Once a year the BBC invites guest editors onto Radio 4 to assemble the Today programme. The latest batch includes Greta Thunberg, the child climate activist, and Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher biographer and former Telegraph editor.
Professor Michael Kelly
Moore gave a spot on the programme to our friend Michael Kelly, Cambridge Professor of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Society, Prince Philip Professor of Technology, former chief scientific advisor to the Department for Communities and Local Government, and member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Introducing Kelly’s segment [at 32:22], Charles Moore observes wryly:
One of the subjects that’s very difficult to air on the BBC if you don’t share the prevailing view is climate change.
Interviewed by a frosty Nick Robinson, Professor Kelly, balanced and rapier fast, gives solid arguments against the alarmist view of a climate emergency. I made a transcript, so you can listen to the interview and download the transcript (pdf, 57 KB — includes helpful time stamps).
Cesspool of climate propaganda
Kelly begins with the science, saying that for the last 30 years the models have been heating twice as fast as observed temperatures. Robinson brushes aside this demonstrable fact, saying Kelly and the GWPF were focussed on public policy, as though policy might be unconnected with science, and suddenly plunges into the cesspool of climate propaganda (where else do they call honest sceptics climate deniers?):
Why do you allow yourself to operate in a think tank with people who are climate change deniers?
But Kelly is unmoved, saying calmly, “they’re not deniers,” and moves smoothly to an anecdote about (Lord) Nigel Lawson being confronted by five Royal Society Fellows whom Paul Nurse (then President of the RS) had sent to “put him right” on climate change but who had no answer when Lord Lawson challenged them to say what THEY would do.
Kelly gets the discussion back on track:
All I’m saying now is that the current renewables and the various other things we’re doing are not going to deliver the expectations of a zero carbon 2050.
That means: eliminating our emissions won’t change the climate. Robinson ignores that, doggedly insisting the zero carbon policy is necessary and suggesting Kelly is “just hoping for the best.”
Kelly again relies on evidence, revealing global average family size recently has halved and is declining steeply. Reduced to speaking over the top of his interviewee, Robinson concludes forcefully, “so the population will fall again and solve the problem.”
Readily agreeing, Kelly says that by 2100 the global population could be several hundred million less than the peak in 2060 or 2070.
Foxes running the henhouse
Robinson tries one last time to demolish Kelly’s scientific approach to climate alarm, first characterising Kelly’s approach as “hoping for the best” (overlooking the fact that Robinson himself introduced that expression), then referring to the coordinated clamour raised by activist scientists and policymakers about the so-called climate emergency.
Refusing to see that these scientists and politicians are foxes with the run of the henhouse, Robinson asks:
Why would you act on the basis of your hope for the best?
Kelly’s response is blunt:
Well, I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t do something which I know in advance is futile.
While that sinks in, Kelly explains how the zero carbon policy is futile. The UK’s emissions reductions last year were undone 80 times over by the rest of the world and he recommends substantial research into new generations of nuclear energy. Finally, he emphasizes:
I want to make sure that what we do is not futile.
I can add nothing to what Kelly says and I greatly admire the manner in which he says it. In the face of outright hostility—no matter how elegantly Robinson expressed himself, he was hostile—Kelly displays a sturdy reliance on science, an admirable grasp of facts and a solid understanding of his political audience, who need digestible nuggets from multifarious facets to make sense of the baffling combination of energy and climate policy.
Michael is uniquely suited to extracting and clearly describing what politicians must comprehend for the good of their country. We can be thankful that he’s a New Zealander, as we also have access to his expertise and wisdom.
We can expect to see him in New Zealand later this year.
PS: I recommend skimming through the transcript (pdf, 57 KB) or taking 3 minutes 15 seconds from your busy day and listening to the exchange (from 32:22). As always, kindly share your insights; you never know whom you may inspire.
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The science is clear.
Kelly doesn’t like it.
Well, nobody likes it; doesn’t make it wrong.
Two things, Nick. This is a shallow analysis because not only does Kelly not say he doesn’t like it, he makes several reasonable observations about the science. The models are warming faster than temperatures, eliminating our emissions won’t change the climate, and UK emission reductions last year were undone 80 times over by other countries, so were useless.
How about a comment on that lot?
In the meantime, you say the science is clear, so I’d like to know just what you think it is saying.
Nick, My likes or dislikes are irrelevant. What is relevant is that our response to the challenge is rational and proportionate and effective. The models were running a factor of two too hot: this has now been corrected [the climate sensitivity has halved since 1990]. The predictions for 2100 are not as bad as was made out, but that does not stop people pumping up the 95th percentile of heating as the full expectation.
Not only do you lie about being a climate denier (you reject the IPCC synthesis reports, which reflect the scientific consensus), but you lie about the warming, the climate sensitivity, and the climate models — you don’t know more than Gavin Schmidt.
I remind you that 93% of the additional energy caused by human activity is going into the oceans, and ice is being lost at a vastly increased rate. Both phenomena are causing worse weather.
What about the connection between the unprecedented fires in Australia and climate change?
In fact the predictions — as opposed to projections — for 2100 are far worse than was being made out by the IPCC.
As for the glib answer the fool Nigel Lawson gave Paul Nurse: “What would you do?” — for heaven’s sake man not having/giving an answer doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. If you cannot see that is intellectually dishonest you need lessons in logic and the philosophy of science.
Even your pope isn’t going to forgive you for backing those with vested interests like Lord Ridley of Coal.
You are even wrong about the population in 2100. In the business-as-usual scenario — which you recommend — it’s unlikely Earth will support a population of one billion souls.
Nick,
If the problem is only half as bad as you suggest, temperate language is an essential part of a serious debate, I leave it to other readers to judge as between us.
MJK
@mjk. There is no debate; just denial. Here, read this, and take up your “misunderstanding” about the modelling with Gavin Schmidt, at NASA or Columbia. You won’t of course, you know better than argue with experts.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/climate-model-projections-compared-to-observations/
What’s more, mjk, you don’t care about science or the truth. If you did you would correct the rubbish your “friends” here write. And you wouldn’t defend Lawson of Blably.
But you don’t care if people believe lies, as long as they follow your fossil fires … to eternal hell on Earth.
Look at Australia. (And don’t give me lies about the greens stopping back-burning: they didn’t and it wouldn’t have stopped the severity, intensity or extent — the rain forests are burning. They’ve never burnt before and some historic trees in Tasmania are gone forever.)
Here’s a course run by Michael Mann. It’s not too late to learn the relevant science from an expert, instead of making stuff up.
https://www.edx.org/course/climate-change-the-science-and-global-impact
Nick,
What are you talking about? The current population is already 7.7 billion souls. If you’re referring to RCP8.5, that was never intended as a BAU scenario.
Crikey, I’ve just had a thought. Are you suggesting that by the end of the century 6.7 billion people will be killed by climate change? That would be the most radical prediction I’ve ever heard.
Nick,
Don’t be ridiculous. Kelly said nothing about the warming, the climate sensitivity or the models, so calling him a liar merely exposed you to ridicule.
Fascinating. You claim 93% of “extra” energy allegedly caused by human activity is “going into” the oceans from above, ice is being “lost” at a “vastly” increased rate and the movement of heat and the melting of ice are causing “worse” weather. How does any atmospheric heat energy enter the oceans from above? I’ve said many times it’s impossible and no paper describes such a mechanism. Tell us where you found those seven gems of knowledge — else how shall we know you’re being truthful?
Well, what about it? I’ve never heard of one. Unprecedented fires? Perhaps in the loss of human property and human life, but otherwise, not at all. There are reports from the 19th century of equal or greater fires, and a professional biologist tells me they’ve been happening for millions of years, from which I deduce that without more information we cannot estimate the relative magnitudes of current fires. She says:
Further, you say:
I’m happy to take the IPCC projections and anyway it’s hard to trust predictions so far out, especially without a reference. So give us a reference.
Look, don’t go calling good men fools or intellectually dishonest, or you’ll lose the chance to contribute here. Call what they say foolish, but treat them personally with respect. I don’t understand your objection. Nurse sent five Fellows to gang up on Lawson and change his mind; he agreed with everything they said, so was their visit successful or simply futile? Kelly quoted one question (no doubt among many) Lawson asked, which they dodged. Strike you as reasonable, does that? As an aside, the RS and our RSNZ have no such shyness when it comes to advising the public or the government that climate change is an existential threat, but we can’t believe them because they openly refuse to reveal evidence of that threat. Ask them yourself.
This is distasteful in revealing the worst side of yourself. Matthew Ridley has a small mine on his property, which helps other people who want to use Mother Nature’s natural resource. You may not know that the widespread use of coal prevented the complete destruction of Europe’s forests and allowed for their restoration. Also to a large extent in North America, whose forests have made a remarkable comeback in the last hundred years.
You don’t say, but this is a reference to RCP8.5, which Kelly didn’t mention. You unreasonably conflate his “hope for the best” (the interviewer’s phrase, incidentally) with RCP8.5, even though that is most emphatically not a description of business as usual. Where did you find this prediction (not a projection)?
Nick, this reveals nothing so much as your ignorance. It is ridiculous. These seven paragraphs are at considerable distance from the truth — give references. – RT
“Even your Pope isn’t going to forgive you for backing those with vested interests like Lord Ridley of Coal”
“your Pope” ??? Anybody would think the Pope belongs to everybody. I’m not a fan of the Pope. ,,, not everybody are Roman Catholics. Quite apart from the fact that the Pope has a gang of pontifical scientists to “advise” him of the AGW pseudoscience. The chief of which, is this bloke.. V. Ramanathan.. who is a dyed in the wool believer and is the favourite of “The Science of Doom”
http://www.casinapioiv.va/content/accademia/en/academicians/ordinary/ramanathan.html
This Ramanathan fellow has been feeding your AGW bullshit into the Pope’s ear for decades.
And btw.
If you think you might want to give me a bit of lip and start answering back, it might pay to see what I’ve said here…
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/25/deck-the-halls-with-facts/?preview_id=34476#comment-4737621596
“I remind you that 93% of the additional energy caused by human activity is going into the oceans,…”
93%, eh? That’s an extraordinarily high percentage, don’t you agree, Nick?
Since the “additional energy caused by human activity” is supposed to be taking the form of increased radiation from greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere and since the oceans only cover about 70% of the earth’s surface, you wouldn’t expect them to be able to absorb more than about 70% of all the radiation that falls upon the global surface, would you?
So, why are you claiming that it’s 93% instead?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What extraordinary evidence can you show us, Nick, to support your extraordinary claim that 93% of global human-caused atmospheric radiation is going into the oceans?
Can you not find the relevant science? I’ll give you a clue so you can work it out for yourself. Consider an analogous situation. Take an electric kettle full of water. Turn the electricity on for 1 minute, then off. Wait a few minutes. Where is most of the heat now? In the element or in the water?
Then have a wee think about how energy moves around Earth.
==============================================================
I don’t propose to answer silly comments and questions, like water vapour not carbon dioxide being the “control knob” for temperature. It’s standard science; explanations are readily available. But again a clue. How long does water vapour last in the atmosphere, typically? And carbon dioxide?
“Can you not find the relevant science? I’ll give you a clue so you can work it out for yourself.”
I am well familiar with the relevant science, thank you, Nick, as I have been studying it assiduously for more than fifty years already. So, there is no need to give me enigmatic “clues” with simplistic analogies that do not correspond with the situation we are considering. (For example, what kettle with a heating-element heats water by radiation from above?) Please show me your evidence just as it is, no matter how technical it might be, and I will do my best to understand it properly before I make up my mind whether or not to accept it.
As I pointed out in my previous post, the basic relevant science leads us to expect that no more than about 70% of the additional energy caused by human activity is going into the oceans. But you are claiming that it is 93%, which is clearly extraordinary and a contradiction of the scientific reasoning that leads to the 70% conclusion. Yet you have not supported your claim with any scientific argument or evidence, so it appears wild and baseless on the face of it. Is that how it really is? You have not given us any reason to think otherwise.
“I don’t propose to answer silly comments and questions, like water vapour not carbon dioxide being the ‘control knob’ for temperature. It’s standard science; explanations are readily available.”
I think you are mistaken about the CO2 “control knob for temperature” idea: it definitely is not standard science. The idea is based on the false scientific premise (first formally proposed in the peer-reviewed literature by Andrew Lacis, Gavin Schmidt and others in 2010) that if all the non-condensing greenhouse gases (chiefly CO2) were to be removed from the atmosphere, the surface temperature would drop so low that all the condensing greenhouse gases (chiefly water vapour) would precipitate out and leave the atmosphere completely devoid of any greenhouse gases whatsoever, whereby the global mean surface temperature would revert to the planet’s nominal effective temperature of about -19⁰C and the earth would be frozen permanently in its “snowball” state. Therefore, they conclude, it is the non-condensing greenhouse gases (like CO2), not the condensing ones (like H2O), that control the global mean surface temperature.
Their scientific premise is wrong for two reasons.
First, even deep-frozen solids (such as water-ice) will emit some molecules of their substance under the action of absorbed radiation from the sun and the global mean surface temperature can never fall so low that no molecules at all will be emitted. These emitted molecules would gradually re-populate the atmosphere with condensing greenhouse gases (like water vapour) as well as non-condensing ones (like CO2), which would naturally enhance the warming process initiated by incoming sunlight, which would release more molecules into the atmosphere and so on in a self-reinforcing feedback-loop. In time the atmospheric greenhouse would be fully restored to its equilibrium level and the ultimate effect of removing all the non-condensing greenhouse gases initially would be zero.
Second, the effective temperature of incoming solar radiation at the earth’s orbital distance from the sun is about 120⁰C which, as I expect you are aware, is hot enough not just to melt frozen ice but also to boil the resulting meltwater. Since there would be no clouds in the sky of a snowball-earth to obstruct the incoming sunlight, the global surface would be exposed to the full intensity of solar radiation at 120⁰C (at least at the equator), whereby the ice covering the global surface would melt and evaporate, thereby restoring atmospheric water vapour to its equilibrium level and restoring the atmospheric greenhouse accordingly.
On both counts, then, the CO2 control-knob idea appears fundamentally flawed. Ingenious as it may be, it is wrong and without any scientific merit.
I am well familiar with the relevant science
No. No, you’re not. You don’t know enough to know you don’t know. Your rejection of my kettle analogy shows you cannot think science. I even gave you a second clue: climate system moves energy. Start here; I’m not here to teach basic climate science:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/oceans-warming-faster-than-ever/
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
https://www.oceanscientists.org/index.php/topics/ocean-warming
“You don’t know enough to know you don’t know.”
Then pray do enlighten me! I have asked, simply and straightforwardly, to see your evidence for asserting that “93% of the additional energy caused by human activity is going into the oceans” and you still have not shown it to me. Why is that? What is holding you back?
It’s all there in the scientific literature. Do your own research.
I am doing my own research, Simon!
But if you are suggesting that I should go trawling through the world’s scientific literature in quest of possible evidence for Nick’s unsubstantiated claim that “93% of the additional energy caused by human activity is going into the oceans,” then I must tell you that you are barking up the wrong tree. Producing evidence to support Nick’s claims is his job, not mine.
The short answer is, as you could gave worked out with the clues I gave you:
The land surface warms up faster and loses heat faster, so over time the ocean holds more heat simply because it can. (Compare specific heat and mass, not area, given the system is not static.)
The 93% heat content is measured.
If you are genuinely interested, here is a recent paper:
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2019/01/04/1808838115.full.pdf
All it took was a 10 second search on Google Scholar to confirm something that is undisputed in the scientific literature.
Simon,
Thanks. The key assertion:
However, it is unsubstantiated, neither referenced nor explained. After this sole reference to anthro GHG emissions, and though SSTs are an important focus of their paper, they make no attempt to discriminate between temperatures or heat energy induced by the sun and by atmospheric GHG. I have no expertise to assess their methodology, but they do make clear the coverage they achieve in their estimates is a small fraction of the ocean mass.
All together, uncompelling support for the abuse you and Nick are dispensing. Kindly knock it off.
The paper starts by saying “Most of the excess energy stored in the climate system due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has been taken up by the oceans, leading to thermal expansion and sea-level rise” This is utter nonsense. There is no set amount of energy that the earth’s system must maintain and so to talk about an excess, or deficit is meaningless. The greenhouse gas emissions do not warm the oceans, since they are not an energy source. The atmosphere is warmed by the surface and it cannot return heat to cause additional heating. This is the second law of thermodynamics. The assumptions at the start of the this paper are completely wrong and so the paper is worthless.
Thanks for that clarification, Nick.
The reason why I mistook your original assertion that “93% of the additional energy caused by human activity is going into the oceans” as referring to primary energy-input to the oceans as radiation (via the greenhouse effect) instead of as primary plus secondary inputs via heat-transport processes from elsewhere in the system that you have now made clear was your meaning, was that I had grossly underestimated the scale of your hubris. I simply had not grasped the now-evident fact that you really do think you have the complete and comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the whole earth’s energy-budget and climate-system that you would need to have in order to know how much human-caused energy is ultimately going into the oceans. No single human mind and no collection of human minds together with their computer-aids is capable of holding that much information, yet your claim implies that you are already holding it!
Come back to reality, Nick. You do not even know how much additional energy human activity is really causing, let alone what percentage of it is going where inside the earth’s hyper-complex matter-energy system. The reason you don’t know this essential item of information is simply that human-caused energy inside the earth’s system is all mixed up with natural energy and it is impossible to distinguish the two from each other in order to observe and measure them. Perhaps one day, in the far distant future, it will become possible to do that but, with climate science in its current embryonic stage of development, it is not.
The same considerations apply to the measurement of ocean heat content, which you say has already been done. No, it hasn’t! The Argo buoys only go down to 2,000 metres whereas the average depth of the world ocean is more like 4,000 metres, so it would be truer to say that ocean heat content has only been half-measured in fact. What use is half a measurement when you need to take a whole measurement in order to actually know what the system is really doing? Assuming that you know what the other, unmeasured half of the system is really doing (perhaps because you’ve calculated it with some really smart mathematics) is not the practice of science: it is the practice of self-delusion.
Climate denial humbug.
I don’t need a complete understanding of gravity to keep my feet on the ground, but I can believe you might because your head’s in the clouds.
The reality is that continuing to burn fossil fuel business-as-usual will see vast areas of Earth where humans live now become more inhospitable and likely uninhabitable.
It’s not my science, buddy, it’s the experts’, and expert you are not.
Nick,
What precisely is your area of expertise from which you can opine with such confidence?
Never mind me, I’m not denying standard science or trying to persuade people from heeding the warnings from the experts, including the IPCC.
You are. So what’s your expertise?
http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/climate-change-sceptics-abuse-freedom-of-expression/
During his interview on the ‘Today’ programme, Professor Kelly expressed his dislike of renewable energy, but also raged against climate scientists’ projections of global warming: “It’s no good looking at a model today and saying it’s done well for the last 30 years. If you look at a model made 30 years ago and look how well it’s done in the 30 years since, if you look at the data for the last 30 years, on average the models have been heating twice as fast as the data.” This claim was, of course, entirely false. A study by Zeke Hausfather and co-authors on ‘Evaluating the performance of past climate model projections’, which was published in December 2019 in the journal ‘Geophysical Research Letters’, concluded: “We find that climate models published over the past five decades were generally quite accurate in predicting global warming in the years after publication, particularly when accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric CO2 and other climate drivers”.
I spent 40 years of my career modelling solid state materials and semiconductor devices. I think I know about modelling, and can have an opinion on how it is done properly. What is your comparable experience? See John Christy’s congressional testimony at https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf In the 30 years since 1990, the then climate sensitivity has halved so that the more recent models fit the data better, and the direct consequence is that the future temperature projections look altogether more modest than 30 years ago, and the recent data is still in the lowest quartile of the temperature predictions. Also take a look at Tim Palmer and Bjorn Stevens, The scientific challenge of understanding and estimating climate change, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1906691116 for an altogether more sober assessment of climate modelling. And please no more unsubstantiated ranting.
All that work but still you can’t persuade the scientists who write the IPCC reports that they are wrong. Perhaps it’s not your field of expertise after all?
You can’t even persuade scientists at Cambridge. Or anywhere else. So you go to blogs and the media.
You may think the modelling is wrong, but the evidence shows otherwise. Christy? Don’t me laugh.
In any case you don’t need modelling to see Earth is warming. You don’t need modelling to decide it’s due to CO2 and other non-condensable gases. You just put 2 and 2 together.
The temperature projections for business as usual are not reassuring. Regardless, we’ve warmed ~1C and already the consequences are dire.
You’re just a propagandist. A denier who tries to conflate and confuse. A disgrace to science and humanity.
Please don’t come to NZ. You’re just a nuisance. We need a plan to reduce emissions and your invincible ignorance is not helping.
Oh, sorry RT , I thought you might have wanted the Nick troll gone.
I have always believed that science is about evidence which can be repeated. All these years I have been struggling with finding evidence and now you reveal that it just a matter of putting 2 and 2 together and so the answer is 22.
“It’s not my science, buddy, it’s the experts’,…”
If it’s not your science but somebody else’s instead, then you are not qualified to speak for it and no-one has anything to learn about it from you.
Goodbye, Nick.
All science is mostly someone else’s, nobody knows everything. But a science graduate should have learnt what science looks like and how it works. Ultimately all science depends on the judgement of experts. Like the IPCC.
Furthermore, nobody is born knowing the science. To start, they learn from science teachers. You are telling me you can’t learn from teachers: “If it’s not [their] science, but someone else’s … no-one can learn anything from [them].” That would explain part of your problem.
You offered as a “gotcha” only the top half of the ocean temperature is being measured. But those measurements show the ocean is warming, and measuring the bottom half cannot alter that. It would only increase the known heat content, because it is known underwater volcanic action is not producing the heat. The greenhouse effect is.
But it’s good to know “If it’s not your science but somebody else’s instead, then you are not qualified to speak for it … ”
That’s exactly what I am saying about Kelly. Goodness – we agree after all!
“All science is mostly someone else’s,…”
Is it? I thought it was common public property.
“But a science graduate should have learnt what science looks like and how it works.”
Perhaps they should. But I wouldn’t expect “climate science” graduates to know much about it, because they will have been taught to use a different methodology to the standard scientific method that was taught in most western universities up until the turn of the century.
“Ultimately all science depends on the judgement of experts.”
I don’t know what you mean by this. Please clarify.
“Like the IPCC.”
I think it is a mistake to regard the IPCC as a body of scientific experts. It is an agency of the United Nations Organization, which is a political body formed by politicians for the express purpose of fulfilling an agenda that is determined and controlled by politicians. It does not do any science itself and does not employ anyone overtly to carry out any scientific research on its behalf. It does publish occasional “Assessment Reports” on the state of the global climate though, which it claims are basically reviews of the results of “gold standard” climate science research that has recently been carried out around the world. At least ostensibly, it is open to receiving scientific contributions from everyone everywhere and not just from designated experts.
So, in reality, the IPCC’s judgments are not judgments of scientific experts. They are judgments of politicians, whose individual areas of expertise may lie anywhere if they have any at all.
“You are telling me you can’t learn from teachers: ‘If it’s not [their] science, but someone else’s … no-one can learn anything from [them].’…”
I’m not telling you that. It’s what you appear to have misread into what I wrote. I didn’t say “no-one can learn anything from [them].” I said: “no-one has anything to learn about it (i.e. the science to which you have alluded as evidentiary support for your claims) from you.”.
“You offered as a ‘gotcha’ only the top half of the ocean temperature is being measured.”
No, I only offered what I said as a statement of fact so as to correct an incorrect statement of yours. I’m not trying to catch you out, Nick.
(By the way, we were discussing ocean heat content, not ocean temperature.)
“But those measurements show the ocean is warming,…”
No, they only suggest that the top half of the ocean is warming. They do not show that the ocean as a whole is warming.
“…and measuring the bottom half cannot alter that.”
I’m afraid it can. If scientists were to measure the bottom half of the ocean and find that it was cooling at the same rate as the top half was warming, the ocean would be neither warming nor cooling overall. And if they found that the bottom half was cooling faster than the top half, the ocean as a whole would be cooling overall, in spite of the fact that the top half was warming.
“It would only increase the known heat content, because it is known underwater volcanic action is not producing the heat. The greenhouse effect is.”
Those things are preconceived assumptions, Nick, not known facts. They only become known facts when they have been empirically tested and verified through precise observation and measurement. Before then, they are merely hypotheses and conjectures – ideas that might be true but might not as well. These are necessarily uncertain, but knowledge is certain. Therefore, they are not what is known.
The situation is far more complicated than you appear to think. The magnitudes of all the possible inputs and outputs of ocean heat content still have not been identified and measured and they cannot be calculated with reasonable accuracy either because too many unknown variables are involved in their calculation. Then too, all these unmeasured and unknown heat inputs to and heat outputs from the world ocean are in dynamic interactions with all the other sub-systems of the overall climate system, such as the atmosphere and the land masses, whose own individual heat inputs and heat outputs are also unmeasured and unknown, which compounds the complexity of the global situation by orders of magnitude.
So, at the present time no-one really does know what the world ocean’s total heat content actually is, nor whether it is increasing or decreasing, nor at what rate in whichever direction it happens to be going. They do not know any of these things because the empirical measurements that would enable them to know them have not been taken yet. And, at the present rate of progress, it may be decades or centuries yet before they have been.
“But it’s good to know ‘If it’s not your science but somebody else’s instead, then you are not qualified to speak for it …’
That’s exactly what I am saying about Kelly. Goodness – we agree after all!”
You’re mistaken there too. We don’t agree about Professor Kelly at all.
You contradicted yourself: If it’s not your science but somebody else’s instead, then you are not qualified to speak for it …”
Then you say: “I thought it [science] was common public property.”
You contradicted yourself again: “… no-one has anything to learn about it from you.”
But you did. You asked me how 93% “extra/excess” energy could go into the oceans when the oceans cover 70% [73%] of the surface. I gave you some clues then actually explained why, and Simon linked a paper. You then went off on a tangent with some bullshit.
“Goodbye, Nick.”
But you came back with more bullshit. You really think the Royal Society and National Academy of Sciences need you to explain science? Yes, I think you do.
Now you’re back with more bullshit about the IPCC.
“You contradicted yourself: If it’s not your science but somebody else’s instead, then you are not qualified to speak for it …”
Then you say: ‘I thought it [science] was common public property.’
Your local town hall is also public property, but that doesn’t mean you are qualified to speak for your local town council.
If you have disowned your science by saying it’s not yours but “the experts’”, it implies that you are not an expert yourself and do not know and understand what “the experts” know and understand about “the science” yourself. In that case, you are not qualified to speak for what the experts know and understand, i.e. “the science”, are you?
“You contradicted yourself again: “… no-one has anything to learn about it from you.”
But you did.”
I don’t think so. You haven’t shown me any climate science that I didn’t already know. Come to think of it, you haven’t shown me any science as such at all.
“You asked me how 93% “extra/excess” energy could go into the oceans when the oceans cover 70% [73%] of the surface….”
Actually, I asked to see your scientific evidence that substantiates your claim of 93%. You still haven’t shown it.
“I gave you some clues…”
Clues are not evidence, Nick. I wasn’t asking you to play mystery-games with me.
“….then actually explained why,…”
Still without producing any evidence to back up your claim.
“…and Simon linked a paper.”
Oh, you mean Simon had your evidence? Sorry, I didn’t know.
But anyway, Richard has already pointed out some of the flaws in that paper and I’m not seeing a need to add anything to his observations about it at the moment.
“You then went off on a tangent with some bullshit.”
What, my pointing out that your unidentified “experts” could not have measured the heat content of more than half the ocean (because the Argo buoys only go down to 2,000 metres) was me going off at a tangent? It directly refutes your claim that “The 93% heat content was measured”!
And the stubborn fact of the matter remains that the full ocean heat content has still not been measured. What “bullshit” is there in that?
“Now you’re back with more bullshit about the IPCC.”
How is my pointing out that the IPCC is a political body “bullshit”, Nick? It’s the truth! Here, check it out for yourself: https://www.ipcc.ch/ .
Arguing with your shadow again.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/13/ocean-temperatures-hit-record-high-as-rate-of-heating-accelerates
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/ioap-row010920.php
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00376-020-9283-7
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7.pdf
———–
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/23/11195
“Arguing with your shadow again.”
We are all one another’s shadow, Nick. But thanks for reminding me of the fact. I’ll try to keep it in mind as we proceed.
OK, let’s see what you’ve given me.
Your first link is to an article in The Guardian newspaper. No scientific evidence there – just more unsubstantiated claims and assertions.
Your second and third links (to a news release from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and an announcement at Springer Nature) offer no scientific evidence themselves but merely provide links to the Cheng et al paper referenced at your fourth link and are therefore superfluous.
The Cheng et al paper at your fourth link does proclaim that “More than 90% of the excess heat is stored within the world’s oceans, where it accumulates and causes increases in ocean temperature…”, but does not specify that it’s 93%, so I still don’t know where you got that figure from. In any case though, the authors seem to me to provide only spurious evidence to support this assertion.
They claim that the evolution of ocean heat content from 2000 to 2019 has been “measured”, but I think that stretches the meaning of the term too far from reality and is thus misleading. As I have already pointed out repeatedly in previous comments above, it is still not possible to actually measure, empirically, the total ocean heat content even with the technology that is available today, let alone with the technology that was available in 2000. So, as they recount in their paper, all that they have done is to estimate it with some sophisticated mathematical operations based on unproven (and therefore uncertain) assumptions. This means that their estimate is necessarily nothing more than an unsubstantiated conjecture – a blind guess, in other words.
However, they are presenting their claim as if it was a scientifically proven fact and a done deal although, self-evidently, it is not either of those. This is alarmist pseudoscience at its most mendacious and antiscientific, in my view.
Sorry for the delay in answering, I had some minor things to attend to.
You have defined your problem in understanding why 90% of the energy retained by Earth is in the ocean, when the ocean covers only 70% of the surface, as “extraordinary” and you demand “extraordinary” evidence.
The claim is not extraordinary. It has a simple explanation.
The need to make it so is only in your head.
Your need for more than necessary is as daft as demanding to know exactly what each molecule of gas is doing in your car tyre when all you need do is measure the pressure.
I’ll let you have the last words. Don’t go to any trouble on my account.
“You have defined your problem in understanding why 90% of the energy retained by Earth is in the ocean,…”
You’re rambling, Nick. I defined no such problem. As you must know (unless you’ve lost your memory) I was asking to see what evidence you might have to support your original bald claim that “93% of the additional energy caused by human activity is going into the oceans”. I said nothing at all about “understanding why 90% of the energy retained by Earth is in the ocean”. Those are two different propositions, surely.
“The claim is not extraordinary.”
OK, have it your way, Nick: let’s say the claim is not extraordinary. You still haven’t explained why it is 93% specifically (or 90%, if that is where you’re shifting the goalpost to now) and you still haven’t produced any supporting evidence for either of these percentages that stands up to scrutiny either.
“It has a simple explanation.”
Simple explanations for complex phenomena are two a penny and are readily available from most schoolchildren. Only rational explanations that are supported by decisive evidence are of any scientific value.
“The need to make it so is only in your head.”
No, I don’t need to make it so, as I just demonstrated above.
“Your need for more than necessary is as daft as demanding to know exactly what each molecule of gas is doing in your car tyre when all you need do is measure the pressure.
I’m not demanding any more than is absolutely necessary for you to prove that what you are claiming is true, Nick. Real and genuine evidence for what you are claiming IS absolutely necessary if you want to advance people’s state of knowledge rather than their state of boredom and irritation with you for telling pretentious fisherman’s tales about the One That Got Away.
“I’ll let you have the last words. Don’t go to any trouble on my account.”
Thanks. It’s no trouble.
Science it not about judgement or consensus, it is about evidence. A good example of how science becomes established is observations conducted just over 100 years ago, and this was to established that gravity bends light. It involved two independent teams to ensure that there was no doubt about the validity of the observations. Judgement has nothing to do with it
Oh, good! Reference please.
The climate system does indeed move energy about. If it didn’t earth would have extreme temperature like the moon. The issue with global warming is where does the energy come from and it is not created in the atmosphere by carbon dioxide. It does not trap heat because heat, by definition, cannot be trapped. If it slows down the heat loss from the earth, it does not increase the temperature of the surface, just as insulation slowing heat loss from a building does not increase the temperature in the building.
It’s an odd argument, isn’t it?
To summarise: nobody is doing enough, therefore it is pointless doing anything. Bjorn Lomberg has been writing articles along the same lines lately. It’s the last argument of resort when AGW is no longer deniable.
The problem is classic game theory, yet another “tragedy of the commons”. Everyone loses if everyone acts in their narrow self-interest. It’s a very selfish way of thinking. I find it unbelievable that overtly Christian leaders like ScoMo keep trying to argue that they shouldn’t do anything because Australia is “so small”. One thing game theorists will tell you is that religion provides a useful function because it disincentivises cheating.
Simon, you too seem to think the science is saying something. What is it?
Morrison is also cheating to claim Australia is reducing emissions (“in a canter”), by using carbon credits from the Kyoto Protocol, that were meant to be discarded under the Paris agreement. His intransigence was one of the problems at Madrid.
Anyone can be mad or bad, but it takes cultists like god-botherers to be really evil.
You’re ranting again, but at least we have your memorable phrases and seldom-heard words.
Simon,
But again this is shallow, for the problem is more than merely not doing enough. In fact, those toiling and spending up large to reduce emissions are being actively undercut by huge users who are not. Kelly gives the analogy of getting a contract to dig a large hole as fast as possible. After working for a time, you glance behind you, only to see a hundred workers filling it in again. Would you agree your work was futile? Would you continue, and why?
Simon
I don’t find anything odd about this argument. The Paris Agreement sets a target, which cannot be reached unless China and India drastically reduce their energy-related emissions. Both countries have refused point-blank to do so, so the target cannot be met. The rational response to these undeniable facts is to seek some alternative route forward.
It makes no sense at all to carry on demanding human sacrifices to a God who no longer exists.
I do agree that the global atmosphere is a commons. Until the users devise some rationing plan that will work, it will just continue to be a commons. Did you think otherwise?
Good on you Michael Kelly, I am very much of the same opinion as you.
Here in New Zealand our news outlets have all gone crazy with pushing climate change as though there is no tomorrow.
Only last night on TV some anti-animal-farming woman was featured as though she was someone of authority and knew what she was talking about. Of course it went on to show some fellow trying a vegan burger.
The bare-faced lie that she stated was that farmed animals emitted (as methane) some enormous amount of CO2 equivalent. Now it is estimated that farmed animals world-wide produce 90 million tonnes of methane and the conversion figure from CH4 to CO2 equivalent can vary from 18 times to 84 times so that proves that no one really has worked out the true number.
The whole attack on biogenic methane is absolute nonsense as not one atom of carbon as CO2 or CH4 is added to the atmosphere. Nick and Simon will shout in unison “that’s not true” but every mouthful of forage that farmed animals consume has absorbed CO2 from the air.
A small amount of methane is emitted during digestion and that methane is soon broken down in the upper atmosphere into CO2 and water vapour. The process is a cycle and not one atom of carbon is added to the atmosphere.
To take the same argument that these people are using, why do they not call for humans to be banned, as every breath that we breath out contains around 5% CO2? Our breathing out CO2 is exactly the same as biogenic methane, for we do not add one atom of carbon to the atmosphere.
If the people calling for the ban on fossil fuel took a moment to think (that is if they are capable of working simple things out for themselves) they could see that our modern civilization depends on cheap affordable energy.
As Michael stated cities cannot function without energy and nuclear should be the first priority for any government seriously trying to reduce CO2 emissions.
Graham Anderson
Proud to be a farmer feeding the world with Milk and Meat.
Graham needs to realise that it’s not the number of carbon atoms that matters, it’s the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the resulting warming effect. Cattle and sheep emit large quantities of methane gas, which has a far greater warming effect than the CO2 they also emit, from respiration. So long as methane emissions continue at current levels, the warming effect will continue, because any breakdown of existing methane is being more than matched by further emissions. The big increases in New Zealand cattle and sheep numbers in recent decades has increased New Zealand’s contribution to atmospheric pollution and global heating, just like the big increases in New Zealand’s motor vehicle numbers. To help tackle climate change we need to reduce all forms of GHG emissions. Otherwise we’re helping to destroy not just our beautiful country but the entire planet. The ‘proud farmers’ need to change course ASAP.
Bill Sutton .You still don’t get it do you ?
The theory of global warming is that we are burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement from limestone that has been locked up beneath the earths surface for millions of years .
Some of the increasing levels of GHG is the result of this extraction and combustion but there is debate that a lot of the increase in CO2 is because of natural warming of the oceans .
According to the theory we are releasing greenhouse gases and as CO2 and CH4 are both increasing in the atmosphere we should be limiting or banning the use of fossil fuels because we might trigger runaway climate change .
Now I ask you how does biogenic methane get put into the same category as fossil fuel .
Did you not read and comprehend what I wrote in my previous post .
The process is a cycle and not one additional atom of carbon or molecule containing carbon is added to the atmosphere over any time frame .
Actually you are misinformed on New Zealands livestock numbers ,
Yes our dairy cow numbers have doubled but our sheep numbers have plummeted to far less than half of what they were in the 1970s.
I will just repeat what I told the Zero Carbon Bill select committee .
Just imagine that the atmosphere is a swimming pool .
The biogenic is the pump and filter .No water is added ,it is a cycle .the level of the pool stays at a constant level .
Your neighbor drops a garden hose into your pool (that equates to fossil fuel emissions ) and the level of the pool rises .
I also showed a graph on atmospheric methane levels and how they flat lined from 1999 to 2008 .
During that period world coal production also was steady at around 4.7 billion tones per year ,World coal production has since soared to over 8 billion tonnes and methane levels have increased but are stll under 2 pp million .
Now I ask you why should New Zealand or any country try and limit there food production from farmed animals when for 10 years there was NO problem with methane levels .
We will penalize our farmers so that other countries can burn coal .
The United Nations has issued a report that countries should limit their GHG emissions in a way that doe’s not impact on food production .
That is why I am proud to be a farmer feeding the world .
Graham Anderson
Bill, you’re right to say the number of carbon atoms doesn’t matter. You might add that livestock don’t emit carbon atoms, only a couple of compounds that include carbon. But the alarmingly large warming effect of methane is not scientific, but is calculated under the direction of an organisation (the IPCC) that actively intends to find human causes of global warming. That is specified in its founding documents. There is no scientific justification to believe it has a warming effect 28 or 100 times that of CO2. If you can find some, let us know.
Livestock respire, as you say. But what comes out has just gone in (from food), so it’s a cycle, not a straight emission. You are absolutely wrong to claim it is. If you doubt this, ask yourself where the cow obtained the carbon to form the carbon dioxide. It may suggest a topic of study for a short time. A biologist could help.
You say the breakdown of existing methane is more than matched by further emissions. Your meaning is unclear, please elucidate. References would help.
Then you refer to “big increases” in NZ livestock numbers, but a little research shows this is wrong. There has been a modest increase in cattle numbers, but the sheep population has plunged by 44%. More importantly, modern herds are a mere fraction of their peak size just 40 years ago,
In 1886, sheep numbered 17 million, peaking 100 years later at 70 million in 1982. Cattle numbers increased from 853,000 to almost eight million over the same period.
Recently, cattle numbers increased to 10 million between 1994 and 2017 (up 25%). But at the same time sheep numbers plunged, from 50 to 28 million (down 40%). – Statistics NZ
You refer to atmospheric pollution – but the odourless, colourless, non-toxic plant food carbon dioxide is no pollution whatsoever. This is a nasty piece of propaganda by warmsters to demonise something they wish to eliminate. Why would they do this? Good question.
I appreciate that you want to save the world and that’s admirable. However you should discover for yourself the truth behind the claims that increasing carbon dioxide leads to dangerous global warming. It’s perfectly obvious it isn’t actually happening. You must do a bit of research to be satisfied of this, but it’s equally obvious that the science confirms it cannot happen. The IPCC does not tell us how it might happen.
Reducing our GHG emissions will not change the weather.
Later on in the same programme, Matt Ridley was interviewed.
Discussed here
https://cliscep.com/2019/12/28/matt-ridley-on-today/
with links in the comments to the audio file and a transcript.
Thank you, Paul. Once again, Ridley makes perfect sense.
So you don’t think that somehow his family land sitting on vast coal reserves might influence his beliefs, but somehow thousands of independent expert scientists around the world, are in it for the money.
First, why not, it’s hardly impossible? Second, only a small number of scientists are at the epicentre of this climate earthquake, not thousands. Third, since you never answer my questions about the warming behaviour of carbon dioxide and other crucial mechanisms of DAGW, why should I answer any of your questions?
About 70,000 qualified experts researching climate science and publishing in peer-reviewed journals.
You couldn’t name 7 such scientists who disagree with the IPCC.
Even so that would still be only 1 in 10,000.
After all these years.
The rational optimist got it wrong with Northern Rock too.
Not being an expert on anything—which does seem of not much hindrance when commenting on climate change—I have yet to see any figures about how the earth’s temperature might drop if there is a substantial reduction in CO2 or even if dropped to zero by 2050 and also how quickly that drop might be established.
At the moment, all I see is lots of money being spent on many dubious projects when really the main aim should be sustainable energy, water and food. If carbon is so dangerous our present aim of renewables and electric vehicles is not really the answer as there is more carbon produced in their manufacture before they are scrapped.
You also do not hear much about how wind turbine blades are delaminating when only four or five years into their thirty-year life span.
CO2 is accumulative so stopping emissions now would not see much of a drop in the atmospheric level, and the temperatures of the surface and oceans would keep rising. Just more slowly than adding more CO2, and equilibrium reached earlier at a lower temperature.
All manufacture requires energy and materials. Unlike ICE vehicles, EVs produce no CO2 at the tailpipe, and little or none during their life if the electricity is from renewables. So which is better to manufacture, given one or the other will be manufactured?
You don’t hear much about the problems with turbines because it’s only deniers who latch onto these relatively minor and solvable issues, which are entirely irrelevant to the science.
Do want to pay a fair price for a hospitable planet?
Do you want the truth from thousands of experts, or do you just want to be reassured by a handful of sidelined scientists whom the global science community regards as cranks?
Only abuse really Nick (well-named). Your sneering and the lifespans of Soros et alia are in lockstep Physics is Greek for nature, and it rules. Right now it wields the Tayler Instability, to wipe away your collective mendacities…….. it has the power of a billion Hiroshimas, so 5 years should see you done. Sayonara
Nick, you say:
The question doesn’t arise, for the first question hasn’t been answered, by you or anyone else.
What is the first question, I hear you ask. It is what is it that threatens to make our planet inhospitable? Do you think that an atmospheric trace gas measuring just 410 parts per million (0.041%) will outperform the energy absorption and phase changes of water vapour measuring 0.5% to 4% and more?
Show me the science of that. But you can’t, because water rules our planet, not carbon dioxide.
Even if you say every single sceptical scientist is a crank, I say it doesn’t matter because you’re being asked to defeat their argument, not to give your impression of their credibility. Have a go!
Hi Richard
I wonder if Nick has anything made in China or India in his home I think our Nick is all talk and abuse and no action
Maybe after 30 years of “we are all gonna die” and he keeps having to buy people Christmas presents it’s all getting to much for him. Nick should check out the Boxing Day sales for the coming Christmas and save a bit of money
I see he has got a list of scientist up to 70,000 scientist now wow
Like your work keep it up
Regards
Harry
Cheers, Harry. Happy New Year.
I just thought the I would lighten up the weekend with a story from overseas but it is quite relevant to NZ.
In a land far away (but it could be New Zealand ) farmers started milking some cows ,other farmers saw this and they also purchased some cows and bred their herds up .Lots of farmers milked lots of cows and sold the milk as many people wanted the milk as it was very nutritious.
As time went on these farmers expanded and brought more land and more cows and everything in the land was going well.
Then the greens became the government and they said these farmers should not have all these cows .everyone should have cows and they should be shared around so they took all the farmers cows and said we and our friends will share these cows .
Now the greens and their friends found that it was hard work milking all these cows and besides you have to get up so early in the morning .Why don’t we eat some of the cows and sell some to the butcher . so that we wont have to get up so early and we like eating beef .
The greens and their friends ate their way through all the cows so then they could sleep in till lunch time .But one day they woke up for lunch and they had no milk and no meat .
Here ends the story .
Graham
As there is not much going on here so I will tell a little more of the story about the farmers and the cows .
In this land far away the leader of the green government was Jimmy Sure and he believed that anyone with more than ten cows should be taxed .He called it a wealth tax as he had always had ambitions to tax any one who was successful and have lots of assets . Now that he had become the Prime Minister of this green land he could introduce a wealth tax and bring back death duties as he said once people die they no longer need their assets .
Our government can make much better use of those assets than the bereaved families he told his friends .
These farmers just sit back the sun shines the rain waters the pasture and cows have calves and they increase their herds he said and then he thought up a cunning plan and said to his caucus I have found a way to tax these farmers cows and this is how we will do it .
We will tell every one in this green land that cows are bad and that they emit a gas that if it builds up in the atmosphere it might overheat the world in about a 200,0000 years time but we can’t be to cautious about these things ,and if it turns out not to be a problem ,no one will remember and who cares .We get lots of tax to throw around to our friends.
Graham .
This is the third and final chapter in the story about about farmers and their cows .
Jim Sure and his green government introduced wealth tax ,death tax, and cow tax , as they believed that any body who had a lot of cows must be greedy and it was not right that some one could start with nothing and end up owning a lot of cows and a lot of land to graze them on.
We will take over all the cows and we will form a government farming company owned by the government and we might call it Parmoo as cows moo .
The government hired lots of managers to run Parmoo ,in fact so many that the government company spent all their surplus cash paying all these managers and all the other staff in the head office and all the regional offices .
Out on all the farms that had been taken from the farmers things were not going too well .The staff said to the managers we are now working for the government and government workers only work 5 days a week .As the managers did not want to milk the cows and do the other essential work the cows were not milked on the weekends .The cows soon went dry and the workers were laid off and were all given lifetime pensions ( because they were government workers )
Jim Sure and his green government had a problem and to make matters worse the gas tax on cows that the government had introduced was costing Parmoo all the income that Parmoo was producing .
What are we going to do asked Jim Sure of his caucus .Well said one member it is all a cycle and we are paying all this gas tax on all these cows so it seems a bit pointless ,we could abolish this gas tax on cows .Another spoke up and said that he had read on a blog Climate Speak or some thing like that. This gas that we are taxing is also a cycle and just like our Parmoo will never increase as all grass eaten has absorbed another bad gas to grow .One of the members asked how is it a bad gas if it makes grass grow . The caucus fell silent as they could not answer .They had never been told that this bad gas is essential to all life on earth .
What are we going to do they said we have been very stupid and the country is going to the dogs and there are not many cows or much milk to feed the towns people .Why don’t we try that old way of doing things called free enterprise or some call it capitalism where individuals are able to think and work for them selves and they were able to keep most of what they earn’ t and invest in their businesses and grow and expand and employ lots of people .
We should try this the caucus all agreed as what we have got here is not working
And it came to pass that the cows were given back to the farmers and soon they had the farms running as they should and the townspeople could buy lots of milk as it is very nutritious and they had been hungry for a long time ..
Trolls remain stupid. Aussie, Land of Fire and Flood, has a climate governed much by the Indian Ocean Dipole. A pattern long understood and not connected to CO2. Look it up.
Drownings reported in Tanganyika etc. signal a developing and ongoing drought over Oz. Three to 14 years are normal over history. Oz being centred on the dry to monsoonal subtropics..
When the dipole switches to wet over Indonesia, Oz starts to get floods again. Drownings etc. have started again there and the signs of drought break are now over WA.
Trolls’ 70000 do not know this, but real Aussies and Kiwis do. Stop your lies. Brett
The frequency of a positive Indian Ocean Dipole increases linearly as global mean temperatures increase, and doubles at 1.5 °C warming from the pre-industrial level (statistically significant above the 90% confidence level)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03789-6
This means that Australia can expect yet more drought and fire in the future.
As you should know Simon, 90% is meaningless as statistical odds, in real Science. Mendacious troll. IPCC is known as a battleship without a bottom i.e its foundation is a vacuum and nature.com is an empty shill.
But if true, the Wet would increase too. Not so but you waste our time and will die with soros. The COLD cometh soon……..Brett
“Mendacious troll. you will die with soros.” — Nobody cares much what Simon thinks of us, but I care what the bystanders think of us because they’re the ones prepared to listen and learn and they’ll vote sensible people into office. So try to restrain yourself! – RT.
Effect of CO2: the radiative physics is very well understood.
Only diehard Australian climate deniers will reject the science by the time these fires have finished with them. Normal people won’t be reassured by Kelly’s sweet nothings.
And these changes have only just started; Earth is heating up.
“Effect of CO2: the radiative physics is very well understood” 🙂
Yeah, the “physics is very well understood”…. I think I’ll add that one to my list…here..
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2018/04/green-utopia/#comment-1549324
“Earth is heating up”….nah, you’re just another looney climate change believing clown, Nick.
“loony clown” — this gives sceptics a bad name, restrain yourself. – RT.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/04/it-has-been-hotter-fires-have-burnt-larger-areas/
Correct RT. Not clowns but ghouls.
RT, and trolls should not be anonymous to slag us. Not a level playing field. Brett Keane
Yes, I realise that. It’s terribly unfair.
Indeed RT. But I care not about any blubbering to Mummy. Rather, that trolls of no name get treated as people when they are really tinmen of no substance. Paid for by Soros et alia, hence will ‘die’ with the billionaires. Allowing rote quotes from fake science sites ad nauseum is very boring and would be so to any intelligent newcomer.
Now, I will lay down the basis of CAGW nullity once more: Poisson combined the gas laws into the Ideal Gas Law. He could see that, mixed, they acted as one outside critical pressures and temperatures, i.e., were not excessively crowded molecularly. Maxwell invented Statistical Mechanics on the basis that this would be so, and tested it by developing Equations that could predict correctly, based on this.
He, and later Einstein (1917), and even myself last year, figured two things: Mixed heavier and lighter Mass gas molecules vibrate around 2 billion times per second at room temperature and ground pressures. Several orders of magnitude faster than the much-depended-on weak (negative 4th Power) radiative transfer rates.
Each collision causes the hotter molecule to lose velocity to the colder one. But different mass molecules keep even Kinetic energies as mass and velocities trade off.
Ally this to the 2nd point: normal atmospheric gases of all species work in a space of about 216 times their 2-angstrom-cubed molecular volume. For all practical purposes, different molecular weights and volumes have no effect. Avogadro’s Law allows for this too, I suggest.
So, we have a gas mixture acting as one, heat-transfer-wise. At the atmospheric level, only expansion and phase change of water affect the mass of gases. They do this very quickly and massively too: around 5km/sec at the atomic level, the power and speed of heated gases making bullets and moon rockets work, also carrying buoyant gas to where it can get past the vain radiative soup to a place where that weaker force, EMF, can leak out fast enough to balance the incoming solar energy.
CO2 dominance (never forget it relies actually on an implied imaginary water vapour dominance, another scam), is a mere figment of IPCC tricksters trying to get a leg in.
I suggest intelligent onlookers study Poisson on Ideal Gases; Maxwell on The Theory of Heat, esp pp330-350, and his Kinetic Theory of Gases; and Einstein’s 1917 Kinetics/Statistical Mechanics/Quantum follow-up.
By the way, I hope it is obvious that recital of equations means no more than recital of Botanical Names when it comes to Physical Understanding. This latter is actually great fun to do. R.W. Woods’ refutation of Arrhenius is another classic milestone.
OK RT, I waste my time again, but dishonest tin men are the real problem and allowing them destroys meaningful debate and progress. That is their purpose and that of their inventors. One cannot actually abuse a tin man, they are not real…
Brett,
No, no, Brett, this is a wonderful explication for which I’m deeply grateful. Never mind tin men or whatever you want to call them; they are not a problem, but a stimulant, like all pesky fleas. We will pay them our best attention when finally they refute what we say, as I look forward eagerly to hearing from our Nick and Simon, but until then, we ignore them. It’s as if they bellow their toxic abuse from the wings, never venturing onto the stage because that requires orderly thought, a good grasp of principles and facts, and a manly courage. Not to mention a readiness to address our own questions of them.
No, I have put your note in a safe place for private reflection, which I’m confident it will repay with a handsome dividend of understanding.
For now, a question: you paint a picture of an homogeneous Physical atmosphere, one molecule knowing nothing about another as they bump together at astonishing speeds. Clearly, incoming radiative energy gets a different view, zooming right through most of them and lurching to a stop on just a few that absorb it. Same with the long-wave IR, with more frequent lurches. Yet the whole time this neighbourhood of chummy molecules participate in the communal kinetic energy the whole day long that in aggregate must be a tremendous shift of energy tending to shift it spaceward. Is this view correct? Can it be or has it been quantified? Surely it overwhelms the feeble radiation ascribed to CO2?
RT, Thankyou. Of course, we already know that radiative acceptance must be followed at once by equal radiative emission. CO2 holding heat, I think not.
One point I insist on is that gases are different, hence the gas Laws. People who won’t admit that, goodbye.
A lot of studying of my Massey Physics tomes etc., plus the works of Tyndall (cooled receiving disc to measure IR radiation, Poisson as per Maxwell, Maxwell’s ‘Theory of Heat, and ‘Kinetics of Gases’. He described his invention of statistics for his Kinetec work dryly in the Scottish manner as ‘avoidance of personal enquiry of gas particles’ or similar. As a great experimentalist, he was able to use statistics to get the answers that fit what actually happenned. Thus short-circuiting much speculation. To get his experiments, I intend to fork out about $180 or similar for a 2nd hand copy on Abe Books. Next on my list….
My Varsity text refers to buoyant uplift both as used by gliders, and how they can be smashed by it. Radiation is an effect, weakly, of Kinetic Energy. But KE rapidly and powerfully effects uplift at normal living temperatures. It creates mass flow that with water’s phase change, dominate IR return to Space.
Radiative warming had to be invented to make a whole civilised-world-destroying meme that was easy to fool folk who take things on trust. Being a bit esoteric….. But nothing is really esoteric if we can apply physics and mechanics (which merely mean nature and work ie sweat).
Re the shift in energy: a colleague of Polish extraction, a scientist and Engineer as I remember, on our Tallbloke discussions, describes it thus: Ther is several times the power needed available just in the diurnal water-steam cloud-vapour -rain-ice -snow dew-mist and fog cycle between two sunrises, to complete the return of enough solar energy to space, to maintain energy eg climate, stability from day to day.
Folk with practical experience unlike the Gretas of this world, know that energy flows by the easiest route always a la Thermodynamics. Oops, another Maxwell ‘invention’
Einstein in his 1917 treatise on Quantum Theory which I have on pdf, cites and uses Maxwell’s stats work to make his treatise work. Another beautiful statement of truth as with Maxwell. They just strike you with their logic, and truth always has beauty.
In closing for now, please test my understanding so I can be stretched some more. Or even, horrors, be disproven. Always a salutary method of progress…… Brett
I believe you have misinterpreted Kelly’s meaning where you wrote,
“All I’m saying now is that the current renewables and the various other things we’re doing are not going to deliver the expectations of a zero carbon 2050.”
That means: eliminating our emissions won’t change the climate.
What he actually meant was that they are very unlikely to achieve zero carbon through renewables, judging by the current state progress. The task is just too enormous. Hence he says the need to focus on nuclear.
Yes, that is right and is more in keeping with the main thrust of his approach to climate science.
Is “Nick” Nick Robison lui meme?
No sign of it.