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Cowboy Climatology - An Inconvenient Question
April 21st, 2007A while back I entered into a discussion about global climate change. Being a newcomer to the controversy, I asked three common sense questions:
* Is it getting warmer?
* If so, is this unusual?
* If it is unusual, how much of a part do humans play?
An alleged scientist in the discussion, in a pompous and arrogant display of self importance, declined to answer my basic questions — a sure sign he didn’t know. Arrogance can cause action, and I was soon downloading climatological data sets from IPCC, NOAA, and other sources. I answered my three simple questions, and turned it into a video.
If you need to explain the political fallacy of global climate change to someone, and slap around liberals at the same time, then just drag them to this web page, or to the two videos on YouTube.
I have to wonder just how old the picture of the LA smog is.
I can recall that level of smoginess travelling through in the early 70s or so. It was significantly clearer than that by the 80s and 90s, though, except on a very few bad days.
I don’t know the ‘facts’ about ‘global warming’, yet I feel that there must be respect for the enviroment in order for a society to be sane.
[...] Granted, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but all of the elements of a religion appear to be in place, including a belief in something that cannot (as yet) be absolutely proven. Some have reviewed the IPCC reports and believe it is proof, as some have read scripture and believe they are proof of God. Others play the role of the skeptical atheist, finding enough holes and contradictions in AGW scripture to raise his doubts (having recently downloaded and processed ice core data sets, I have become a bit more skeptical myself). [...]
You say in the video that co2 makes up 3 and a half percent of all heat trapping gases in the atmosphere.
According to the wikipedia page on global warming - ‘On Earth, the major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect (not including clouds); carbon dioxide (CO2), which causes 9–26%; methane (CH4), which causes 4–9%; and ozone, which causes 3–7%.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Greenhouse_gases_in_the_atmosphere
I’m curious about who is getting their facts wrong.
Or is it my own misunderstanding.
So, co2 causes 9-26 percent of the greenhouse effect. The concentration of atmospheric co2 has increased by 31 percent since the industrial revelution.
(These levels are considerably higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores. From less direct geological evidence it is believed that CO2 values this high were last attained 20 million years ago)
The present atmospheric concentration of CO2 is about 385 parts per million (ppm) by volume. Future CO2 levels are expected to rise due to ongoing burning of fossil fuels and land-use change. The rate of rise will depend on uncertain economic, sociological, technological, and natural developments, but may be ultimately limited by the availability of fossil fuels. The IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios gives a wide range of future CO2 scenarios, ranging from 541 to 970 ppm by the year 2100.
Doesn’t it make sense to try to drastically reduce carbon emmisions. Even if fossil fuel burning is not nesessarily the main cause of global warming.
Isn’t Al Gore right to draw attention to the situation?
‘6.1 billion metric tons of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are produced each year (measured in carbon equivalent terms), an estimated 3.2 billion metric tons is added to the atmosphere annually.’
Sounds like a lot.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
I was reporting on just the quantities in the atmosphere while they are reporting on the alleged warming effects (which are still defined by theory and computer modeling). I know my facts are right because they are from direct measurements.
“Doesn’t it make sense to try to drastically reduce carbon emmisions. Even if fossil fuel burning is not nesessarily [sic] the main cause of global warming. Isn’t Al Gore right to draw attention to the situation?”
Sure. AS I said at the end of my video, who doesn’t like clean air. But Gore scaring people with false doomsday prophesies is little unsavory and entirely unacceptable.
It could be argued (and apologies for arguing) that it is also ‘entirely unacceptable’ and quite cavalier for anyone to claim with any certainty that they understand ALL the complexities and causes of climate change.
Although given the tone of the video, maybe you’re just having a laugh.
Funny how the phrase ‘entirely unacceptable’ really winds me up.
Maybe because it sounds so dogmatic.
I prefer to think that everything is uncertain and subjective - try using e-prime which makes it harder for a writer or reader to confuse statements of opinion with statements of fact.
I hate to admit you might be right about something -
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths
There seems to be a lot of man-made global warming skeptics.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport
There is something I don’t understand, if manmade greenhouse gases make up such a small percent of the total greenhouse gases, as shown in your pie chart and also here - http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html , why has there been such a big increase in the concentetion of co2 in the atmoshere? - ‘The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and CH4 have increased by 31% and 149% respectively since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Greenhouse_gases_in_the_atmosphere
You said in the comments - ‘I was reporting on just the quantities in the atmosphere while they are reporting on the alleged warming effects’ - does that mean some of that co2 in the atmosphere doesn’t contribute to warming?
I may not have many braincells left, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
One cause is that CO2 locked in the oceans (the biggest repository of CO2 there is) is being released as the planet warms. If the warming trend is natural/solar (which it may be), the oceans will release more CO2 than normal (there is some validation of this — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon-14-10kyr-Hallstadtzeit_Cycles.png).
Long-term (600,000 years) analysis shows a correlation between periods of warming and CO2 increases (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.svg). Some people theorize that most of the atmospheric CO2 concentration is an oceanic byproduct and not tailpipe waste.
And yet, this graph is very striking -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.svg
The co2 concentration is now at 385ppm
‘These levels are considerably higher than at any time during the last 650,000 years, the period for which reliable data has been extracted from ice cores. From less direct geological evidence it is believed that CO2 values this high were last attained 20 million years ago.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Greenhouse_gases_in_the_atmosphere
The graph you showed is somewhat deceptive, it points out the present co2 level, without showing it in the line graph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.svg
Sorry I meant this graph is striking -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png
One of the problems in the debate, and with some of the proffered “science” is the improper mixing of reconstructed ancient data (such a ice core samples) and modern directly measure data (atmospheric samples). The chart above appropriately shows just one (ice core samples) and stop at a point where the limited granularity of sample might distort the value.
One of the worst examples of the mixing of data came early in the global warming debate, and indeed caused much of the hysteria. One “scientist” presented a chart that pasted modern direct temperature measurements (which are by themselves of suspect quality) on top of ice core reconstructions, creating the now infamous ‘hockey stick curve’ (see http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11646).
The same may apply to CO2 measurements. A lot of theory has been applied to how/if the CO2 trapped in antarctic ice may relate to the actual atmospheric concentrations at the time of the ice fall. Thus, ice core data needs to be viewed as a ‘relative measure’ chart and not compared directly with today’s samples.
It’s interesting how deceptive numbers can be, for instance, the concentration of co2 in the atmosphere is 385 parts per million, which persumably means that the 0.0385% of the atmosphere is made up of co2? Before the industrial revolution it was about 270ppm which would be 0.027%, so even though that’s about a 30% increase, it is still only a difference of 0.0115 percent of the atmosphere - but I’ve no idea if I got that right.
Your math is right. The argument by some is that increases in GHGs change atmospheric compositions that in turn change the atmosphere’s ability to filter radiation, etc. But their claims are based primarily on hypotheticals and modeled in computer simulations (many of which they refuse to share the source code for). Hence, it is 45% speculation and 45% hysteria and 10% low-level contribution by humans.
I wonder if you ever worry that you might be wrong.
Conservatives often seem to be climate change skeptics , whether they understand the science or not.