Climate change advocacy is all about the framing of a virtue signaling narrative that incites fear in the public so political agendas can turn into laws. In President Joe Biden’s, recent speech to the UN General Assembly speech he said the following…
“Will we meet the threat of the challenging climate we’re all feeling already ravaging every part of our world with extreme weather, or will we suffer the merciless march of ever worsening droughts and floods, more intense fires and hurricanes, longer heat waves and rising seas?”
“This year has also brought widespread death and devastation from the borderless climate crisis. The extreme weather events that we have seen in every part of the world, and you all know it and feel it represent what the Secretary General has rightly called code red for humanity. And the scientists and experts are telling us that we’re fast approaching a point of no return in a literal sense.”
There you have it, virtue signaling fear mongering “settled science” propaganda straight from the mouth of the President of the United States;
Fear mongering 1-0-1; find a world pedestal, climb on that world pedestal and say things that will stir up basic fears of survival in all those who hear the words. Use words and phrases like ravaging, extreme, merciless, widespread death and devastation, code red for humanity, and of course the all time favorite point of no return.
We have been told over and over again by the “settled science” crowd that the climate change apocalypse is right around the corner and we’ve been told that for over 50 years. They’ve been telling us that there’s a “planetary emergency”, climate change is an “existential threat”, claims that “we are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation”, one University professor actually wrote in 1970 that “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”. We have been told that sea levels are going to rise because of melting Artic ice and flood all the coastal areas of the earth. The climate change predictions are endless and when the predictions based on that “settled science” don’t come true, they just shrug their shoulders and drag the goalposts further down the road; how convenient it is to be a politically correct science propagandist that no one is supposed to question.
Let’s do a brief review of some “settled science”.
The following video pulls out the big guns from Hollywood to tell us that climate change is upon us and the apocalypse is right around the corner. There’s lots of “settled science” in the video to embrace but pay close attention to the “settled science” apocalyptic climate predictions presented by Dr. Hays [thanks to TA for noting the misspelling of Dr. Hays name] at 12:30 and compare that to the “settled science” we get from today’s apocalyptic climate change cult.
When you pull out the big guns from Hollywood to tell us that the world is coming to an end you know it must be undeniable fact because famous people are the keepers of all knowledge that is good and wise and would never lend their good names to something that’s not absolute truth. The opinions in the video were based on a specific kind of scientific tunnel vision that ignores climate history that falls outside of the preapproved narrative.
Here is a video that shows how the “settled science” people are intentionally manipulating the public…
We can clearly see from the information presented in the video that the people promoting massive social changes based on climate change predictions are viewing their climate change data about fires through a very intentional preapproved tunnel vision and ignore anything that contradicts their narrative. This is not an isolated incident of tunnel vision in modern climate change “science” this is the new “activist science” (much of like the new activist journalism) standard, simply focus on what supports your narrative and ignore everything else while publicly smearing all those that disagree as lunatic conspiracy theorists wearing tinfoil hats. Climate change activists seem to think that they don’t have to actually argue intelligently when those who oppose them are publicly smeared as a bunch of wackos.
If you think I’m exaggerating about the tunnel vision of scientific activism then you aren’t paying attention to what’s going on.
This is all “settled science” folks and if you don’t believe every damn word of it you’re a science denier heretic and a political outcast from the hive mind of “right” thinkers, you might as well be wearing the Star of David on your lapel because you’re an idiot “wrong” thinker and have earned your public scorn and persecution.
Who the hell do all these “scientists” think they are making claims and basically stating that they’re accurately predicting exactly what Mother Nature’s climate is going to do in the next 5, 10, 30, 50, 100, 1000, etc years and predicting what exactly the resulting apocalyptic changes are going to be across the planet? Geologically and scientifically speaking, climate science is still in its’ embryonic stage of development because we don’t have completely accurate information of how climate change actually works it’s still all theoretical, but yet We the People are supposed to simply swallow everything these arrogant scientists predict as if it’s facts that are permanently etched in marble and not correlation = causation tunnel vision. To date, none of the wide spread apocalyptic kind of climate change predictions have come true, all we have is some bad weather that the fear mongering activists claim is worse than it’s ever been, which is more tunnel vision lies. Climate scientists are arrogant charlatans and they’re lying to We the People.
To be absolutely truthful and honest, cleaning up the environment would b a great thing for the planet and the entire human race. The best I can tell, everyone and everything would benefit from having a clean planet where resources aren’t squandered and pollution of all kinds are kept to a bare minimum, but all the cultish hype and lies surrounding the “settled science” we hear from apocalyptic climate change advocates is just a bunch of correlation = causation arrogant science-speak bull shit.
We the People need to fully understand that there’s nothing about the “settled science” of climate change, and its corresponding activism, that is actually settled.
Society's Building Blocks 
Ha ha! The irony of an unlettered rant on the failures of science that fails to provide scientific or data evidence for itself. Your inability to understand the necessary predictive power of a proper scientific theory shows your level of ignorance.
You actually claim to have debunked the large data sets showing climate change as a real and present threat with conjecture, logical fallacies and three YouTube videos. But, scientists are arrogant?
Imagine being this wrong and feeling proud of it.
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The Devil Unbound wrote, “Ha ha! The irony of an unlettered rant on the failures of science that fails to provide scientific or data evidence for itself. Your inability to understand the necessary predictive power of a proper scientific theory shows your level of ignorance.”
That’s pure ad hominem trolling. Read my comment policies and pay particular attention to items 4, 6 & 7.
Ad Hominem: directed against a person rather than the position they are maintaining.
Troll: noun, Those that post inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement.
The Devil Unbound wrote, “You actually claim to have debunked the large data sets showing climate change as a real and present threat with conjecture, logical fallacies and three YouTube videos.”
Interesting claim. You’re welcome to your own opinions but not your own facts.
Here’s an actual fact for you, The Devil Unbound, I never actually claimed anywhere in my blog post that I debunked large data sets or that climate change is not real, the fact is that I believe that the climate is changing and it does so all the time because it’s cyclical and that’s verifiable using real science. We have warm periods and cool periods and these cycles are proven to exist in history if climate change advocates and “scientists” would look outside their intentional tunnel vision and see all the scientific data that’s out there. Scientific facts tell us that we are in a relative warm period. My basic argument is that the predictions the climate change advocates are making based on tunnel vision science that is extrapolated to absurdity are false, or likely to be false, not that climate change doesn’t exist.
You either didn’t read what I wrote, didn’t comprehend what I wrote, or you’re a lying internet troll; anyway I look at it, your claim is false.
The Devil Unbound wrote, “But, scientists are arrogant?”
Arrogant: adjective, having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.
Yes, The Devil Unbound, any scientist that’s making claims that their predictions of exactly how the climate is going to change are facts and then claiming that their apocalyptic predictions based on their climate change extrapolations are also facts is arrogant to the point of being a charlatan. If you pay attention to what climate change activists say, very little of it is actually “science”, it’s all about inciting fear to push policy as I wrote in the first sentence of the blog.
The Devil Unbound wrote, “Imagine being this wrong and feeling proud of it.”
More ad hominem trolling.
In conclusion, your entire comment is nothing but a trolling unethical ad hominem and you’re banned for not following my comment policies.
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The Devil Unbound has, in one fell swoop, Removed All Doubt!
The Gotch
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LAST_CHANCE_TO_SAVE_THE_PLANET
Bonn 2001: A Global Warming Treaty’s Last Chance. Time Magazine, 16 Jul 2001
Montreal 2005: With time running out for the global climate, your meeting in Montreal represents a last chance for action. The Independent, 28 Nov 2005
Bali 2007: Bali could be the last chance to avoid the worst effect of global warming, said Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth. The New Zealand Herald, 3 Dec 2007
Poznan Poland, 2008: The world will “suicide” if it cannot strike a strong climate pact soon, The Age, 9 Dec 2008
Copenhagen 2009: The world faces a final opportunity to agree an adequate global response to climate change at a U.N.-led meeting in Copenhagen in December, The Telegraph, 10 Aug 2009
Cancun 2010: Jairem Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, sees it as the “last chance” for climate change talks to succeed; The Telegraph (UK), 29 Nov 2010
Durban 2011: Rev. Dr. Olav Fyske Tveit, who leads the World Council of Churches, says the upcoming climate conference in South Africa is mankind’s ‘last opportunity’ to address climate change. Spero News, 27 Nov 2011:
Doha 2012: Tomorrow: the earth’s last chance with climate change? The Examiner, 25 Nov 2012
Warsaw 2013: Is the Warsaw Climate Change Conference a last-chance summit? Sustainable Mobility, 14 Nov 2013
Lima 2014: Last chance: Change needed for climate negotiations in Lima 2014. WWF Global, 23 Nov 2013
Paris 2015: The UN meeting in December is “the last chance” to avert dangerous climate change, according to the Earth League. BBC News 22 Apr 2015
Lefty sure is generous with their Last Chances, am I right?
The Gotch
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When Climate Alarmists decided that carbon dioxide is a climate destroying gas that must be regulated is when we divided the field between agenda driven trolls and those who understand verifiable scientific fact. Hint: CO2 is what plants eat; more is better
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Been missin’ you’s over @Ethics Alarms, slick!
The Gotch
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Steve,
You wrote, ” … the fact is that I believe that the climate is changing and it does so all the time because it’s cyclical and that’s verifiable using real science.”
Please provide the real science that shows the climate is changing all the time because it’s cyclical. Which cycle specifically are you talking about? Where are we now in that cycle? When did it last change?
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TA wrote, “Please provide the real science that shows the climate is changing all the time because it’s cyclical.”
You asked for it, here it is…
Here are typical graphs that are used by tunnel vision climate change activists it begins around 1880 and they extrapolate what they see in this tunnel vision to predict their climate apocalypse.
Here is what happens when you start pulling back the tunnel vision filter and start looking at the whole story of climate change…
Looking at the last 2000 years
Looking at 300,000+ years
Looking at 400,000 years
Looking at 800,000 years
Climate change is cyclical and anyone that tries to argue that it’s not is literally a science denier and a damn fool.
TA wrote, “Which cycle specifically are you talking about?”
The overall cycle.
TA wrote, “Where are we now in that cycle?”
We are in a relative warming period of the cycle as I mentioned in the blog post. If the climate will go up or down no one really knows, predicting it’s all theoretical and not “science”.
TA wrote, “When did it last change?”
The last really noticeable climate change was when the temperature started a relative warming around 1600 after there was a relative cooling period for about 800 years.
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Thanks Steve for posting the graphs. Yes indeed there is a cycle and it goes back 2.5mya. There isn’t a single climate scientist that denies it. The particular cycle you showed that data for is so famous that it has a name attached to it. And yes, that cycle was discovered by climate scientists. I was wondering if you knew what the name of the cycle is because, if you did, it would tell you what the physical cause of that cycle.
This is what you wrote just above,
“If the climate will go up or down no one really knows, predicting it’s all theoretical and not “science”.”
Prior you wrote, “… the fact is that I believe that the climate is changing and it does so all the time because it’s cyclical and that’s verifiable using real science.”
We’ll come back to whether something is ‘theoretical’ and not ‘science’ later on, but let’s just look at the data you posted because that’s presumably what you consider ‘real science’. If something is cyclical than you can take a Fast Fourier Transform of that data and reconstruct the time signal for any particular year. Frankly you could do this yourself just by digitizing the data and taking the FFT. Without even understanding the theoretical framework of the data you could make a prediction what the climate would be doing now. In fact you would know precisely whether the climate will go ‘up or down’ as you say. According to this particular cycle, should we be in a warming phase or a cooling phase?
In addition to the question I have about what the name of the cycle and the phase, I have an additional question. You wrote,
“The opinions in the video were based on a specific kind of scientific tunnel vision that ignores climate history that falls outside of the preapproved narrative.”
Does that criticism of ‘scientific tunnel vision’ apply to Dr Hayes as well?
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TA asked, “Does that criticism of ‘scientific tunnel vision’ apply to Dr Hayes as well?”
Yes it does and if you actually understood the overall thesis of my post you would have already known the answer to that question.
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Excellent, thanks!
Bear with me for a moment because I still want to understand precisely why Dr. Hayes has ‘scientific tunnel vision’?
Is it because he ignores climate history that ‘falls outside the preapproved narrative’? And presumably that preapproved narrative is to only look at temperature data since 1850 or so?
You didn’t want to take another shot about taking the FFT of the data and telling us whether we should be in a warming or cooling phase? I’m just curious why not?
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TA wrote, “Bear with me for a moment because I still want to understand precisely why Dr. Hayes has ‘scientific tunnel vision’?”
Seriously TA, are you sealioning?
There is no way Dr. Hayes could have come up with a prediction that we were heading into an ice age without tunnel vision focused on relatively few years of weather trends. I remember the years that everyone was screaming about the coming ice age very well and my opinion back then was the same as it is now, there’s no way to accurately predict climate change. Dr. Hayes was absolutely certain his “settled science” was certain proof that our climate was heading towards an ice age and he was clearly false; Dr. Hayes was not the only one that had tunnel vision and seemed to be ignoring the fact that there are mini ups and downs within an overall relative climate change. You cannot accurately predict climate change you can only show trends from known data, extrapolating from a tunnel vision focus on data and making wild predictions is bad science and makes them look like arrogant charlatans or intentional liars trying to intentionally manipulate the public based on their “activist science”. Bias makes you stupid and biased activist science is a good example of that.
TA wrote, “You didn’t want to take another shot about taking the FFT of the data and telling us whether we should be in a warming or cooling phase? I’m just curious why not?”
What part of I think it’s bad science to try to predict climate change or where we “should” be in the climate cycle are you not understanding? Why would I do what you’re asking me to do when I think it’s ridiculous to do so. I clearly stated that I think we are in a relative warming period in our climate cycle, what more do you want.
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You wrote:
“There is no way Dr. Hayes could have come up with a prediction that we were heading into an ice age without tunnel vision focused on relatively few years of weather trends.”
Your description of what Dr. James Hays (not Hayes) said is provably false. It’s almost as if you didn’t listen to the video that you posted. Did you hear this part, “Geologists have collected enough sea cores to form a detailed history over the last million years.”? Hayes is standing in front of the cores while he is speaking!
Here’s the real kicker: the data that you posted above is in large part due to Dr. Hays and his collaborators and colleagues. To accuse Hays of “tunnel vision” while at the same time actually pointing to the data that he helped collect and analyze is bewildering to say the least.
The cycles that you displayed above are called the Milankovitch cycles. Milutin Milankovitch was a Serbian scientist who back in the 1920’s postulated that the Earth’s ice ages were due to fundamental changes in the precession, obliquity and eccentricity of the orbit which have periods of roughly 23,000, 41,000 and 100,000 years.
Hays even says in the video, “We now have a theory that changes in the shape of the Earth’s orbit act as a pacemaker for the ice age succession”. You’ll note that he did not say “based on a few years of weather trends”.
The problem was that there was no way to estimate in Milankovitch’s day when the ice ages occurred. The seminal contribution to climate science was in the1950s by Harold Urey, the word’s expert on isotopes and Nobel Prize winner in 1934 for his discovery of deuterium. It was Urey who understood that temperature data in the past could be understood by analyzing the subtle changes in the ratio of oxygen isotopes. It was Hays, and his colleagues Imbrie and Shackleton, who were able to collect enough data to show that when you take the FFT of isotope ratios for those sea cores sitting behind Hays, you get 3 peaks in the spectrum just like Milankovitch predicted.
You can find the Hays paper, entitled appropriately “Variations of the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages” and published in Science magazine in 1976, here:
Click to access Hays%20et%2076%20Science%20194-1121.pdf
Contrary to your claims, Hays did not believe that an ice age was imminent. Rather, based on the FFT of the data he understood that a continuation of the Milankovitch cycles meant that the Earth was in a cooling cycle, not a warming one. Here’s what he writes in the paper, “A model of future climate based on the observed orbital-climate relationships, but ignoring anthropogenic effects, predicts that the long-term trend over the next several thousand years is toward extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.” NEXT SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS. The anthropogenic effects are “due to the burning of fossil fuels” as he writes in the paper. In summary Hays is telling everyone that the natural variation in the Earth’s orbit should lead to the cooling of the planet’s surface, but pointed out that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere might lead to a warming climate. And that’s precisely what happened.
Here are some additional questions for you, to help clarify my understanding of what you wrote. You wrote,
“Geologically and scientifically speaking, climate science is still in its’ embryonic stage of development because we don’t have completely accurate information of how climate change actually works it still all theoretical, but yet We the People are supposed to simply swallow everything these arrogant scientists predict as if it’s facts that are permanently etched in marble and not correlation = causation tunnel vision.”
What does it mean what climate science is in its embryonic stage, geologically speaking?
How about scientifically speaking? How old do you think climate science is?
What’s your evidence that climate change is only ‘theoretical’ as you say? Do you not know what the physical data is that supports the theory?
Give me one example of how scientists use correlation = causation tunnel vision.
Thanks!
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TA,
It appears that you “might” be intentionally spinning this so I’m applying Hanlon’s Razor and I’m moving on. I’m not crawling in your endless sealioning rabbit hole, see #8 in the comment policies.
You’re welcome to your opinion.
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That’s a disappointing response.
You made a large number of factually incorrect statements, you said climate scientists are “lying” to “We the People” and you even likened people who disagree with scientists as having to wear a Star of David (you can’t possibly imagine how offensive that is for someone like myself whose family had to actually wear that Star and wound up in crematoria).
I’ve been polite and I’ve asked you a number of questions to clarify what you were saying rather than jumping to conclusions. I’ve kept my comments to mostly about the science and math and I pointed to the peer reviewed literature. An intellectually curious person would have recognized that they misunderstood what Dr. Hays was saying, read his paper. and retracted the false statements. I offered a means for you to examine the data for yourself, but you refused. A curious person would have wanted to know what the actual data is in support of climate science.
What was it that you wrote? “Climate change activists seem to think that they don’t have to actually argue intelligently when those who oppose them are publicly smeared as a bunch of wackos.” I guess people who have their own political biases are not willing to listen to what is really fairly basic physics.
Steve, you certainly are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.
I don’t blame you for smearing me with accusations of sealioning and hinting that you would kick me off your blog. Who wants to discuss science anyway when there are political biases to be held dearly?
Cheers!
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TA wrote, “That’s a disappointing response.”
No one on this blog, including me, is here to meet your expectations.
TA wrote, “I don’t blame you for smearing me with accusations of sealioning and hinting that you would kick me off your blog.”
So you know, here’s how I define sealioning…
Sealioning: is a type of rhetoric that sometimes borders on rhetorical harassment; some might call it trolling, I do not until it’s taken to absurd levels. Sealioning consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity.
If you don’t think that sealioning fits what you’ve been doing here, that’s fine, you’re welcome to your own opinion but not your own facts.
By the way, I didn’t hint that I might kick you off the blog; I don’t hint, I come right out and tell someone when they’ve been warned. Number 8 in the comment policies clearly states, “Don’t expect anyone to reply to your comments.” that is the comment policy that I referred you to.
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TA was trolling you. No doubt about it.
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slickwilly wrote, “TA was trolling you. No doubt about it.”
Maybe, maybe not; I choose to give TA a chance.
Life is all about choices.
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TA,
Since you’re new here and I don’t know you there’s a new commenting rule that applies to you. Please check your email (it could be in spam) and reply.
Steve
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Steve,
I didn’t get your email, perhaps because of a typographical error. You can try it again at the email listed. I appreciate the opportunity to counter the claims you are making in this post. I will respond.
Today Syukoro Manabe, the so-called ‘grandfather’ of modern climate science, was declared one of the three recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics. In his honor, I think it is worthwhile to counter specifically your claim that there is no evidence behind global warming, just a bunch of theory. Manabe in particular made a number of predictions according to his model of radiative-convective warming of the atmosphere that were later borne out by empirical data.
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As I said, today it was announced that Syukuro Manabe is one of the three recipients of the Nobel Prize for Physics. In this post I want to call out in particular his contributions in making theoretical predictions that were confirmed by empirical data. To keep this to a reasonable length, some of the explanations need to be short.
I want to address “settled science” first. Personally, I hate the term and never use it. Science is never settled, but sometimes it’s settled enough. Newtonian physics was overturned in part by relativity and quantum mechanics, but it’s settled enough that it’s the basis for building a bridge or designing an airplane – situations where classical physics holds. A better term is “known with high confidence”. In terms of climate, there are clearly gaps in what is known, but there are 3 things that are known to high confidence. 1) The climate is warming 2) The warming is due to greenhouse gases 3) The greenhouse gases come from the burning of fossil fuels. ‘Apocalyptic’ scenarios are not part of this high confidence list since the term apocalyptic is not a scientific term.
Since the first high confidence item is not disputed on this blog, I’ll move on to the second (and maybe the third at a later time). To understand why greenhouse gases are the cause of the current warming, it’s necessary to know some physics to understand the evidence. It was stated on this blog that climate science is in its ‘embryonic stage’. That’s simply not true. It goes back at least 200 years to James Fourier’s understanding that the mean global temperature on the planet is determined by a balance of incoming short wavelength radiation and outgoing infrared. From the Stefan-Boltzmann relation one can easily calculate that the mean surface temperature should be around 0F. That is, the planet should be one lifeless ball of ice. It’s not.
Greenhouse gases are responsible for the mean global temperature not being zero, but rather around 60F. Explanations on the internet on very poor, so I’ll give you mine. The Earth radiates as a blackbody out to space. Molecules that have a dipole moment like CO2, CH4, H20 O3 etc can absorb and re-emit infrared radiation through the lower atmosphere. O2 and N2 are symmetric molecules and don’t resonate with infrared. CO2 at 15 microns in particular is optically thick: that means that it continually absorbs and re-emits infrared at that frequency all the way up to the top of the troposphere. Since the top of the troposphere is colder than the bottom it emits far less radiation in this bandwidth. This is fairly basic radiation transfer physics that goes back to Einstein and Chandrasekhar among others from the early 20th century.
Manabe’s contribution that earned him the Nobel prize is to wrap together two separate threads in physics, radiative transfer which mostly came from astrophysicists like Chandrasekhar and convective heat transfer that dominates the distribution of heat within the planet. In 1967 he wrote a famous paper with Richard Witherald in which he described his radiative/convective model. In it he made a rather startling and amazing prediction: because CO2 in the stratosphere is no longer optically thick to infrared, instead of warming like the troposphere, the stratosphere should cool. He calculated what that cooling would be. There weren’t satellite measurements available at the time so the confirmation of his prediction wasn’t made until decades later. Any model that attempts to explain the current warming has to also explain the simultaneous warming of the troposphere and the cooling in the stratosphere. If the Sun was the cause of the warming trend at this time, it would heat both the troposphere and stratosphere.
One other (there are others but no space to list them all) prediction Manabe is noted for is that in 1970, a period when the planet was in a slight cooling phase, he calculated that between 1970 and 2000 the mean temperature would increase by 0.57C (this of course depended on future greenhouse gas emissions that he had to make a best guess); the data showed 0.54C. Between 1900 and 2000 the mean temperature would increase by 0.8C; the data shows 0.72C.
How do you prove that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are causing the warming? You launch a satellite (called Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS) to look down on the infrared emission that is emitted from the Earth’s surface and passes through the troposphere. What you see on a roughly blackbody spectrum are holes in the emitted radiation where CO2 and other greenhouse gases absorbed radiation and re-radiate it at much cooler temperatures from the upper atmosphere. If you integrate over the spectrum you find that the incoming radiation is exceeding the outgoing radiation. The planet warms to keep the radiation in balance. Then you go and look for where that extra heat is being stored — about 90% of it is in the ocean because of its huge heat capacity. You set up a system of floats (called Argo) in the ocean to measure the temperature rise as a function of depth. The difference in the incoming and outgoing radiation at the top of the atmosphere matches the heat found in the ocean.
Maybe I’ll get to the 3rd high confidence item at another time.
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TA wrote, “It was stated on this blog that climate science is in its ‘embryonic stage’. That’s simply not true.”
Please stop cherry picking. It’s most certainly true if you take in the full context of what I wrote.
The full context of what I wrote is, “Geologically and scientifically speaking, climate science is still in its’ embryonic stage of development because we don’t have completely accurate information of how climate change actually works it’s still all theoretical”
Geologically speaking the last 200 years of scientific observation is nothing compared to how long the planet has been around and changing, climate science IS in it’s “embryonic stage” in comparison to eons of our changing planet. We do not fully understand how or why the climate changes, we make observations and learn from them.
We have been told over and over again that the climate is changing because carbon dioxide concentrations are rising and that’s the only reason given. Temperature and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have correlated nicely over the years at what appears to be a roughly one-to-one relationship (the graph below shows that nicely); however, when you look at the data there is something very interesting that seems to contradict what the scientists are using to extrapolate and predict future temperature rise. Look at the right side of this graph below and you’ll see that the CO2ppm has dramatically spiked over the last few years and it’s higher than the numbers on that graph now; however, there is no corresponding temperature spike and this cannot be explained away. The concentration of CO2 might be a contributing factor but it is clearly not the driving force behind the temperature rise otherwise the temperature would have spiked in a relatively equivalent manner. This fact has been almost entirely ignored in the activist science that’s being distributed to the public because it contradicts their apocalyptic narratives.
The real problem as I see it, and I think I’ve stated this a number of times, is that the data since the 1880’s is being extrapolated out to absurdity and ridiculous predictions are being made based on those extrapolations. The extrapolations and predictions are being presented to the public as “settled science” facts and those that speak out against this illogical nonsense are smeared as science deniers. These extrapolations and predictions are literally not facts, the public is being lied to.
Maybe in a few hundred or thousand years and lots more reasonably accurate data collection from weather stations around the globe we will actually be able to predict actual climate change 10-15 years in advance in a similar manner as meteorologists predict local weather patterns a week or so in advance.
TA wrote, “Maybe I’ll get to the 3rd high confidence item at another time.”
I look forward to reading it.
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“Please stop cherry picking. It’s most certainly true if you take in the full context of what I wrote.”
I asked you what you meant by embryonic and you refused to answer. The full context of what you wrote is even more incorrect.
“… we don’t have completely accurate information of how climate change actually works it’s still all theoretical”
This is the logical fallacy of an argument from ignorance. YOU don’t know how climate change works, and all of a sudden it become ‘we’. But as we saw previously you weren’t even aware of the Milankovitch cycles — a brilliant illustration of the scientific method. Milankovitch calculates three factors in the earth’s orbit that influence the ice ages and 50 years later Hays shows the data that proves the model. That it’s all ‘theoretical’ is just nonsense as I just explained above about global warming.
“Geologically speaking the last 200 years of scientific observation is nothing compared to how long the planet has been around and changing, climate science IS in it’s “embryonic stage” in comparison to eons of our changing planet.”
No, no, no! Seriously, how many times do I have to explain this? Every graph that you posted on this thread comes from a climate scientist who spent their professional careers drilling ice cores in Greenland and the Antarctic or drilling sea cores in the ocean floor. That data goes back millions of years and some goes back billions. You keep wanting the data to be divided into two parts: 200 years of scientific observation that you consider inadequate and millions of years of data back in time that you consider ‘real science’ as you said. The truth is that climate scientists are responsible for ALL of it.
“We do not fully understand how or why the climate changes, we make observations and learn from them.”
Stop saying ‘we’. YOU don’t understand how the climate changes. Science doesn’t work just by making ‘observations’. Understand occurs when empirical data that fits to a theoretical model.
“We have been told over and over again that the climate is changing because carbon dioxide concentrations are rising and that’s the only reason given.”
Seriously, I don’t even understand what this sentence says. Pick up a book, learn some physics. Dig into it a little. Plot some data. The information WHY CO2 is the cause of the current warming is out there. I can even recommend some fairly elementary texts if you like. It’s “the only reason given” because it’s the only reason that explains the data in all it’s manifestations. As I said, Manabe made predictions about the effects of CO2 that weren’t even verified until decades later.
“Temperature and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have correlated nicely over the years at what appears to be a roughly one-to-one relationship”
I don’t know what you mean by one-to-one relationship. I would ask but you would accuse me of sealioning. If you mean that it’s linear, it’s not. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is logarithmic. You can even prove this point for yourself if you actually plotted the data! And for the data you showed I want to make it absolutely clear that CO2 is NOT the reason for the cyclical nature of the data. In this case the Earth’s orbit is the pacemaker (or forcing, which is the correct term) and CO2 acts as feedback. That’s NOT what is happening now where CO2 and other greenhouse gases are doing the forcing.
“… what the scientists are using to extrapolate and predict future temperature rise.”
NO! I don’t know how many times you’re going to repeat this political talking point, but that’s not what happens. Scientists don’t extrapolate to predict future temperature rises. Since the future temperature rise clearly depends on future emissions, there is no way to know exactly what those emissions are going to be. Rather, scientists develop scenarios for emissions and then calculate what future temperatures may be for each scenario. And they give estimates of the uncertainty in their calculations. As in “IF CO2 rises according to this graph, THEN the temperature will likely be in this range.”
“Look at the right side of this graph below and you’ll see that the CO2ppm has dramatically spiked over the last few years and it’s higher than the numbers on that graph now; however, there is no corresponding temperature spike and this cannot be explained away.”
YES, look at the graph! I realize that you got this from Zoltar Speaks, but frankly I couldn’t track down what data is actually plotted here. If it has a title called “CO2 Contentrations” (sic) that should tell you something right there. Or that the blue line is bursting beyond the borders of the graph. Or that the temperature on the left is in friggin’ Fahrenheit in absolute units (scientists usually plot temperature anomaly in C). There is one place in particular where one can obtain ice core data that indicates CO2 changes over the last 200 years — Law Dome in Antarctica. But the data there only goes back about 90,000 years. It’s possible that someone simply slapped the Law Dome data onto another plot – I don’t know if that’s what happened here. But there’s no attribution associated with this graph.
However, all this misses the bigger picture. If you want very recent data of CO2 and temperature, you don’t use ice core data. There are nice CO2 measurements from Mauna Loa and lots of hard temperature data. PLOT IT! See how temperatures compare to CO2 concentrations. I’m even willing to explain how to calculate the temperature from the CO2 concentrations. Why don’t you take up my challenge and see for yourself?
“The real problem as I see it, and I think I’ve stated this a number of times ….”
You have. And it’s wrong every single time.
“is that the data since the 1880’s is being extrapolated out to absurdity and ridiculous predictions are being made based on those extrapolations.”
I really have no idea what you’re talking about. Give me an example in the scientific literature of how the data is being extrapolated. Seriously, have you ever looked at a scientific paper about climate change? There’s no extrapolation. And I have no idea what ridiculous predictions are being made by scientists. Don’t quote me something you read at Zoltar Speaks, show me something in the scientific literature.
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TA,
A couple of things have become crystal clear after reading through this conversation top-to-bottom again, you simply cannot or will not take what I’ve written on this topic in its full context; sobeit. Is this observed rhetorical trait because of bias, an agenda, arrogance, or comprehension, I really don’t know and I really don’t care.
Continuing this conversation when you are making unsupportable assumptions about me personally is a futile gesture of good faith conversation on my part. You seem to think that I’m supposed to address every single point you make and every question you pose in a manner that you agree with and if I don’t then I’m ignorant. The perceived arrogance your showing here is astounding.
This tumbling down the rabbit hole conversation between you and I ends here for me, that’s my choice.
Now it’s your turn to make a choice.
Steve
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TA said: “YES, look at the graph! I realize that you got this from Zoltar Speaks, but frankly I couldn’t track down what data is actually plotted here.”
This was difficult to track down but here it is. It seems to mostly be credited to this article by Zack Guido:
Click to access pdf2009febpastpresentclimate.pdf
He credits: Image is modified and courtesy of the Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences.
From internet archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090609205502/http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/historical02.jsp
“As recorded in ice cores from Vostok, Antarctica, the temperature near the South Pole has varied by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit during the last 350,000 years.”
I don’t know where they got the temperature data but the CO2 data is from ice cores from Vostok, Antarctica
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.html
https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/vostok.icecore.co2
There are several diagrams here but I cannot find the actual data points for temp. I spent too much time already.
http://www.climatedata.info/proxies/ice-cores/
To be clear, I’m not entering the debate, merely tracking down the origin of said graph.
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Excellent piece of detective work, thanks!
As is apparent from the Vostok record, the most recent piece of data is from 2342 BP (before present, where present is defined as 1950) when the CO2 concentration was 284.7. In other words, there is no data from Vostok that is even remotely close to 2007. This is not surprising since it’s so cold at Vostok, it rarely even snows.
The link to the Marian Koshland Science Museum is an especially interesting find because their graph has the word “Today” sitting next to the vertical line that’s sticking out beyond the range of the y-axis on the right. Since there is no “Today” data point from Vostok, it’s clear that someone just added the vertical line to illustrate what CO2 concentrations were in the early 2000’s in contrast to the variation during the Milankovitch cycles.
Which brings me back to my original point regarding CO2 concentrations and temperatures in the modern era. There are precise measurements of CO2 atmospheric concentrations dating back to the late 1950s from Mauna Loa (and multiple other locations since CO2 is a well-mixed gas). There are earlier records of CO2 from the Law Dome ice cores (also in Antarctica, but near the coast where it’s warmer so that it snows far more often than at Vostok). There are also multiple global data sets of mean surface temperature on the planet. For those intellectually curious about the relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperatures, plot the data yourself! It’s best to plot the CO2 concentrations in the form of the logarithm to the base 2 because of the band saturation effect for the 15 micron line of CO2. From the plot you’ll get an understanding of the temperature response to CO2.
(And for those who raise the question, this isn’t a proof that CO2 drives the temperature, it just gives the temperature response to a doubling of CO2. The proof comes from measuring the outgoing infrared spectrum from the Earth’s surface.)
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And just to be clear about the implications of this graph, where someone at the Koshland Center added a vertical line to illustrate the modern level of CO2 concentration compared to the previous Milakovitch cycles, this is what Steve wrote:
“Look at the right side of this graph below and you’ll see that the CO2ppm has dramatically spiked over the last few years and it’s higher than the numbers on that graph now; however, there is no corresponding temperature spike and this cannot be explained away. The concentration of CO2 might be a contributing factor but it is clearly not the driving force behind the temperature rise otherwise the temperature would have spiked in a relatively equivalent manner. This fact has been almost entirely ignored in the activist science that’s being distributed to the public because it contradicts their apocalyptic narratives.”
Of course there is a corresponding temperature spike in the modern era that this blog has already acknowledged. This is what happens when political arguments are more important than scientific fact.
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Steve,
It’s your choice not to continue this discussion. I’m fine with that. But I want to point out a few things first.
You have made unsupportable assumptions about both climate science and climate scientists. You have made provably false statements in this blog post. When you make statements like “it’s still all theoretical” or that it “is just a bunch of correlation = causation arrogant science-speak bull shit”, this is the logical fallacy of an argument from ignorance. I’m not saying that YOU’RE ignorant, I’m saying that’s what the logical fallacy is. Frankly, I have no idea what your educational level is (nor do I especially care).
But you seem like a smart fellow. I wouldn’t bother trying to have a science discussion with you if I didn’t think you were capable of understanding. Rather, I’m asking you to step up your game. DO BETTER! Learn some physics. Look at the data. Take the Fourier transform of the Milankovitch cycles and prove to yourself that we should be in a cooling state of the climate right now if one only considered natural variability. If you make accusations that scientists are simply extrapolating from past data, then back that opinion up by pointing to the scientific literature. Science can be brutal sometimes. If you can’t back up your claims, there is no reason to take your opinions seriously.
If you think that’s arrogance, so be it. Science doesn’t really care if your feelings get hurt or not. This isn’t some post-modernist touchy-feely feel-good dorm room discussion. You have a choice in life: you can continue to play the victim here and make ridiculous statement about wearing the Star of David on your label or you can pick up a book and learn some science. In particular, I’m asking exactly the opposite of being passive about understanding climate change. Ask questions, question the model, plot the data, take that FFT! DO BETTER!
The next time you go outside and the weather is nice and the sun feels warm on your face, ask yourself this question: The incoming solar radiation is far too little to explain the world I’m seeing; why is it that I’m not buried under miles of ice? Hopefully that would inspire you to learn about the Stefan-Boltzmann equation if you don’t know what it is already.
Thanks for the opportunity to give another perspective on what you wrote. I appreciate it. And if you ever want to know why WE know that the greenhouse gases that are causing the warming come from fossil fuels, I’d be happy to explain.
Cheers!
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For your reading pleasure…
“The Climate Is Changing, And Human Activities Are The Cause”: How, Exactly, Do We Know That?
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The title of the blog post is exactly the question every thinking person should be asking: How do we know human activities are the cause of the current warming trend? The problem is that the author, an uh uh lawyer, makes no attempt to answer it. Instead he sets up a strawman argument, “If you address my question — what is the proof? — to the UN ..” Wait …. whut? To the UN? Not to a climate scientist, or a physicist or a geologist? Not to a chemist or a geophysicist or even an astrophysicist?
So let’s ask a climate physicist how do we know that human activities are the cause of the current warming trend. In fact, let’s ask Raymond Pierrehumbert, probably one of the leading experts in the world on radiation transfer physics. Pierrehumbert is an interesting fellow in his own right — Not only has he examined climate physics throughout the 4.5 billion years here on Earth, but he’s also studied climate on Venus and Mars and Titan, a moon of Saturn. Now he’s studying climate on exoplanets — planets outside our solar system. Here’s one of his papers and in particular you should look at Figure 3a.
Click to access PhysTodayRT2011.pdf
The temperature on any planet is a balance between the incoming radiation in the visible wavelengths and the outgoing radiation in the infrared. Figure 3a shows the infrared spectrum on Earth (figures 3b and 3c are for Mars and Venus respectively) as a function of wavenumber. The red curve is the measurement by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder looking down on the planet and the blue curve is the model calculation. There are also a series of blackbody spectra labeled 285K, 260K etc.. What the figure shows is that at the vibrational wavenumber of 667 cm-1 (or a wavelength of 15 microns) there is a hole in the outgoing spectrum for CO2 that reaches down to 220K (And, there are also holes for water vapor and ozone).
Now 285K is around 53F or roughly the temperature on the Earth’s surface, while 220K is around -60F or around the temperature of a point in the atmosphere around 11km up. The 15 micron line of CO2 is what’s called optically thick: radiation from the Earth’s surface is absorbed by CO2 just above the surface, then reradiated step-by-step through the atmosphere until it gets to the point that the radiation is no longer ‘thick’ and is emitted out to space.
As this hole in the spectrum indicates, infrared emission is reradiated back to the Earth rather than passing through to space. The net incoming solar flux is about 240 w/m2 and if the outgoing infrared, integrated over wavenumber, is only 239 w/m2, the Earth has to warm until the incoming and outgoing energy fluxes are equal. The more CO2 (as well as other greenhouse gases you put into the atmosphere, the bigger the holes (see this paper by Harries for example https://www.nature.com/articles/35066553)
Where does most of the excess incoming solar flux wind up? Some of it warms the surface of the planet as well as the atmosphere, some serves to melt ice, but roughly 90% of the heat winds up in the ocean. That data can be found here: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/global-ocean-heat-content/ Notice the units used here are 10^22 joules! That’s an enormous amount of heat. And we know that the excess heat is not coming from the sun because the solar flux has been decreasing very slightly ever since the late 1950s.
So that’s how we know that human activities are the cause of the current warming trend.
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Since your comment is addressing the Manhattan Contrarian’s blog post, why not post your comment over on that blog post, that’s where the conversation about that blog post is taking place? I thought it was an interesting related read and I am kind of curious what kind of response you’d get from the blogger and his commenters.
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I do not have an infinite amount of time. If you want to discuss on this blog any of the arguments you read about, or the ones that you made yourself on that blog, we can do that (time permitting).
In the meantime, here’s a simple calculation. Say the energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere is 1 w/m^2. Given the surface area of the planet and for a length of time of one year, how much heat does the Earth absorb? An order of magnitude estimate is good enough. Compare that to the measured ocean heat content from ARGO floats.
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TA wrote, “If you want to discuss on this blog any of the arguments you read about, or the ones that you made yourself on that blog, we can do that (time permitting).”
I don’t know if you’re still following this comment thread, but if by chance you are there is something that you might find interesting to read. If you want to discuss the contents of what I’m referring you to please do so over there in that comment thread and don’t bring it back here. I think you’d find the author of the post I’m referring you to, Ryan Harkens, to be quite reasonable.
Here is the LINK to the post that includes the commentary thread.
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The Manhattan Contrarian has another related blog post, COP26 And The Hubris Of Our Political Overlords.
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