Idso’ for extensive documentation.
     
    5: No, their funding (and the fact that they lie about it) are not reasons to dismiss their ‘science’. The fact that the science is clearly fraudulent is reason enough.
    This graph shows ‘the MWP’ peaking ~700 years ago;
    http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l3_chileanslope.php
    This one shows ‘the MWP’ peaking ~1100 years ago;
    http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/studies/l1_jamtland.php
    Go through the database and you will see that this wide disparity continues throughout… essentially, they have taken any study which finds warming (though some are actually rainfall studies which they mis-represent as warming) at a specific location over a long time frame and said ‘ah ha… MWP’. Yet if you line all these graphs up you find that when one is showing warming another is showing cooling. Further, they ONLY include studies and locations which show warming some time between ~500 and ~1500 AD. In short, they deliberately present a biased picture, but even so it should be apparent to anyone who looks at it objectively that their ‘MWP’ is all over the map and if the results were factored together on the same timeline would largely cancel each other out.

    • Jonathan DuHamel

      To Conrad:
      1: If “continued for thousands of years in conjunction with (and largely due to) the rising CO2 level” what made if stop warming? I propose that the same orbital forces that initiated warming, ended it. And Conrad, please see my post on PETM.
      2: Your point #2 has nothing to do with warming cause and effect that I can see.
      3: The ” WAY that the planet is warming is consistent with” solar cycles and well-correlated with ENSO, PDO, etc. If you read my post Your Carbon Footprint doesn’t Matter You will see that CO2 forcing is very weak.
       
      4: The funding argument is a red herring and does not preclude good science.
       
      5: Could it be that MWP peaked at different times in different places?
       
      Still no physical evidence of SIGNIFICANT CO2 forcing.
       
      Fraser007 below is correct. Natural climate changes happen and have caused disruptions, but we adapt. Those who propose we can somehow stop natural climate are dreaming.

      • Dr. John Parsons

        Jon, no one has ever suggested we “stop normal climate”. To suggest they have is disingenuous. As to your point #1, Jon you keep confusing CO2 forcing with CO2 feedback. I’m trying very hard to not sound patronizing: but you must think this through. You continually miss the point that CO2 is a forcing in two completely different ways even though they are coupled.
        As to your point #2: Please carefully read Conrad’s points number 2 and 3. We know what the earth’s radiative budget is. We know where the heat is coming from and how much is trapped and by what. It’s as empirical as it gets. We measure it with instruments. We know what CO2 is from “natural sources” and which is from fossil fuel consumption by it’s isotopic signature.
        As to your point #3: Just cite your source. I’ve read your link but it’s difficult to know which part of it refers to your point 3, so simply cite your source(s) so we can follow your reasoning.
        As to your point #4: Neither Conrad nor I nor anyone else has said to dismiss that website because of its funding source. We both stated the categorical opposite. What we did say is that they should be transparent and let people make up their own minds. Both of us said that. I said it twice and you continue to say we repudiate them because of their funding source. Not true, and you know it. As to your point #5: Of course MWP could have peaked at different places at different times. All I’ve been saying is what the Moberg 2005 study that YOU cited said: The data is not robust enough to support claims about the climatic vs weather argument. But you don’t need this argument because we know without any doubt that the forcing was not caused by humans burning huge quantities of fossil fuels.

        Jon, tenacity in a scientist is a great trait and you have that, but it must be accompanied by a willingness to have an open mind. Your training as a geologist has given you a unique longterm perspective. And, if we do nothing, over the long term everything will work out fine—for the rocks. John

    • Anderlan

      That was brilliantly informative and concise yet manageable.  You are an ally of the next generations.

      • Dr. John Parsons

        Anderlan, I’ve been accused here of being overly complimentary, but in Conrad’s case, he sure deserves some props. I’m not an expert, but I know enough to say that no one on this site has shown a better grasp of the subject. I like what you said about future generations. You, too, are an ally. JP

  • fraser007

    Couple of points: First thanks again for having this blogsite. I have learned a lot.
    I will suppose that volcanos are natures way of releasing pressure from our molten core. Thats a lot of Co2 gas being let out. Does that mean that three volcanos in  a year will mess us up on C02 levels for a long time. What does that do to global warming?
    Last point which is more of a statement. Years ago when my son played chess the parents would wait outside and read and talk etc. One of them with me was a paleo-pollen scientist. He knew pollen, I know military history. While chatting we came up with this. Some centuries ago the sun gives off more warmth….more rain on earth….more grass growing in Central Asia…..more horses being bred by the locals….more population….a powerful leader. You guessed it.. Genghis  Khan. World history gets changed.
    I am not too worried about global warming if there is nothing we can do about it or change it. I am worried about population shifts, resources, technology, military conquences etc.  For me history is technological changes and movements of people. I can give you a thousand examples of how those two things have changed history. I dont think we have put all of the answers together as yet. Am I right or are the people that consider the Great Men (or women) the most important or is it religion ….maybe its the heating of the earth???!!  Still lots of questions out there.

    • Dr. John Parsons

      Fraser, The story you and your friend came up with is a very important one. It clearly illustrates a kind of feedback. This is why Jon is incorrect when he says, “well it’s only three degrees we go through fifty degrees in a day”. But, as in your story, that 3 degrees may be the difference in the germination temperature of one type of grass seed over another or the life cycle of a simple bug, like the pine beetle that is already laying waste our great pine forests. Three degrees warmer in the winter and that bug thrives–three degrees colder and it dies in the winter, as it has for thousands of years. You are right Fraser, more than you may know. And I don’t mean that in a condescending way, I mean more than any of us know. As I’ve mentioned before, the story of climate change is the story of forcings and feedbacks. Yours was a very beautiful example. Thank You, JP

    • Anderlan

      You mention technology as a prime mover in history.  Technology must progress, by definition.  Science must progress.  We are on an ascending staircase, and we cannot just get off it, without catastrophe.  

      Antiquated fossil carbon energy technology has been shown over time by science, as it has progressed, to be a panacea with a cost that has built up as our use of it has exponentially increased.  It has already outlived itself and will continue to cause increasing travails to humanity even if we transitioned off of it instantly right now.  But the degree of trouble will be lowered the quicker we do.  So, to shy away from this challenge is simply  incomprehensible to me.  

      I fight for energy transition and efficiency because I am an optimist.  I will not accept what Luddites and those with a vested fossil carbon interest say: that this is not something we can make even slightly better, that we must accept the full portion of decreased agricultural production (and so higher food prices, and so economic recession, and so more failed states and wars) that allegedly ‘natural’ global warming will bring us.  

      I believe the scientists, who originally helped us harness fossil energy, who gave us vaccines, computer chips, and so many other things that we all take for granted while some call them prostitutes with no discipline, diligence, God-given intelligence or calling to Truth.  I believe the scientists who say that we should decimate fossil carbon emissions and use more subtle energy sources more intelligently.

      I want energy transition because I do not think we should decrease the work and value created by our energy.  The deniers and delayers say that there is no viable alternative to fossil carbon energy.  What a defeatist attitude!  They are defending one industry, at the expense of our children.

      I do not know how we decimate fossil carbon without a policy that says “don’t use it.”  Actually, we can impose a rising cost on it, and, say, replace that cost in the economy with lowered taxes on good things like work and investment.  But the deniers and delayers say that is exactly equal to an evil government mandate saying “don’t use it.”  So, I guess I’m in favor of a law saying “don’t use it.”

      http://www.jcs.mil/speech.aspx?id=1472

      Thank you for your time and effort in this.

      • Anderlan

        Regarding the ascending staircase of science and technology, I forgot to mention population.  It’s an important point, because the pessimist deniers like to say that scientists are the Luddites, the ones who want to bring us to a time of lower population and standard of living.  

        Rather, we energy transition is consistent with humanity continuing to expand in living standards and maintain population.  We are bound to technology because it is what enables our huge population.  We cannot go backward to our old ways.  Likewise, we cannot forever stay in our current mode.  Fossil energy is the current mode, and we should have moved on decades ago. 

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Conrad, You’ve done more in five paragraphs than I did in five days. Very nicely written with absolute clarity. I challenged Jon just as you did, to spend a little time looking at the “CO2 Science” database. It is absolute hokum, and Jon is smart enough and well trained enough to know it. I will address some of his comments soon, but you already succinctly made the most important points. Well done. JP

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Jon, I will of course respond to the points you brought up, but unfortunately my work will only allow this brief reply until this evening. “Settled science” is a term of art like “settled law” is to the legal profession. It does not mean what the common idiom would suggest. I would have thought you knew that. “Settled science” is simply the state of the art. “Settled science” does not mean that it is the last word, anymore than settled law is the last word.

    Before I have time to respond to your article in depth, might I suggest you think about the implications of your statement that “…people don’t live in the average global temperature.” Look at Fraser’s story above and think about what effects average temperatures have on this biosphere. It’s not the three degrees Jon, it’s the derivatives, the feedbacks; and those are something we will all “live in”. John

    • Jonathan DuHamel

      “Settled science” i.e., consensus has been used by AGWists to dismiss anyone who questions the “settled science” as a heretic and not worthy of listening to.  It amounts to argument by appeal to authority.

      • Dr. John Parsons

        Jon, You may be right about them, but this is about our discussion. I told you that when I use the term settled science it is not in the idiomatic sense. I could not be clearer. For you to imply that I believe scientific knowledge comes to a halt at a certain point is incorrect. This is the third time I’ve had to tell you this and I hope it’s the last. John

        • Jonathan DuHamel

          Perhaps you make a distinction in the term “settled science” but the common reader takes it in its idiomatic sense as you put it.  If that’s not what you mean perhaps you could find another term because your protests sound like:
           ”When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

          • Dr. John Parsons

            You know very well what a term of art is. From what I’ve seen here, your readers are smarter than you are giving them credit for. JP

            • Mark in Sandy Eggo

              Dr. JP,
              settledpast participle, past tense of set·tle (Verb)

              Verb:

              Resolve or reach an agreement about (an argument or problem).
              End (a legal dispute) by mutual agreement: “the matter was settled out of court”; “he sued for libel and then settled out of court”

              If you are writing to convince readers of the the Tucson Citizen blogs of this point, you are doing pretty bad at it.  I would guess that no more that 1% of the people reading this would be thinking “of course, he means settled (as a term of art) instead of settled (as in a dictionary).
              As you warmists often do, you bluster to push your point across, and then when people get very specific, you ether say “that wasn’t important” or “that isn’t what that word means when I use it.”
              The “Climate Change 101″ video hosted by Bill Nye the Science Guy during Al Gore’s 24 Hours of Reality.  Here they showed a video, and said it could be done in a high school science class, where they demonstrated higher heat in one jar that had higher CO2 compared to the other jar.  A little problem was demonstrated by Anthony Watts that the video was staged.  After thoroughly proving that the “easily reproducible” science experiment was a fraud, the warmists replied with a bunch of mistakes Anthony Watts did in the experiment. 
              http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/18/replicating-al-gores-climate-101-video-experiment-shows-that-his-high-school-physics-could-never-work-as-advertised/
               
              The point, Dr. JP, is that climate science is a relatively new area of exploration.  Note that most of the paid research in Climate Science is about all the effects (flooding, ice caps melting, polar bears drowning, South Pacific Islands underwater, endangered species, drought, hurricanes, tornadoes, snow storms, etc, etc, etc), which presupposes that unprecedented warming is coming our way.  The guess at the horrible amount of warming is determined by a small community that huddle in the corner, tap tap on the computer,  and have shown themselves to be not worthy of trust.  And the warmist community wonders why the UK is turning back Green initiatives, and the US Government just gave a 2.7 Billion dollar bailout to a solar company in Spain, because they killed their own economy by following the warmist’s agenda. 
               
              I believe our money would be better spent preparing for the real effects of a potentially warmer world.  If that means oceans will rise, we can adapt to that.  But, there is no reason to buy a trillion dollars of 2011 technology for the rise that is expected in 2450.  Just like solar and wind, which do not have the energy density to make it economically viable TODAY vs. fossil fuels.  Maybe solar will be viable in 2450, or even 2150, but it is not today.  Or maybe we will be in another mini ice age, and would really enjoy some extra global warming.
               
              A quote from Mark Twain: ” . . . people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
              I look forward to the decriminalization of the US Energy Industry.  When we start drilling again, less money will be sent overseas, people will be employed here, energy will cost less, productivity will rise, and the economy will rise. 

              • Dr. John Parsons

                Mark, Your point and Jon’s about my choice of words has validity. Knowing that it causes such a distraction, I will refrain from using that terminology in the future. Your other points seem very fatalistic to me Mark. The chances that your house will burn down are about 1 in 16,000 and yet most of us buy insurance. When the same methods of statistical analysis say there is a 95% or greater chance your world could be devastated, your recommendation is to keep playing with matches? JP

                • Mark in Sandy Eggo

                  John,
                  Thank you for the dialog.
                   
                  Far from being fatalistic, I think my approach is more optimistic. Biological systems adapt.  There is a unique tree called the “Torrey Pine Tree” that is a holdover in the San Diego area from the time glaciers were around here.  Humans also adapt.  Every time a Tucson High School graduate moves to an east coast college (or a Bostonian attends the UofA), human adaptation takes place.  My niece, who grew up in Tucson, lives (and loves) freaking North Dakota!
                   
                  Back to your house fire analogy, it seems like the approach of the AGW believers is to spend a lot of money and reduce everyone’s  quality of life to avoid the house fire.  This means never cooking in the house, disconnecting the gas from the fireplace, throwing away the toaster, etc.  My approach is to use fire in the household, but also to be prepared for the effects of using it.  This DOES include insurance, but also includes having pot holders, putting a screen in front of the fireplace, and teaching children about the proper and improper uses of matches.
                   
                  We can do activities that can help us adapt to the world better if global warming happens, and does not decrease our lives if it doesn’t.  For example, more dams can be built to catch water in the wet years.  Then, if there is a drought, then water is available.  If the ocean rises 6 inches or a foot, coastal communities can add soil or seawalls to deal with the issue.  I remember seeing a documentary how Venice (or was it Amsterdam) was sinking, and there were significant projects to limit potential damage from the sea.  People can adapt.
                   
                  So, far from fatalistic, I am optimistic about humanities ability to adapt to whatever changes in the climate, what ever the cause – nature or man made.

                  • Dr. John Parsons

                    Mark, You raise many good points and I agree with much of what you say. The unique problem that AGW presents is that it doesn’t allow enough time for the natural adaptive processes you describe. We have changed the atmosphere more in 100 years than nature did in ten thousand years (during PETM). Jon recognized this in his article. CO2 is higher than anytime in at least 650,000 years. That’s why the argument is so much different Mark. As concerns you last point: Yes humans can adapt quite well, but we are only one member of the biosphere. Other species can’t adapt that quickly. Lastly; yes Venice is, and has been sinking, and hundreds of millions have been spent on that one town alone. Rather than putting out thousands of expensive brush fires, why not spend the money more efficiently by stopping the source of the problem. It would be much less expensive and would save the biosphere not just one species in it. Thanks, Mark JP

                    • Dr. John Parsons

                      Need to pay some bills—back after supper JP

                    • Mark in Sandy Eggo

                      JP – not replying to myself of purpose – there seems to be a limit to how many imbedded replies can be done.
                       
                      First, being honest, I consider myself a species supremacist.  With all this evolution to get to homo sapiens, I am NOT going to eat like a cow.  I think that the lack of balance between the needs of US Citizens compared to the protection of species has been absurd.  The destruction of the California Central Valley, previous breadbasket of the west, because of the delta smelt is plain stupid.
                       
                      One of the things that frustrates those who try to talk to AGW believers is time scale.  The time scale always changes to support whatever the AGW crowd wants to do:
                       
                      Me: The temperature is flat the last 10 years
                      AGW: You dummy.  This is climate.  Ten years is not enough.
                       
                      Me: In the age of dinosaurs, CO2 was in the thousands of Parts per million, far more than the  ~300 ppm today.
                      AGW: You dummy.  You cannot look back that far. The important period started only 660,000 years ago.
                       
                      Me: In the 1070s, the climate scientists predicted a coming Ice Age.  Time Magazine cover in 1977 talks about how to survive the coming ice age.  
                      AGW: You are looking back to far.  We know so much more now. 
                       
                      Do you see how it is always head you win, tails I lose?
                       
                      Now.  According to HADCRUT, over the past 10 years, atmospheric CO2 has gone up 4% while global temperature has remained flat.   Climate scientist ten years ago did not see this coming at all.  In fact, they were predicting that the temperature increase was going to get even steeper.  But global warming stopped, and there are only guesses as to why. 
                       
                      What this tells me is the nascent science of Climate is very new, and does not have a good grasp on what goes causes, and what has no effect, on the long term climate.  Unfortunately, the academic money train mostly funds that research which supports the existing hypothesis.  Rather than working behind the scenes to exclude skeptic authors, there should be significant funding to support science that comes from an alternate view.  All research (which is bought and paid for by citizens) should be transparently put on the internet as a condition of funding.  This includes data AND source code.  (coders lie, but the source code never lies).  The urgency to spend money and destroy industries and jobs over a tenuous correlation between CO2 and Global Warming, and the correlation between Global Warming and devastation, just doesn’t make sense.
                       
                      Note that I am not against pollution control  I lived in Riverside CA in 80s (where the LA smog went in the afternoon), and I think the work done to control Carbon MONOXIDE, Unburned Hydrocarbons, and Oxides of Nitrogen was FANTASTIC.  We in the United States live in a world that is much more healthy than 30 years ago.  Unfortunately, instead of declaring victory, the environmental control apparatus had to find something else to manage.  Viola – CO2 – which is not pollution.
                       
                      What if I am right?  Let yourself go and just believe that for a moment.  It won’t hurt.  Lets say it is 10 years from now.  The year is 2021.  CO2 is another 30% higher, but the global temperature has gone down another 0.2 F.  Global temperature is now measured only be satellite, since the ground stations and their siting issues (some on black asphalt, or near runways) were finally acknowledged to be more problemmatic than all the correction factors and selective removal could fix.  Climate Science is starting a growth phase, where the new breed has sufficient instrumentation to really get down to see what are the factors.  Empirical measurement is key – models have lost favor.  How important in the equation are clouds (they can measure that now).  Meanwhile, we are coming close to paying off the 18 trillion dollars of debt, much on the back of the resurgent oil business.  So much oil and natural gas has been found, coal is no longer economically viable for electricity generation.  Speaking of natural gas, 25% of the new cars (and growing) use Liquified Natural Gas.  It produces less pollution, and is cheaper.  Corn ethanol programs have been abandoned, and food is once again being used for food.
                       
                      So Dr. Parsons – what if you walked the world as a skeptic.  What if, when you colleagues say something about the climate that just doesn’t make sense, you question it, instead of just letting is slide by,  because that little error probably isn’t important anyway.   You don’t even have to believe it.  You can pretend.  When you see the latest assertion about climate catastrophe, you can say to yourself “If I were Jon DuHamel (or that crazy engineer Mark) I would say  “This doesn’t work, and this doesn’t contradicts what was said last year”.
                       
                      I’ve enjoyed our conversation.

    • Dr. John Parsons

      see above

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Fraser, I so liked the story you told that I didn’t answer your questions. Volcanoes, on average contribute about 1% as much CO2 to our atmosphere as we humans do each year. If three large volcanoes went off at once, the largest effect would be to cool the earth significantly and quickly. This is because in addition to CO2, volcanos emit large amounts of aerosols that have the effect of increasing the earth’s albedo. In other words they reflect sunlight. This is what the large ice sheets that cover our polar regions do and why if they are melted, less energy is reflected and the earth warms. As you can see this becomes a vicious cycle. This is what climatologists mean when they talk about feedbacks. This is called a positive feedback, in that it adds to the forcing (driver) that created it. In the case of us humans, a positive feedback can be very negative. Thanks again for the story about you and your friend. It was illuminating but also touching. Dr. John

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Jon, You just tell me what you want me to call it. Maybe you should also tell the Supreme Court to quit saying “settled law” because it’s insufficiently colloquial. JP

  • Anderlan

    Not sure how the length of a cycle of 10-12 years can be plotted versus time at 10 year intervals.  Graph looks nice, but makes no sense.

  • Philip Haddad

    A more rational explanation to global warming is the amount of heat added to the environment from fossil fuels not the CO2 by-product. nuclear and geothermal also add to the heat. But since 80% of our energy comes from fossil fuels there is a corresponding rise in temperature  with increasing CO2 concentration. I dare say the Kyoto scientists never considered that all the energy we use goes to heat. In 2008 we added 50x10E16 BTUs to an environment whose atmosphere has a mass of 5.3x10E18 kilograms. It is a simple calculation to determine that this is enough heat to potentially raise the temperature by 0.04*F. Photosynthesis, melting glaciers, and thermal lag have mitigated part of potential heat effect. From a practical standpoint fossil fuels must be drastically reduced. Planting of more trees may permit some level of standby power from fossil fuel. We should stop the counterproductive efforts  to sequester CO2 by any means other than through photosynthesis. It is the energy removed in the process, not the physical removal of CO2, that provides the cooling. We should not listen to people advocating more advanced nuclear power plants (based solely on the fact that they emit no CO2). There is no solution other than temperature neutral energy sources, such as solar, wind, biomass, hydroelectric,etc. Let’s accept that and quit dithering about.

    • Mark in Sandy Eggo

      Philip,
      I have to say, I have read a lot of AGW literature from all sides, and this is the first time that I have heard of the issue you raise on the actual heat release in fossil or nuclear sources.  Is the 0.04F value you cite really 0.04F per year? From the HADCRUT temperature, the rise since 1950 (a local minima)  has been  +0.6C, or +1.08 F.  Now I know that heat output from using energy has been increasing (until 2008 and the recession), but to me, this looks like it accounts for ALL of the warming in the past 60 years.  This would mean that the CO2 is a negligible effect.
       
      Now, I do believe there are stabilizing functions.  For example, warmer planet -> more water evaporated from ocean -> more cloud cover -> more sunlight reflected -> cooler planet.  However, I am surprised that this is not a more broadly discussed topic.  Thank you for broadening the discussion!

  • Conrad Dunkerson

    “I propose that the same orbital forces that initiated warming, ended it.”
    You are correct. The warming was initiated and ended by changes in orbital forcings. However, that does nothing to change the fact that CO2 was a powerful positive feedback effect. When the forcing changes ‘direction’ so do the feedbacks. That is, oceans and permafrost warmed by orbital forcing release CO2… which causes more warming. When the orbital forcing switches to cooling the oceans and permafrost they sequester more CO2… which causes more cooling. Nothing mysterious about it.
     
    “And Conrad, please see my post on PETM.”
    You suggest that methane hydrates may have been the primary cause… which is ironic because methane quickly breaks down in the atmosphere… to carbon dioxide. Release of methane hydrates also requires warming… which is generally believed to have been caused by CO2 outgassing due to the massive vulcanism at the time.
     
    “Your point #2 has nothing to do with warming cause and effect that I can see.”
    You asked for evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing warming. Establishing that human CO2 emissions are responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration is a pre-requisite for that.
     
    “The ‘WAY that the planet is warming is consistent with’ solar cycles”
    This is simply false. Setting aside the fact that warming over the past 50 years or so does NOT correlate with solar cycles, if the warming were being caused by increased incoming solar radiation we would see ‘top down’ warming… that is, both the stratosphere and the troposphere would be warming. Instead, the stratosphere is cooling. If sunlight were the cause of warming then the strongest warming signal would be observed during the daytime (i.e. when there is sunlight)… instead nights are warming faster than days. In short, there is conclusive evidence that the observed warming trend is NOT caused by solar radiation.
     
    “and well-correlated with ENSO, PDO, etc.”
    ENSO, PDO, etc? No matter how many of these cycles you combine you will NOT get a correlation with the observed temperature rise… because they are CYCLES. They go up and down but average out around a flat baseline. They just move heat around within the climate system and thus cannot explain the observed accumulation of MORE heat. Fluctuations AROUND the warming trend do correspond with these cycles in many cases, but the warming itself requires another source.
     
    “If you read my post Your Carbon Footprint doesn’t Matter You will see that CO2 forcing is very weak.”
    In that article you conclude that US CO2 emissions will cause only a 0.003 C increase in temperatures… but ignore the fact that this figure is PER YEAR. You also ignore that this is essentially a ‘tragedy of the commons’ argument… ‘why should WE reduce our CO2 output because it will not make a difference unless everyone does so’ – which of course allows everyone else to make the same argument, especially since the highest per capita emitters (i.e. us) aren’t doing anything. Finally, you then suggest that we should further reduce this warming by 98.5% because that is the percentage of annual emissions (both natural and humans) absorbed by nature. Of course, this ignores the fact that the IPCC warming calculations you cited already incorporated the CO2 sinks because they were based on increase in atmospheric concentration (i.e. the amount which accumulations in EXCESS of the sinks). In short, your conclusions are demonstrably false.
     
    5: Could it be that MWP peaked at different times in different places?
    If we are to imagine that the MWP existed as a worldwide phenomenon then we must also expect it to have had geographical and temporal cohesion. Otherwise, we are just searching for high temperature records with no underlying pattern and putting them together to say ‘look warming’… oh wait, that >IS< what ‘CO2science’ is doing. You do your credibility no favors by promoting such an obvious fraud.

     
    “Still no physical evidence of SIGNIFICANT CO2 forcing.”
    So you are stressing the “significant”… despite that being a purely arbitrary term? Are you claiming that the observed ~1 C rise in global temperatures is not “significant”?
     
    “Fraser007 below is correct. Natural climate changes happen and have caused disruptions, but we adapt. Those who propose we can somehow stop natural climate are dreaming.”
    Natural forest fires happen… therefor we must conclude that arson is impossible? As to the claim that we cannot stop natural climate… CO2 levels should be on a long slow decline which, in several thousand years, would lead us into another glaciation. Instead, they have risen to a level far above anything seen in the current ice age glacial cycle. We already HAVE stopped the next glaciation. No dreaming required. Acid rain. Ozone depletion. The Dust Bowl. Water shortages due to irrigation. This claim that humans cannot impact the climate flies in the face of observed reality.

  • Jonathan DuHamel

    Conrad,  the first graph in the post shows a correlation of temperature with a solar cycle.  And geologic evidence shows that the “normal” concentration of CO2 is over 1,000ppm, about 3 times what it is now.  It is currently low because we are in an ice age.

    • mojo

      Are you suggesting that there is a correlation between energy emitted by the sun and the temperature here on Earth? Seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

      • Conrad Dunkerson

        Mojo, actually that would be quite reasonable… variations in energy emitted by the Sun DO influence temperatures on Earth. However, the amplitude of these variations over the short term (e.g. hundreds of years) is so small that the impact on temperatures is well under 1 C… and that isn’t what was being claimed. What the graph actually purports to show is that the frequency at which the variations occur, regardless of how high or low the energy output is, determines temperature on Earth. I’ve already replied below with an extensive analysis of why this is false.
         
        BTW, over the past 500 million years or so solar output has increased by about 30%. That is a very significant increase. Without it the planet would be too cold to support most life at current greenhouse gas levels.

  • Conrad Dunkerson

    “Conrad,  the first graph in the post shows a correlation of temperature with a solar cycle. ”
    The first graph in the post above PURPORTS to show a correlation between the LENGTH of each solar cycle and temperature. This is problematic for several reasons.
    First, there is no physical mechanism to explain the supposed correlation. Based on the graph it would seem that the shorter the duration of the solar cycle the greater the warming… with the amount of solar radiation being output during the cycle being completely irrelevant. What is it about a short duration solar cycle that you imagine would cause warming? Frankly, this is rather like saying that ocean waves coming in closer together will get you more wet… regardless of how tall the waves are.
    Second, the solar ‘data’ on the graph isn’t accurate. The sun goes through semi-regular cycles of activity which result in slight changes in the amount of radiation emitted and the number of sunspots observed. The peaks and troughs of the radiation cycle can be precisely measured by satellites, but the corresponding ‘sunspot cycle’ is determined by people counting the number of sunspots they observe over a given day/month/year. When done properly these sunspot observations match up with the precise satellite readings (and thus have been used to determine solar cycles long before the satellite era)… but since they are performed manually there is always the potential for error and thus are cross-checked from various reports. The recent values in the graph above seem to bear no relation to the recent solar cycles as measured by satellites. For example, cycle 21 ran from June 1976 to September 1986… ~10.25 years. Yet the graph above shows no cycle of around that duration since the 1940s.
    Finally, the TEMPERATURE data in the graph above ALSO does not match any of the global sets I’m familiar with. After a bit of searching I believe I’ve found the original source of the graph (Friis-Christensen 1991)… in which case it is actually northern hemisphere land only temperatures… which of course makes any ‘hypothetical physical mechanism’ even more absurd (e.g. ‘shorter solar cycles cause warming, but only in the northern hemisphere and only over land’).
    I also found a page documenting the various incorrect values (apparently some of the sunspot cycle values have gone through a smoothing function and some have not), AND a subsequent 1999 study where one of the original authors acknowledged that the above graph/correlation was incorrect;
    http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-cycle-length.htm
     
    So… a 20 year old study which was fairly ridiculous when it came out, and which even one of the authors debunked more than a decade ago.
     
    “And geologic evidence shows that the “normal” concentration of CO2 is over 1,000ppm, about 3 times what it is now.”
    The ‘scare quotes’ around normal suggest that you are aware there is no such thing for atmospheric CO2. There is no ‘stable level’ on geological time scales. However, you are correct that the current value is towards the low end. Indeed, for most of the past 500 million years it was higher than 1000 ppm.
     
    “It is currently low because we are in an ice age.”
    True… and seemingly indicative. That is, if you accept that ‘low CO2 = ice age’ why are you arguing that ‘higher CO2 != warming’?

    • Dr. John Parsons

      Jon, You’ve got some serious questions to answer. You can’t continue to use material that you know is false/misleading. You were still peddling the Spencer/Christy garbage until I called you on it. You were caught in the Idso cookie jar. Now this. The extensive work done by Conrad and myself call for a lot more than a link to some discredited website or your past work that ‘s being questioned. No more free ride, Jon. The evidence you asked for has been presented. You sir, have been served. JP

    • Mark in Sandy Eggo

      Conrad,
       
      Another example of nit picking to confuse the issue:
      Jon sez :“It is currently low because we are in an ice age.”
       
      You said: True… and seemingly indicative. That is, if you accept that ‘low CO2 = ice age’ why are you arguing that ‘higher CO2 != warming’?
       
      Mark sez: Correlation does not equal causation  Warmists claim that burning fossil fuels will increase CO2 and warm the world significantly.  I understood from what Jon said that if the world is in a warmer period (say, during the days of dinosaurs) more CO2 exists in the air.  Most of this would be released from the oceans.
      A truly reproducable experiment.  Get two bottles of Coke.  Put one in the refrigerator for 4 hours, put the other in the noon Tucson sun.  Open both bottles.  The one that makes the louder “phisst” has just released more CO2 into the atmosphere.
      By warmist theory, the released CO2 caused all bottles of Coke to warm up world wide.  The noon Tucson sun wasn’t the problem.  We need a trillion dollar worldwide program to prohibit carbonation of the soda industry under the auspices of the UN.  The government will subsidize the creation of a new beverage industry that does not use carbonation.  In spite of the subsidy, the new green beverage costs $4.00 a bottle instead of $1.50, and it tastes horrible, but it is the “good” thing to do to save the planet.
       
       

      • Conrad Dunkerson

        Mark, no correlation does not equal causation… but the word “because” DOES. Jon said that CO2 is low “because” we are in an ice age.
         
        ” I understood from what Jon said that if the world is in a warmer period (say, during the days of dinosaurs) more CO2 exists in the air.  Most of this would be released from the oceans.”
        In the glaciation cycle that is true. Warming from orbital forcing causes CO2 to be released from the oceans into the atmosphere. However, currently it is NOT true… the planet is warming and the CO2 content of both the atmosphere AND oceans is INcreasing.
         
        “By warmist theory, the released CO2 caused all bottles of Coke to warm up world wide.  The noon Tucson sun wasn’t the problem. ”
        That bears no resemblance to AGW theory.
         
        “We need a trillion dollar worldwide program to prohibit carbonation of the soda industry under the auspices of the UN.”
        No such plan exists, nor would it make any sense. Carbonic acid (aka ‘soda’) actually sequesters carbon dioxide in liquid. When it is consumed this CO2 is released into the atmosphere… but where do you think the CO2 in the soda came from in the first place? Basically, it is recycled… and does nothing to increase the atmospheric concentration. Indeed, every soda bottle/can sitting unopened somewhere is sequestering CO2 away from the atmosphere.
         
        “Me: The temperature is flat the last 10 years
        AGW: You dummy.  This is climate.  Ten years is not enough.”
        Your statement is false. Your straw man representation of the AGW statement is inaccurate/misleading. The temperature over the past 10 years is NOT flat. It is increasing. However, 10 years is insufficient time to calculate statistical significance (at the usual 95% confidence level) for a data series with as much ‘noise’ as the temperature series. Basically, that means a standard mathematical test to determine whether a trend is likely ‘real’ or simply an artifact of random noise in the data requires more than 10 years of values. False ‘skeptics’ use this to say ‘there has been no warming’… even though the trend DOES show warming. You just have to start further back than 10 years in order to get a statistically valid result… which, by the way, ALSO shows warming. Pick any two start and end points over the past 50 years or so and the resulting trend will either be ‘not statistically significant’ (if the duration is too short) or statistically significant warming. There aren’t ANY statistically significant ‘cooling’ or ‘flat’ periods.
         
        “Me: In the age of dinosaurs, CO2 was in the thousands of Parts per million, far more than the  ~300 ppm today.
        AGW: You dummy.  You cannot look back that far. The important period started only 660,000 years ago.”
        Your statement is true. Your straw man  representation of the AGW position is nonsense. Millions of years ago the radiation output of the Sun was significantly lower. Thus, without the much higher greenhouse gas levels at that time the planet would have been frozen solid.
        “Me: In the 1070s, the climate scientists predicted a coming Ice Age.  Time Magazine cover in 1977 talks about how to survive the coming ice age.  
        AGW: You are looking back to far.  We know so much more now.”
        Both statements are inaccurate/misleading. You make a claim about climate scientists and then cite Time magazine… you really can’t see the flaw in that logic train? A review of scientific papers published at the time shows that even then most climate scientists were predicting greenhouse warming. The Time report was sensationalized journalism based on a minority opinion… which, BTW, they admitted when they retracted it.

        • Jonathan DuHamel

          Conrad,

          What is the source for your statement “the CO2 content of both the atmosphere AND oceans is increasing”? Your statement would be true according to Henry’s Law, but that assumes constant temperature. Is ocean temperature warming, cooling or staying the same? Again what is the source showing CO2 in the oceans is increasing?

          • Dr. John Parsons

            Jon, I’ll let Conrad speak for himself (which he does particularly well) but what do you think is causing ocean acidification. A quick search will reveal innumerable studies of the consequences to our oceans from human CO2 emissions. I hope you are working on a response to Conrad’s recent posts. Your reader’s deserve that. JP

          • Conrad Dunkerson

            As John said, ocean acidification (i.e. the accumulation of carbonic acid, CO2 + H2O = H2CO3,  in the oceans) has been established for quite a while now. Studies showing this include; Raven 2005, Hoegh-Guldberg 2007, and Palejero 2010. The last of those is a good overview (with a focus on comparison to previous instances of ocean acidification) and can be found at;
            http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347%2810%2900044-3
             
            Your graphs and commentary above acknowledge that atmospheric CO2 levels are rising so I’ll assume you don’t require further evidence of that.
             
            As to the oceans, they are warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. Again, there are many studies showing this. Levitus 2009 is a good example;
            http://www.agu.org/journals/ABS/2009/2008GL037155.shtml

            • Mark in Sandy Eggo

              The summary for your first link says:
               
              The anthropogenic rise in atmospheric CO2 is driving fundamental and unprecedented changes in the chemistry of the oceans. This has led to changes in the physiology of a wide variety of marine organisms and, consequently, the ecology of the ocean. This review explores recent advances in our understanding of ocean acidification with a particular emphasis on past changes to ocean chemistry and what they can tell us about present and future changes. We argue that ocean conditions are already more extreme than those experienced by marine organisms and ecosystems for millions of years, emphasising the urgent need to adopt policies that drastically reduce CO2 emissions.
               
              Hold the phone.  So, we have to limit CO2 because “.. more extreme than those experienced by marine organisms and ecosystems for millions of years”.  But, as we have acknowledged, CO2 levels millions of years ago was in the thousands of ppm, compared to the ~300 ppm today.   How can much less CO2 today be more “extreme” than high levels of CO2 millions of years ago.  This sounds sensational enough to be on Time magazine.
               
              Heads you win, tails I lose again, Conrad?
               
               

              • Dr. John Parsons

                Mark, I hate to do this but it’s important and it shows you’re using you head. It’s more extreme because when it happened last time, life had as much as 2 million years to adapt. That’s enough time for natural selection go do it’s magic. A couple of hundred years just doesn’t allow enough time for adaptation. You are correct to note that if what we were doing was of much longer duration, it wouldn’t be the same kind of problem. JP

              • Conrad Dunkerson

                Mark, the rate of change issue John explained also causes a significant problem with the distribution of the acidification. In past changes, atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels rose slowly and currents had time to distribute the carbon such that surface and deep pH levels remained similar. In the present case the atmospheric level is rising much faster than the oceans can redistribute the carbon and thus the near surface pH (where most ocean life is found) is dropping to unprecedented levels.
                 
                This is explained later in the same paper: “This knowledge places into context the changes we are facing today, in pCO2 and in pH, which are happening ~100- times faster than during glacial–interglacial transitions. The average surface pH levels that oceans have reached today are already more extreme than those experienced by the oceans during the glacial–interglacial changes and beyond, probably being more extreme than at any time during the last 20 million years. Ocean pH levels that might be reached by the end of the twenty-first century are unprecedented in at least 40 million years.”
                 
                Indeed, the amount of CO2 we have emitted from fossil fuels is actually fairly small compared to the ability of the oceans to absorb it. Had it taken place over the course of ‘just’ a few million years the atmospheric level would have risen only a few ppm and the pH change in the oceans would be almost imperceptible. It is only the fact that we are releasing so much CO2 so quickly which makes it a problem. It’s like a traffic jam… cars (carbon) are going into the city (oceans) but not spreading out to side streets (the deep ocean) fast enough. As a result the entry roads (surface layers) are jammed (acidifying quickly) and cars (carbon) on the highways  (in the atmosphere) leading to the city are also backing up (rising atmospheric CO2 levels).
                 

        • Mark in Sandy Eggo

          Wow Conrad.  I wish you could try to understand a bit more.  On the general point of the AGW moving the bar, do we agree?  Anyway, here we go. 

          Conrad says:
          Mark, no correlation does not equal causation… but the word “because” DOES. Jon said that CO2 is low “because” we are in an ice age.

          So, if you are saying that Jon cannot say CO2 is low because of the ice age, I guess you are saying that you cannot say global temperature is going up because of rising CO2?  I understand the theory that rising CO2 causes warming, but you must also agree that CO2 diffused in a liquid (say, the world’s oceans) are released as the temperature rises.  Also, during warmer temperatures, biomass outgasses more as well. 

          Conrad says:
          “By warmist theory, the released CO2 caused all bottles of Coke to warm up world wide.  The noon Tucson sun wasn’t the problem. ”
          That bears no resemblance to AGW theory.

          I know that.  What I am proposing is potential reason OTHER THAN AGW THEORY on why there is a correlation between temperature and atmospheric CO2 levels.  Was it really that hard to understand?

          Conrad says:
          “We need a trillion dollar worldwide program to prohibit carbonation of the soda industry under the auspices of the UN.”
          No such plan exists, nor would it make any sense. Carbonic acid (aka ‘soda’) actually sequesters carbon dioxide in liquid. When it is consumed this CO2 is released into the atmosphere

          I know this as well.  I was sarcastically extending the analogy on the soda pop example.   Maybe I should have put <sarc> </sarc> tags around this, but seriously?

          Conrad says:
          “Me: The temperature is flat the last 10 years
          AGW: You dummy.  This is climate.  Ten years is not enough.”
          Your statement is false. Your straw man representation of the AGW statement is inaccurate/misleading. The temperature over the past 10 years is NOT flat. It is increasing. However, 10 years is insufficient time to calculate statistical significance (at the usual 95% confidence level) for a data series with as much ‘noise’ as the temperature series.

          Wow.  First off, the sarcasm answer applies above (no one actually called me dummy).  However, you say I was inaccurate/misleading that AGW believers say 10 years is not long enough, and THREE  SENTENCES LATER you show why 10 years is not long enough!   Can you not see this?
          On the issue of temperature being flat the last ten years:  I will admit I am wrong here. It is actually the last 15 years.  Dr Phil Jones, head of the CRU in UK, said in an interview with the BBC in Feb of 2010 ” for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”  He couched that by saying it was not significant, but only just.
          So, the trend, according to Dr Jones, from 1995 to 2009 was not statistically warming, and not statistically cooling.  I am going to go ahead and call that “Flat”.

          Conrad says:
          “Me: In the age of dinosaurs, CO2 was in the thousands of Parts per million, far more than the  ~300 ppm today.
          AGW: You dummy.  You cannot look back that far. The important period started only 660,000 years ago.”
          Your statement is true. Your straw man  representation of the AGW position is nonsense. Millions of years ago the radiation output of the Sun was significantly lower. Thus, without the much higher greenhouse gas levels at that time the planet would have been frozen solid.
          I get a “Your statement is true”.  Cool   I guess my strawman representation is that AGW’ers call me dummy again?  Now, how do we know what the Sun’s radiation level was during the time of Dino?  Oh yeah.  It is because we have a theory that CO2 is bad, so we have to adjust the Solar output in our models so that the equation turns out right. 

          Conrad says:
          “Me: In the 1070s, the climate scientists predicted a coming Ice Age.  Time Magazine cover in 1977 talks about how to survive the coming ice age.  
          AGW: You are looking back to far.  We know so much more now.”
          Both statements are inaccurate/misleading. You make a claim about climate scientists and then cite Time magazine… you really can’t see the flaw in that logic train? A review of scientific papers published at the time shows that even then most climate scientists were predicting greenhouse warming. The Time report was sensationalized journalism based on a minority opinion… which, BTW, they admitted when they retracted it.

          So, by this twist of logic (It is in Time, because it is a sensational opinion to sell magazines, therefore it cannot be trusted), can we then say that that since Global Warming has been on the Time cover recently, then it is not true?  That logic train is a bitch when it comes back down the track.  I have no doubt that Time has retracted the old covers and discredited their own reporting – AGW is the party line today.

          Does anyone remember anything about global warming in the 70s.  I sure as heck don’t, and I was there.  And I am sure it can be true that “A review of scientific papers published at the time shows that even then most climate scientists were predicting greenhouse warming.”  I can make a search from 1970-1980, put the search terms “global warming” and “greenhouse” and come up with a bunch of papers that are waited towards the warming view.  “A review..” can come up with anything you want it to come up with.  I am sorry, but with the lack of transparency, the behind the scenes scheming, and the stonewalling of Freedom Of Information Act requests by the AGW crowd, they have forfeited the benefit of the doubt without showing their data and source code.  That someone is asserting that the Climate Change Scientists in the 70s were not on board with the coming ice age is just revisionism.

          Conrad – What if you are wrong?  What if the real drivers of global temperature are solar activity, orbital variations, or variations in water vapor (aka clouds), and CO2 has little or nothing to do with overall global temperature.  What if the real forcing function is something we haven’t discovered yet, because we have stopped looking?  Meanwhile, the developed world are sending citizens to the welfare line, and we are living less significant lives because we, as a world, have decided to restrict using fossil fuels to reduce CO2.  People in the third world will continue to die because we are restricting access to fossil fuel, which leads to lack of refrigeration and clean drinking water.  There is a cost in human lives in the world going down the path of avoiding CO2.  What if you are wrong?  I leave you with a quote

           “Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.” – Professor Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT.

          • Conrad Dunkerson

            Mark, actually I’m quite familiar with sarcasm. However, in my experience MOST of what AGW ‘skeptics’ say makes no sense. This makes differentiating INTENTIONAL nonsense somewhat difficult. Thus, my only response to the various ‘that is not what I meant / I was being sarcastic / et cetera’ comments in your post is, perhaps you could just say what you actually mean.
             
            “So, if you are saying that Jon cannot say CO2 is low because of the ice age, I guess you are saying that you cannot say global temperature is going up because of rising CO2?”
            No. My point was that Jon saying ‘CO2 is low because of the ice age’ inherently indicates an acceptance of a correlation between CO2 and temperature.
             
            “I understand the theory that rising CO2 causes warming, but you must also agree that CO2 diffused in a liquid (say, the world’s oceans) are released as the temperature rises.”
            This would be true if atmospheric CO2 levels were not changing. With the current rapidly increasing atmospheric CO2 the oceans are actually absorbing more CO2 despite the fact that they are also warming.
             
            “However, you say I was inaccurate/misleading that AGW believers say 10 years is not long enough, and THREE  SENTENCES LATER you show why 10 years is not long enough!”
            You appear to be missing some nuances. The trend over the past 10 years is not flat. Ergo, it is inaccurate to say that AGW dismisses the flat trend for lack of duration. It is dismissed for lack of existence. I then went on to explain that the actual ‘too short a duration’ bit applies to statistical significance tests which scientists use to check the likely validity of observed trends. Which, in this case, show warming.
             
            “Dr Phil Jones, head of the CRU in UK, said in an interview with the BBC in Feb of 2010 ” for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.”
            The interview in question can be found here;
            http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8511670.stm#
             
            You will note that it wasn’t Jones who specified the wording, but rather the interviewer… who got the carefully worded question from ‘climate skeptics’. Indeed, that particular deception originated with one Dr. Richard Lindzen – and is one of the many reasons that I don’t find his quotation at the bottom of your response, or anything else he says, particularly convincing.
             
            “So, the trend, according to Dr Jones, from 1995 to 2009 was not statistically warming, and not statistically cooling.  I am going to go ahead and call that “Flat”.”
            Then you are calling it wrong. As Dr. Jones says in the interview, the trend from 1995 to 2009 was warming of 0.12 C per decade. The statistical confidence level of this being a valid trend and not just noise is 93%… but the usual standard is 95%. Thus, Dr. Jones stated that it ‘only just’ failed to achieve statistical significance. Start in 1994 or continue forward to 2010 and it DOES reach 95%. Basically, the period was carefully chosen to present a misleading picture… and then further mis-represented to portray rapid warming as ‘flat’ temperatures.
             
            I’ll say it again. ALL statistically significant trends in the temperature data of the past several decades show warming. Every single one. There are NO ‘cooling’ or ‘flat’ periods which can pass statistical significance tests. Citing non-statistically significant trends basically amounts to saying, ‘the second day of Summer was colder than the first… therefor Summer has a cooling trend’.
             
            “Now, how do we know what the Sun’s radiation level was during the time of Dino?  Oh yeah.  It is because we have a theory that CO2 is bad, so we have to adjust the Solar output in our models so that the equation turns out right. ”
            You’ve got the sequence of events reversed. Astrophysicists had observed that class G stars like our Sun get hotter as they get older and came up with formulae and models to show how stars work. The problem was that while these results matched all the observational data (i.e. billions of visible stars) they indicated that Earth received much less solar heat during what fossils suggested were hot-house periods. The explanation, paleo-climate studies showing the high past greenhouse gas levels you cite, came later.
             
            “So, by this twist of logic (It is in Time, because it is a sensational opinion to sell magazines, therefore it cannot be trusted), can we then say that that since Global Warming has been on the Time cover recently, then it is not true?”
            I’d just stick with, ‘Time magazine is not science’. That doesn’t mean it is always wrong. Just that it isn’t valid evidence for your claim of what ‘science said’ in the 1970s.
             
            “I can make a search from 1970-1980, put the search terms “global warming” and “greenhouse” and come up with a bunch of papers that are waited towards the warming view.  “A review..” can come up with anything you want it to come up with.”
            I’ll just refer you to the actual evidence in Peterson 2008;
            http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
             
            “I am sorry, but with the lack of transparency, the behind the scenes scheming, and the stonewalling of Freedom Of Information Act requests by the AGW crowd, they have forfeited the benefit of the doubt without showing their data and source code.”
            Ironically, the ONLY major temperature records which does NOT make their data and methodology available are the ‘skeptics’ Spencer and Christy at UAH.
             
            “That someone is asserting that the Climate Change Scientists in the 70s were not on board with the coming ice age is just revisionism.”
            The link above cites papers published at that time which directly prove otherwise.
             
            “What if you are wrong?”
            It isn’t a question of right or wrong belief. It is a question of true or false. It is provably true that humans are causing atmospheric CO2 levels to rise and that higher CO2 levels will cause warming. These are demonstrable facts. Indeed, you will not find a single ‘skeptic’ scientist who disputes them. They just claim that some magical unknown will offset most of the warming… even though it has never done so in the past and has not done so thus far in the current situation.
             
            “What if the real drivers of global temperature are solar activity”
            See my previous comments where I explain the proof that the observed temperature variations are not due to solar activity.
             
            “orbital variations”
            Take place over thousands of years… and would currently be producing slow cooling.
             
            “or variations in water vapor (aka clouds)”
            Water vapor has a powerful greenhouse effect, but the water vapor content of the atmosphere is a factor of temperature. It is thus a feedback rather than a forcing.
             
            “and CO2 has little or nothing to do with overall global temperature.”
            Contradicts observed reality and basic radiative physics.
             
            “What if the real forcing function is something we haven’t discovered yet, because we have stopped looking?”
            Climatologists continue to look at all possible forcings and feedbacks in order to continue fine tuning our understanding of climate change. In order for another forcing to be responsible for the observed warming it would have to first somehow prevent the warming which radiative physics indicates CO2 should be causing and then exactly mimic that warming in degree and appearance. For example, it would have to somehow prevent CO2 from producing ‘downwelling radiation’ at the IR wavelengths CO2 interacts with… while itself producing that exact same effect at those exact same wavelengths. Which no known substance does.
             
            “Meanwhile, the developed world are sending citizens to the welfare line, and we are living less significant lives because we, as a world, have decided to restrict using fossil fuels to reduce CO2.”
            Nonsense. The developed world has done very little to reduce CO2 emissions. Indeed, 2010 showed the largest emissions INCREASE in history. The global economic downturn had absolutely nothing to do with efforts to lower CO2 emissions.
             
            “People in the third world will continue to die because we are restricting access to fossil fuel”
            More nonsense. No such restrictions exist. Nor would stopping the use of fossil fuels mean ending the use of electricity.

            • Mark in Sandy Eggo

              Conrad – Just a couple points.  One, you complain about the wording of the interviewer’s “deceptive” question of Dr Phil Jones was from Dr. Lindzen.  And it was a deceptive question why?  It seems like the BBC interviewer went to a skeptic to word a question in a way that could not be finessed like has been done so many times in the past.  The question was constructed to that Dr. Jones had to admit that the warming since 1995 was not statistically significant.  How is it that a question that was constructed so that Dr. Jones could not deceive, be called deceptive?  And I am sorry, the last 15 years are more important than other periods of 15 years, precisely because we have been told by the Climate Scientists that if we did not pass Kyoto or Copenhagen, they knew that the temperature was going to rise significantly.  The world didn’t, and the temperature didn’t.  This built on the growing lack of trust on the AGW community.
               
              WRT the CO2 levels, this is from “http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/perlim_2009_2010_estimates.html”
              Emissions from the United States were 1,498 Tg-C, up by almost 60 Tg-C, or 4%, of the 2009 estimates of 1,438 Tg-C. The record year for the United States was 2007, with estimated emissions of 1,589 Tg-C. The 2010 total is about 94% of that value, reflecting economic conditions.
              Nonsense. The developed world has done very little to reduce CO2 emissions. Indeed, 2010 showed the largest emissions INCREASE in history. The global economic downturn had absolutely nothing to do with efforts to lower CO2 emissions.
              So, this shows there WAS a decrease in the US that corresponded to the economic downturn.  I am not sure about a huge jump in 2010, but if it was, it was because it had dropped so far from 2007 to 2008. 
              More nonsense. No such restrictions exist. Nor would stopping the use of fossil fuels mean ending the use of electricity.
              If you really think that the US has not suffered economically due to government policies directed at reducing CO2, the gulf between us is really too wide to have any sort of dialog.  Despite the previous approval, the Keystone XL pipeline project (along with 20,000 jobs) has been put on hold.  The government has all be ceased providing permits to resume oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, continuing the economic devastation of the Gulf Coast region.  During a press discussion with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, President Obama said:
              When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal…under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket…even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad, because I’m capping greenhouse gasses, coal power plants, natural gas…you name it…whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retro-fit their operations.
              That will cost money…they will pass that money on to the consumers.
              Forcing expensive retrofits, and restricting access to oil (and natural gas) causes prices to go up.  Gasoline prices have roughly doubled from the time President Obama took office to today.  Energy is a worldwide market.  When the price doubles, poorer countries cannot afford it.  When the energy prices double, businesses that were financially viable are not so any longer, and people are laid off.
               
              So Conrad, if you are so dead set in your camp that you cannot even see (or you see, but will not admit) that your countrymen are suffering economic harm due to these energy policies, I don’t have anything else to say to you, and I will not engage in discussion.   If you refuse to have empathy for your fellow man, I really have no where to go.
               
               

              • Conrad Dunkerson

                “And it was a deceptive question why?”
                Because it was worded so as to create a false impression… as you have ably demonstrated by repeatedly making false statements based upon it;
                “I am going to go ahead and call that “Flat”.”
                “…the temperature didn’t [rise].”
                 
                Those statements are FALSE. That’s the point. YOU have been deceived. The temperature DID rise. “No statistically significant warming” does NOT mean ‘no temperature rise’ or ‘very little warming’.
                 
                The observed rate of global warming from 1995 to 2009 was 0.12 C per decade… that is roughly twenty times the warming rate which ended the last glaciation. It is, by any reasonable standard, extremely rapid warming.
                 
                “And I am sorry, the last 15 years are more important than other periods of 15 years”
                The last 16 years (1995 – 2010) show statistically significant warming. The 15 years from 1995 to 2009 show rapid warming, but the time period is deliberately chosen to be too short to reach 95% statistical significance.
                 
                “So, this shows there WAS a decrease in the US that corresponded to the economic downturn.”
                As I said previously, the economic downturn caused CO2 emissions to decrease. Not vice versa.
                 
                “If you really think that the US has not suffered economically due to government policies directed at reducing CO2″
                WHAT government policies “directed at reducing CO2″?
                 
                “Despite the previous approval, the Keystone XL pipeline project (along with 20,000 jobs) has been put on hold.”
                That was LAST WEEK. Hardly a viable candidate for the cause of the global economic downturn over the past several years. It is also only one side of the equation. Building non-fossil fuel power sources ALSO provides jobs.
                 
                “Gasoline prices have roughly doubled from the time President Obama took office to today.”
                Yet are still lower than the peak reached under President Bush.
                 
                “So Conrad, if you are so dead set in your camp that you cannot even see (or you see, but will not admit) that your countrymen are suffering economic harm due to these energy policies, I don’t have anything else to say to you, and I will not engage in discussion.”
                You aren’t engaging in discussion now. You are lobbing false equivalencies and straw men (e.g. ‘if you do not agree with me then you are trying to destroy the US economy’) in a desperate attempt to continue ignoring reality.
                 
                http://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/how-to-avoid-the-truth-about-climate-change/

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Mark, I hope you pick up this thread because I think you’ve raised many points that, I admit I’ve been guilty of. There’s a post above from a supporter that has something seriously wrong with it and I let it slide. I’ll correct that and try not to do it again. But your post deserves a lot more attention if I expect your trust. I promise I’ll do that—but it may be late in the evening. ‘Til then. JP

    • Mark in Sandy Eggo

      Always willing to listen to alternate views.
      Good night.

      • Dr. John Parsons

        Mark, I think Conrad addressed most of your questions. You seem to be interested in Phillip’s point about Anthropogenic Heat. I was also very interested in that question a year or so ago so I talked to NASA/GISS and spoke to Gavin Schmidt about the topic. I can’ t see the error in Phillip’s calculation, but I suspect that it’s the use of BTU’s rather than the radiative flux. It turns out that all the heat generated by humans is 0.028 watts/M^2, which is less than 1% of the radiative flux of GHGs. Interesting idea, though. Talk to you later Mark. JP

        • Conrad Dunkerson

          Had missed that one until now. John’s summation is (as always) correct… the heat from human industry is two orders of magnitude less than the increase in the greenhouse effect. If you think about economic boom and bust cycles this becomes clear. For instance, there was a sharp global economic slowdown in 2008 and 2009. There was less manufacturing, people drove less, CO2 emissions dropped, all activity declined. If the observed rise in temperatures over the past century had been due to the rise of human industrial heat emissions then this reduction in human industry should have resulted in immediate noticable cooling. Instead, 2008 and 2009 were both amongst the 10 hottest years on record… because the heating is actually due to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, which remained there and continued to increase – though at a slower rate for those years.
           
          You might object that the heat from human industry would ‘stick around’ rather than showing immediate cooling… but that isn’t viable. Sunlight produces VASTLY more heat than human industry every day. If the planet’s heat retention mechanisms (primarily the greenhouse effect) could retain a significant amount of industrial heat for two YEARS then they would also retain so much solar heat that the planet would be molten. Instead, the vast majority of industrial (and solar) heat escapes the planet within minutes. Ergo, if industrial heat caused global warming we’d see temperature changes with every economic downturn, every major blackout, et cetera.
           
          Heating would also be centered around major industrial areas and spreading out from there… which simply isn’t the case. Indeed, the fastest warming area of the planet is the Arctic. Not exactly an industrial center.

    • Dr. John Parsons

      Mark, Sorry, but I just ran out of time and if I don’t get some sleep my response probably would show it. We’ll pick this up soon. I realize the effort you put into your comment and it deserves thoughtful attention. JP

    • Mark in Sandy Eggo

      John – take your time.  Get out and enjoy yourself over the weekend.  In our hyper-connected technical world, we are deprived of time to decompress, and it takes time to fully absorb thinking about things in a fundamentally different way than we have in the past.  We will see things that were thought were important as insignificant, and other things we thought were trivial as newly important.  We may end up in the same place we were before, but at least we will be there with a more assured foundation, and we will have a better appreciation for others that are on a different path.
       
      Have a good weekend, my Friend.

      • Dr. John Parsons

        Mark, Thanks for the interesting discussion and the cordiality. You have a great weekend too. JP

  • fraser007

    This has been way too much data. I dont know what agenda these commenters have or what their problem is but they sure ruined a great story.

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Fraser, Do you realize that you just said there are too many facts? JP

    • fraser007

      To answer your comment to mine. Yes there is too much data for a forum like this. Espicially from you. You seem like a zealot. That worries me.

  • Jonathan DuHamel

    Gentlemen: please read my post on ocean acidification:
    http://tucsoncitizen.com/wryheat/2009/12/14/ocean-acidification-by-carbon-dioxide/
    I don’t buy your contention that current conditions are unprecedented or dangerous.
    Also see the dreaded CO2Science data on sea life adaptations to changes in pH:
    http://www.co2science.org/data/acidification/acidification.php

    • Dr. John Parsons

      Jon, Overwhelming evidence has been presented that contradicts your statements on AGW. Your response to pages and pages of documented empirical evidence is: “I don’t buy it.”, or “Go to…[this or that] website.” I can not make you be a serious scientist, Jon, only you can do that. What I can do is this: Every time you present information that is untrue, I will be here to call you out. JP

      • leftfield

        Dr. Parsons:  I have been watching without comment thus far your dialogue with Mr. DuHamel.  I had hoped that, based on your obvious depth of knowledge regarding the Global Warming issue, the conversation between yourself and Mr. DuHamel might be different than it has been with other posters.   I see you too have come to the same conclusion that all other posters have come to:  that there is no argument, no collective set of objective data that will convince Mr. DuHamel (and perhaps the bulk of the deniers) to change his mind. 

        For what it is worth, I will tell you what I believe based on long term monitoring of this blog and Mr. DuHamel’s postings elsewhere.  I do not believe that Mr. DuHamel’s real concern is the evidence for or against Global Warming Theory.  Rather, I believe Mr. DuHamel is primarily and always concerned about how efforts to stem GW might effect business interests, primarily their profit margins.  Mr. DuHamel is not classically anti-science, but he is very conservative and very pro-business; I suspect he is actually Libertarian in outlook.   

        So, instead of beating your head against his wall, you might consider arguments that suggest business interests would actually benefit financially and even enjoy greater profit levels were GW to be controlled.

        • Dr. John Parsons

          Leftfield, Thank You for your comments. You are absolutely correct about your assessment of my position. You actually beat me to it. I was under the illusion that Mr. DuHamel was a believer in the scientific method. I’ve been disabused of that notion. Only in the last few days did I arrive at the conclusion you reached, that for Mr. DuHamel a recognition of the facts regarding AGW would seriously undermine his political worldview. I believe you are right when you suggest that winning over skeptics has been more successful when the opportunities are stressed. I think that’s why most major corporations have been able to face scientific reality. It can be fit into their business models. I’m going to give your idea some serious thought. I mean that. In the meantime, I just want people to have the facts. My efforts are directed more towards Jon’s readers than they are to him. The nature of the format does make it appear otherwise. Lefty, it’s really good to know you’re out there. I’m going to give your comment more thought, but I wanted to say hello and, especially, Thanks. JP

          • leftfield

            “that for Mr. DuHamel a recognition of the facts regarding AGW would seriously undermine his political worldview.”

            Dr. Parsons:  This is certainly correct, which brings me to another point.  I think to great extent the ongoing debate over GW has left the scientific arena/community and it has now become another of many issues in the Great American Cultural War.  This means several things, but at very least it means that consensus will not be reached (if it ever is) or GW acted upon based on the evidence alone.  Conservatives are vocal in their contempt of all things liberal and this alone will lead them to reject all evidence, since they view GW as a part of the “liberal agenda”; a nefarious conspiracy.  So, perhaps if someone could find some really relevant evidence, such as a lost memo proving that Ronald Reagan conceived of GW and intended to make it a cause long before Al Gore came along, we might make some progress here.   

            • Richard H

              I agree that it’s really more about politics.  I noticed that long ago when I observed certain politician- power brokers lecturing and writing books on GW science  for which they have no expertise.  Your comments on financial gain have merit;  there  will be the winners  with GW controls,   but be assured we the people will be losers,  our well being and standard of living at stake.   Indeed, the real battles are going on in the political arena, with science more of a side issue.  Are you a scientist?  If not, the average Joe like yourself doesn’t  really understand all this science stuff, relying  more on  personal bias, emotion and the bottom line.  You need to put aside your perceived motives of dissent and learn to understand the process;   skepticism is a privilege of science, those who flout it are a discredit to themselves and their peers

      • Jonathan DuHamel

        John,

        We have seen much discussion on this post. Perhaps the points have been lost in the verbiage.
        Please review and list what you consider is “overwhelming evidence” that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions play a significant role in climate change. Let’s say that “significant” means CO2 is the major forcing or that it makes more than a minor difference. Or in other words, prove that our emissions pose some danger.

        My position is that while carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it plays a very small role that is easily overwhelmed by natural forcings and feedbacks. Temperature variations correlate well with solar forcing but are complicated by the still poorly understood influence of cloud cover. While correlation does not prove causation, lack of correlation of temperature with CO2 (except for very short-term coincidences) disproves the AGW hypothesis. For most of the history of this planet, CO2 has been at least three times higher than it is now.

        BTW:
        Lost in the press about Berkeley’s BEST data is another paper published about the same time:
        How Natural is the Recent Centennial Warming? An Analysis of 2249 Surface Temperature Records by Horst-Joachim Ludecke, Rainer Link, and Friedrich-Karl Ewert EIKE, European Institute for Climate and Energy

        Their major conclusion:

        From 1906 to 2005, about a quarter of all records show falling temperatures. This in itself is an indication that the observed temperature series are predominantly natural fluctuations. ‘Natural’ means that we do not have within a defined confidence interval a definitely positive anthropogenic contribution and, therefore, only a marginal anthropogenic contribution can not be excluded. We evaluated – with a confidence interval of 95% – the probability that the observed global warming from 1906 to 2005 was a natural fluctuation as lying between 40% and 70%, depending on the station’s characteristics. For the period of 1906 to 1955 the probabilities are arranged between 80% and 90% and for 1956 to 2005 between 60% and 70%.

        • Dr. John Parsons

          Jon, After a brief look at the paper you mentioned, I’m a little surprised at your professed reluctance to rely on statistical analysis mentioned below. The paper is purely statistical analysis. Why is it OK with this paper, but not OK for our discussion? JP

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Jon, I will provide the list you requested. But, because we’re talking about empirical data, we can’t just pick our own arbitrary definition of ‘significant’. Let’s use the definition that scientists use; that is “statistically significant.” Agreed?

    As regards the paper you mentioned, I’ll be happy to look at it. I feel a responsibility to see to it that information presented here is accurately represented.

    If you want a headstart, the list of overwhelming evidence is already here. I’ll just being repeating Conrad’s list and my own. Those that you didn’t respond to. I didn’t find Conrad’s comments to be verbose. On the contrary, I found them to be extraordinarily succinct. JP

    • Jonathan DuHamel

      I think the general reader will not appreciate the term Statistically significant and from what I’ve seen, there is an argument about what statistical significance is because there are all kinds of statistical tricks. Therefore let’s gear the discussion to something more basic. The whole thing about the AGW position is that we should stop or greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions because they will lead to dangerous warming or dangerous climate change. So, please show me where the danger lies.

      • Dr. John Parsons

        Jon, OK. You don’t want to use ‘statistically significant’. You’ve been very consistent in your use of the word significant, and OED says that significant means: ” sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention”. You’ve asked me and many others the same question repeatedly: “….evidence for human CO2 emissions having a significant role in climate change…”. I, and others, have been basing our disagreement with you on that statement. I don’t think anyone would say ‘significant’ is synonymous with ‘dangerous’. OED says dangerous means: “able or likely to cause harm”. But if you want to change your charge to us to: “… CO2 emissions that are able or likely to cause harm”, I can agree to that. JP

  • Dr. John Parsons

    Jon, I will be using the word “evidence” as defined by the OED online. JP

  • fraser007

    The next time you start posting here let me know…I will go do something else.

    • Dr. John Parsons

      Fraser, Leave your contact info with Jon. He’s been kind enough to serve to intermediate personal communications. I’ll be happy to save you from having to think. JP

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