NZ Herald, 10th February, 2015.
The letter at right appeared in the NZ Herald on 10th February and that day I emailed the following letter in response. To the best of my knowledge my letter was not published, so here it is.
Dear Sir,
Your correspondent Philip Jones claims Bryan Leyland’s assertion of ‘no warming’ is incorrect, saying the temperature data do not support it.
He says recent high temperatures prove they have been rising and he’s right. But they haven’t been rising for some time and so he’s wrong.
For Mr Jones conflates high temperatures with rising temperatures, apparently not understanding that temperatures can remain high when warming stops. Hasn’t he heard? When a recipe says “bake in a hot oven for an hour” you don’t keep heating it up.
He says 2014 was the warmest year, but NASA belatedly admitted they were wrong about that—and the UK Met Office has now validated this century’s global warming hiatus. The yearly temperatures vary by such lilliputian margins even an Ellerslie photo-finish wouldn’t separate them; it’s impossible to claim a record for 2014.
The temperature data certainly support Mr Leyland’s claim of no warming for about the last 20 years—but the strange thing is they also support Mr Jones’s claim of record high temperatures.
It’s like a miracle.
Yours, etc.
Richard Treadgold
Why are the most elementary logical processes beyond the capacity of many ordinary people and journalists?
Views: 259
“Elementary logical processes” exemplified by the correspondent’s claim that “it is so important that we accelerate the move to a clean energy future”. This is a complete non-sequitur to his second paragraph. It is a common misconception amongst CAGW proponents that CO2 is pollution. They also assume that the correlation between warmer climate and fossil-fuel burning activities is irrefutable when in fact it is very debateable. Oh wait…. the debate thing by which they cannot abide.
‘No growth in carbon dioxide emissions in 2014’
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-No-growth-in-carbon-dioxide-emissions-in-2014-1603154.html
Annual Mean Global Carbon Dioxide Growth Rates
Year ppm/yr
2013 2.53
2014 2.51
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global_growth
Hmmm……….
2014 atmospheric CO2 growth much the same as 2013. Only a 0.02 ppm reduction at zero growth in anthro emissions.
What was the source of that 2.51ppm then?
I didn’t do a big mileage in my elderly 2.5 litre 4wd during the last year. I promise to do better this year.
🙂 Sarc off.
Did any of us really expect The Herald to print a letter expressing views contrary to the standard MSM alarmist stuff?
Meanwhile, over at Sciblogs….
http://sciblogs.co.nz/guestwork/2015/03/23/right-of-reply-responding-to-hot-topic/
A bit tricky for Gareth, SciBlogs being outside his cosy, censored, HT enclave.
Re SciBlogs article: Bloody good evisceration imo.
As for Gareth’s assertion that “the real climate debate is not a scientific debate, or a debate about the science, it’s about how we deal with an issue which is going to shape the lives of everyone over the next few hundred years”, wow! Damn right it’s an issue that is going to shape the future, but it is not based on science – and that is the skeptic’s main point. Indeed, the point of the entire article. Thank you Gareth for summing up the skeptic’s argument so clearly.
Peter Griffin at Sciblogs is posing the “reasonable” question as to whether Leyland and Carter are “paid propagadists” by dint of receiving some money, now or in the past, from Heartland
I wonder how much Mr Griffin gets paid by the Royal Society for his work at the Science Media Centre, one wonders.
Oh I forgot, it is only wrong if the baddies get paid.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator1024.gif
Hey I have got a really good idea. Let’s spam this thread with the “escalator graph” from Skeptical Science
Bwah ha ha ha .
That’ll teach those pesky “deniers”
— 🙂 RT
Simon, you miss the point, I think. The fact that temperatures haven’t risen significantly for about 20 years says nothing about the future course of global warming or cooling. Nobody knows what will happen. But it demonstrates that the highest atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide in modern times are not enough to overcome natural variability. That is very significant against the claims that our emissions are destroying the environment.
Furthermore, the surface temperatures are diverging from the models.
Yes. There is much wrong with the dangerous man-made warming hypothesis.
Hey Simon. I’m an AGW sceptic but I don’t “see global warming” starting 1970 as per SkS. I “see global warming” starting at the LIA. Don’t SkS “see” that?
I also “see global warming” in the MWP. And “see” global cooling following.
Isn’t it time SkS updated their escalator for how sceptics actually “see” global warming and cooling, not how SkS foolishly think we see it?
A rather limp riposte to the post I note. Even the UK Met Office doesn’t resort to escalator stupidity.
‘CO2’s role in climate hard to prove’
by James Barrante
[…] A second possibility is the greenhouse effect. Oxygen and nitrogen gases are not greenhouse gases, meaning they cannot absorb infrared light. So we are left with water vapor and CO2. Now, greenhouse gases can’t just absorb any arbitrary IR radiation. Like a radio or TV, they must be tuned to a specific wavelength of light. Carbon dioxide only can absorb Earth’s IR radiation in a narrow band of wavelengths centered around 15 micrometers. But the Earth does not emit a lot of radiation at 15 micrometers. According to infrared astronomers, Earth radiates strongly in a band that peaks around 10 micrometers (infrared astronomers refer to this as N-band radiation). CO2 does not absorb strongly in the N-band, because 15-micrometer radiation falls in the tail of this band at very low intensity. It does not take a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb essentially 100 percent of the 15 micrometer radiation in this band. Adding more CO2 to the atmosphere once this radiation is gone has no effect.
Colder areas of Earth’s surface (minus 80 degrees C, Antarctica temperatures) do shift Earth’s radiation toward 15 micrometers where CO2 absorbs more strongly, but these cold regions of the Earth’s surface are very small compared with the warmer areas near the equator.
Which of these theories is correct, and could there be others? Who knows, but until any are tested experimentally, they all are just chalk dust.
James Barrante of Cheshire is a retired college professor of physical chemistry.
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/co2-s-role-in-climate-hard-to-prove.html
# # #
Others? Yes, the Maxwell/Carnot/Clausius Mass/Gravity/Pressure Theory is one.
Tested experimentally? Yes
‘Why Atmospheric Temperature is a Linear Function of Mass & Gravity, and Not Influenced by Greenhouse Gas Concentrations’
The Hockey Schtick, December 11, 2014
In the previous post [hotlink] of this series, we demonstrated why the US Standard Atmosphere Model & Observations Prove Maxwell’s Mass/Gravity/Pressure Theory of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ is Correct & Falsifies Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) [hotlink].
We now show why the hundreds of rocket and atmospheric scientists, physicists, and aeronautical engineers who created the gold standard and final 1976 version of the US Standard Atmosphere Database (created during the ice age scare of the 1970’s and just one decade prior to the global warming scare of the 1980’s) in effect were “deniers” of any significant “radiative forcing,” “heat trapping,” or “radiative imbalance” from any greenhouse gases in their physical chemical calculations of the temperature profile of Earth’s entire atmosphere from the surface all the way to the edge of space at ~100 kilometers altitude.
In fact, the 241 page document provides overwhelming physical proof from physical chemistry and physics that the average annual temperatures at any altitude are controlled solely by molecular density, molecular weights, gravity, mass, pressure, etc. without any consideration of alleged “radiative forcing” or “heat trapping” from either natural or man-made CO2, nor any “radiative forcing” nor radiative considerations from any other gases including water vapor (now alleged to be the so-called ‘primary greenhouse gas’) whatsoever. The essential-to-CAGW claims of “radiative forcing,” “heat trapping greenhouse gases,” and “radiative imbalance from greenhouse gases” did not exist in 1976, and first appeared on the scene more than a decade later with James Hansen and the first IPCC 1990 report.
These pioneering atmospheric scientists calculated the effects of CO2 on the basis of the tiny 0.03-0.04% in the atmosphere (and thus contribution to molecular mass of the total atmosphere only ~0.03-0.04%) and found it to be so tiny and insignificant, that they removed CO2 from their 1-D model of the atmosphere completely. Their model was then used to calculate the US Standard Atmosphere database at every altitude from the surface to 100 km, and then overwhelmingly verified with millions of observations from weather balloons, research flights, rocket launches, etc. and found to accurately reproduce the temperatures on an annual basis at every altitude 0-120km within Earth’s atmosphere, while completely omitting any mass, radiative, or any other effects from CO2 whatsoever.
Much more>>>>>
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/why-atmospheric-temperature-is-linear.html
Natural variability has a trend of zero. http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics/Escalator1024.gif demonstrates a clear increasing trend. Maybe it is time to take the dog for a walk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0vj-0imOLw
Oh now it’s the dog video for the “deniers” who have the mental age of five.
Thanks, really helpful
I’ve discovered a massive obesity epidemic overtaking the ENTIRE world
If you take the birth weight of every person and plot it against age, you will see an upward trend.
For everyone
We need to take action now. Obesity deniers who cherry pick the ages of 20 upwards are just focussing on short term fluctuations
The bigger picture shows a definite upward trend
>”Natural variability has a trend of zero”
Well yes, but millennial like this:
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g316/patrick1952/GlobalTemperatureReconstruction-2000Years.gif
The SkS escalator doesn’t demonstrate zero trend natural variability which includes both maximum warming AND minimum cooling – contrary to what SkS think we think.
Katherine Hayhoe of course conforms to the SkS timeframe.
[Simon/SkS mindset] – Natural variability commenced 1970.
Yeah right.
Several papers relating the 60 year climate cycle to solar activity, ocean oscillations [which are in-turn driven by solar activity], and lunar-tidal cycles:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2014/03/what-causes-natural-60-year-climate.html
And, for cycles longer than 60 years (beyond SkS comprehension of course).
Over 200 peer-reviewed papers demonstrating solar control of climate published since 2010:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/over-200-peer-reviewed-papers.html
You wont find those in IPCC AR5 that were published by the cutoff date (and few others – no solar chapter). For IPCC purposes, they don’t exist.
‘Shock: Global temperatures driven by US Postal Charges’
Barbara Boxer, majority Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, immediately set up an inquiry, announcing that all future changes in price for US post must be approved by the EPA.
“We’ll need a full environmental impact statement. We can’t just let global damage be done willy nilly on the basis of some arbitrary postal expenses committee’s need to balance the books. No other government service has to balance their budget, why should US Post?”
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/05/shock-global-temperatures-driven-by-us-postal-charges/
‘ atmospheric scientists calculated the effects of CO2 on the basis of the tiny 0.03-0.04% in the atmosphere (and thus contribution to molecular mass of the total atmosphere only ~0.03-0.04%) ‘
No, gases are measured in ppm by volume. CO2 molecules have atomic mass C 12 + ( 2 x O 16 ) = 44, versus four parts N2 at 28 to one part O2 at 32, average about 29. So carbon dioxide’s mass does punch rather above it’s ranking, so to speak.
As for Earth’s emissivity peaking at 10 micrometres or whatever, doesn’t blackbody radiation happen at the wavelength pertaining to the temperature of the emitter – and all wavelengths below that? From feeling my double glazed windows ( and a bit of thermal coring in a glider ) I’d imagine that convection dominates heat transport over radiation, in the troposphere at least. And you don’t have to go to the poles to find polar temperatures – just go up a couple of kilometres. CO2 and all the other stuff we’ve been putting in the air only has to move the average altitude that radiation makes it out to space up by a few hundred metres to change the planet’s heat budget.
For people who think global warming is all about the medieval warm period and the little ice age, check out ‘ Plows, Plagues and Petroleum ‘ by Professor William Ruddiman. If our current climate had followed the pattern of the previous twenty-odd glacial-interglacial cycles, we would have been well on the way towards another ice age by now. CO2 and methane from farming and deforestation bent that trajectory back up a little ( interrupted by periods of drastic population decline, like the Black Death, and the devastation of the native American civilisations after 1492 ). By that account, humanity had already changed the climate by about as much before the industrial revolution started, in eight thousand years, as we have since, in two hundred. Don’t expect the future to move at the same pace though – big wheels take a while to get rolling.