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« Another Attenborough tragedy porn exposé | Main | More walrus articles »
Thursday
Apr182019

Attenborough does climate

This is an open thread for discussion of tonight's David Attenborough does climate thingy.


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Reader Comments (168)

Tiny,
Good to see you again. Still making stuff up about me, I see.

Apr 19, 2019 at 11:27 AM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

So apart from the bits about bats, heatwaves, wildfires, storms & floods, polar ice caps, sea level rises, corals, the claims that fossil-fuel funded deniers are making politicians reluctant to act, the credibility given to climate model and sea level increase predictions, the reference to a magical 1.5oC threshold with no context, and the apparent absence of any benefits from higher temperatures, did anyone spot any possible flaws with this programme?

Apr 19, 2019 at 11:48 AM | Unregistered CommenterDaveS

Attenborough probably has been deceptive his whole career.
Greta upset with criticism is irrelevant.
It is delusional and evil for her handlers to have manipulated her into the position that she actually thinks she is offering serious advice that the world should take seriously.
She has said and done nothing that is relevant to how people should live.
Greta is a teen version of America's Occasio-Cortez.
A self important highly verbal ignoramus.

Apr 19, 2019 at 12:10 PM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

ATTP, There is no empirical evidence to support the CAGW hypothesis. Flawed computer models have no value whatsoever. Furthermore, the climate has been both colder (LIA, frozen Thames and Hudson) and hotter (MWP, dairy farming in Greenland) within human recorded history. These are facts - established centuries before the industrial revolution. The cycle extends further into the past - the dark ages and the Roman warm period. We are simply at the midway point between the highs and lows, thankfully warming!

Furthermore, there is empirical evidence that CO2 has a negligible effect on the climate. The CAGW hypothesis relies on a narrow view of radiative physics, where IR radiation is absorbed in 3 narrow bands, completely ignoring the dominant effect of water vapour and the mechanics of conduction and convection. Check the evidence - the climate of the arid deserts has not altered in recorded history, where the effect of water vapour is not present. If CO2 was the "control knob" of climate you would see the climate of deserts converge with that of the humid tropics - but this has not happened.

We do not need less CO2, we need more. It increases plant growth, which is essential for all animal life on Earth.

I am staggered that the CAGW hypothesis continues to perpetuate, influencing our young and uneducated to break the law and seeking to divert trillions of dollars away from human development. It is the greatest scientific fraud in history and has cost trillions, affected billions and killed millions. Why? Follow the money.....

Apr 19, 2019 at 12:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterRoger Longstaff

ATTP, There is no empirical evidence to support the CAGW hypothesis. Flawed computer models have no value whatsoever. Furthermore, the climate has been both colder (LIA, frozen Thames and Hudson) and hotter (MWP, dairy farming in Greenland) within human recorded history. These are facts - established centuries before the industrial revolution. The cycle extends further into the past - the dark ages and the Roman warm period. We are simply at the midway point between the highs and lows, thankfully warming!

Furthermore, there is empirical evidence that CO2 has a negligible effect on the climate. The CAGW hypothesis relies on a narrow view of radiative physics, where IR radiation is absorbed in 3 narrow bands, completely ignoring the dominant effect of water vapour and the mechanics of conduction and convection. Check the evidence - the climate of the arid deserts has not altered in recorded history, where the effect of water vapour is not present. If CO2 was the "control knob" of climate you would see the climate of deserts converge with that of the humid tropics - but this has not happened.

We do not need less CO2, we need more. It increases plant growth, which is essential for all animal life on Earth.

I am staggered that the CAGW hypothesis continues to perpetuate, influencing our young and uneducated to break the law and seeking to divert trillions of dollars away from human development. It is the greatest scientific fraud in history and has cost trillions, affected billions and killed millions. Why? Follow the money.....

Apr 19, 2019 at 12:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterRoger Longstaff

ATTP - so you've started telling your acolytes how small your CO2 footprint is these days? You've been sharing tips to reduce CO2? You declated when you stopped flying? I'm impressed... unless of course your site is just the same as it always was - a hangout for hypocrites moaning about sceptics. I stayed as long as I did to try and work out if there was anything deeper behind your support for CAGW but there wasn't a sign of it. Like most warmists you're just waiting for the government to tell other people to sort it.

Apr 19, 2019 at 12:56 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

Roger,
completely ignoring the dominant effect of water vapour and the mechanics of conduction and convection.
This is simply not true. Water vapour is a well known feedback response. Some of the energy is indeed transported from the surface via non-radiative processes. It's well known that the typical temperature gradient in the atmosphere is set by convection.

Tiny,
I don't support CAGW.

Apr 19, 2019 at 1:04 PM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

I see that the BBC web site has categorised this program as "Entertainment and Arts"

'nuff said

Apr 19, 2019 at 1:13 PM | Unregistered Commenterfred

Minty (Apr 19, 2019 at 10:21 AM): perhaps he saw what happened to David Bellamy and Johnny Ball, who both dared to question the narrative, and decided he wanted to remain a “national treasure”….

Apr 19, 2019 at 1:38 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

ATTP - Very well, I will repeat my arguments without the words you dispute, and without the rant. Now, please can you tell me what is wrong with it?

There is no empirical evidence to support the CAGW hypothesis. Flawed computer models have no value whatsoever. Furthermore, the climate has been both colder (LIA, frozen Thames and Hudson) and hotter (MWP, dairy farming in Greenland) within human recorded history. These are facts - established centuries before the industrial revolution. The cycle extends further into the past - the dark ages and the Roman warm period. We are simply at the midway point between the highs and lows, thankfully warming!

Furthermore, there IS empirical evidence that CO2 has a negligible effect on the climate. The CAGW hypothesis relies on a narrow view of radiative physics, where IR radiation is absorbed in 3 narrow bands, whereas the effect of water in the atmosphere evidently dominates. Check the evidence - the climate of the arid deserts has not altered in recorded history, where the effect of water vapour is not present. If CO2 was the "control knob" of climate you would see the climate of deserts converge with that of the humid tropics - but this has not happened.

We do not need less CO2, we need more. It increases plant growth, which is essential for all animal life on Earth.

Apr 19, 2019 at 1:45 PM | Unregistered CommenterRoger Longstaff

This is currently in moderation at Homewood's place...

Attenborough shows this graph of global temperature trends, (though omitting satellite temperature measurements which show no increase since 1998). But he fails to explain why temperatures rose sharply in the early 20thC, long before CO2 emissions began to rise significantly.

This is meant to be a factual rebuttal, right? The trend in the satellite data post 1998 is indistinguishable from that before, and showing the satellite data alongside HADCRUT would have made little difference to the message…

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/trend

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/mean:12/plot/hadcrut4gl/mean:12/offset:-0.2

In any event, daily temperature extremes are not increasing, in the UK at least. The hottest day in CET was 33.2C, set in 1976, and equalled in 1990. No day last summer got anywhere near that.

Breathtaking cherry pick there! CET is a subset of the temperature record, using just three stations. In fact according to the Met Office, 2018 was the hottest summer in England and tied for the UK as a whole.

Proper forestry experts, which Michael Mann most definitely is not, consistently maintain that the real reason for the severity of recent fires in California is the build up of undergrowth, dead trees, thickets of small trees, and overcrowded forests generally, all of which act as fuel. This is the result of decades of fire suppression after the war, not climate change.

Nope. The US National Climate Assessment was clear on this, area burned and suppression costs have risen fourfold over thirty years and 'a warm, dry climate has increased the area burned across the Nation'.

https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/

See also https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/113/42/11770.full.pdf

Finally Attenborough gets onto corals, and makes this astonishing statement:
“In the last three years, repeated heat stress has caused a third of the world’s corals to first bleach, and then die”

There is absolutely no evidence for this, and I have not even seen that claimed about the Great Barrier Reef.

Try this: It is now confirmed that about 29% of shallow water corals died from bleaching during 2016, up from the previous estimate of 22%, with most mortality occurring in the northern parts of the reef.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/29/coral-bleaching-on-great-barrier-reef-worse-than-expected-surveys-show

See also https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21707

Change the facts - indeed.

Apr 19, 2019 at 1:49 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

It was an unbelievably tedious show. A few things to write about though.

Apr 19, 2019 at 1:56 PM | Registered CommenterBishop Hill

‭You know what to do ,OfCom 0300 123 3333‬.

Apr 19, 2019 at 2:57 PM | Unregistered CommenterJamspid . I’m back LOL

@ATTP. Ken: Now that I have looked at your blog I can see that you have likely swallowed the anthropogenic attribution explanation of the present warm period hook line an sinker. Let's for one minute agree that carbon dioxide emissions are responsible at present. Now please explain what mechanisms you think were in play for say the last three or four warm periods starting with then MWP and the RWP. You may quote from Hubert Lamb if you like. Regards Peter

Apr 19, 2019 at 4:10 PM | Unregistered CommenterPeter F Gill

Peter,
There are a large number of factors that can influence our climate. For example, CO2 emissions (both anthropogenic and natural), changes in solar forcing, volcanoes, and even internally-driven processes. It is, however, much more difficult to make causal claims about periods in the past than it is now. Generally, it is thought that the LIA was a combination of reduced solar forcing and fewer volcanoes. The MWP was probably not globally synchronous, so almost certainly wasn't as warm globally as it is now. However, there were regions that appear to have been quite warm and this may be a combination of changes in solar forcing, and internal variability. None of the past periods particularly challenge our understanding of anthropogenically-driven warming. If anything, studying these past periods provides further information about how our climate can change and actually strengthens our understanding of AGW, rather than weakening it.

Something else to bear in mind is that many of the radiative perturbations associated with some of the recent periods of climate change (MWP, LIA, for example) were quite small. Given this, they provide some indication that our climate's response to radiative perturbations is very unlikely to be very small.

Apr 19, 2019 at 4:43 PM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/19/friday-funny-attenbollocks/

Includes Cartoon by Josh

Apr 19, 2019 at 6:04 PM | Unregistered Commentergolf charlie

ATTP, A quick visit to Paul Homewood's site shows that one of the misrepresentations in the program was Mann propagating the usual falsehoods about extreme events. Homewood does a good job debunking this. It is easy to do because the science and the supporting historical data is pretty clear.

It's really become a talking point for Mann and its quite wrong.

Apr 19, 2019 at 6:06 PM | Unregistered Commenterdpy6629

ATTP doesn't believe in CAGW but he's spent years being uncritical of science that claims AGW will be catastrophic. He spouts tosh about what caused the MWP and LIA etc because nobody knows the answer. If it was as simple as he pretends it would be possible to model the last 10,000 years and they can't even model the last 1000. All the main drivers are recorded in ice or proxies... assuming the proxies are accurate and who would know given that the climate scientists don't do replication, quality control or basic management of the science. Basically ATTP is just a cheerleader for dud science.

Apr 19, 2019 at 6:12 PM | Unregistered CommenterTinyCO2

"This is simply not true. Water vapour is a well known feedback response."

If this is true then it would happen for any place that is relatively warmer and has oceans.
Therefore we should have a definitive test as to whether climate change is newsworthy:

There should be a relative hotspot in the atmosphere over the tropics (where it is hotter). And it's magnitude should tell us if the warming is fast enough to be problematic.

Please show us the Tropical Hotspot.

Apr 19, 2019 at 6:17 PM | Registered CommenterM Courtney

Alex Cull has started transcribing the whole programme at
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/2019/20190418_cc
While he's having a break I'm continuing his work in comments at
https://cliscep.com/2019/04/18/climate-change-the-lies-propaganda-misinformation-disinformation-and-emotional-blackmail-part-i-of-many/
We hope to have the whole thing up at Alex's site this weekend

Apr 19, 2019 at 7:40 PM | Unregistered Commentergeoff chambers

perhaps he saw what happened to David Bellamy

Bellamy stopped doing science.

Apr 19, 2019 at 7:44 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

dpy,
Doesn't seem like a very good debunking to me. There is indeed a relationship between storm intensity and sea surface temperature. We also know that AGW is leading to higher sea surface temperature and makes it more likely that we could get an intense tropical storm (we expect an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme cyclones, even if there isn't an increase in the frequency of cyclones overall). Sea level rise is also enhancing storm surge and we can definitively associate sea level rise with AGW. Higher temperatures also increases the water vapour content in the atmosphere and means that these storms can be associated with more extreme precipitation. Which bit of basic physics are you disputing?

Apr 19, 2019 at 7:55 PM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

There's more science in David Bellamy's toenail clippings than the entirety of Monbiot's life to date.

Apr 19, 2019 at 7:57 PM | Unregistered Commenterfred

M Courtney,
There should be a relative hotspot in the atmosphere over the tropics (where it is hotter). And it's magnitude should tell us if the warming is fast enough to be problematic.
The tropospheric hot spot is a consequence of lapse rate feedback which leads to more warming a higher altitudes than on the surface. It's independent of what is causing the warming and is essentially an indicator of a negative feedback. If there really is no hit spot, then we would expect slightly more surface warming, rather than slightly less.

Apr 19, 2019 at 8:07 PM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

Fred,

I am devastated by that well thought out and thoroughly researched, strictly evidence-based rebuttal.

It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in your palm. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist.

Monbiot's right though, isn't he?

Apr 19, 2019 at 8:17 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

For M Courtney...

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL035333

Apr 19, 2019 at 8:19 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

Wow, Mr Clarke, you use Monbiot as a reference...!?

Apr 19, 2019 at 9:08 PM | Registered CommenterRadical Rodent

On not being nasty to Greta Thunberg:
She has the culminating five minutes of the programme to herself. She didn't have to do it. I described in a comment at
https://wordpress.com/comment/cliscep.com/34650
the origins of her activism. Briefly: last August her mother published a book berating the Swedish government for not doing enough a) about her daughter's mental problems and b) about the coming climate catastrophe. Two months later her daughter started her strike, and the paperback version of mum's book (in Swedish) has just come out with a photo of Greta on the cover. It's not being translated, but a follow up book by Greta and her mother will be. I think being rude about the little twit is absolutely the best thing we can do to save the planet.

Apr 19, 2019 at 9:31 PM | Unregistered Commentergeoff chambers

Wow, Mr Clarke, you use Monbiot as a reference...!?

I just did, yes. For the click-averse, David Bellamy wrote an embarrassing letter to New Scientist claiming that the majority of glaciers are advancing, a claim based on nothing more than a highly dubious fringe website.

So last week I telephoned the World Glacier Monitoring Service and read out Bellamy’s letter. I don’t think the response would have been published in Nature, but it had the scientific virtue of clarity. “This is complete bullshit.” A few hours later, they sent me an email.

“Despite his scientific reputation, he makes all the mistakes that are possible”. He had cited data which was simply false, failed to provide references, completely misunderstood the scientific context and neglected current scientific literature. The latest studies show unequivocally that most of the world’s glaciers are retreating.

I think the reason Monbiot attracts opprobrium in some circles is simple: he is usually right.

Apr 19, 2019 at 9:45 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

Not to go off topic
but yes that was a mistake that David Bellamy made
However AFAIK Monbiots has much more frequently made such mistakes.
I ould point to the way for years he was dead set against nuclear
..said lot of things about it
..and then changed his mind.

BTW On Homewood's blog posts with lots of links in , automatically go into premoderation.

Apr 19, 2019 at 9:54 PM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

@Phil Clarke

thanks for Monbiot link - I had no idea he was such a busy guy, wonder what his fee is!!

Events
George will be appearing at the following events:

George Monbiot – Connecting the dots between climate emergency, consumerism and mental health, at the Anson Rooms, Bristol
Wednesday 1st May 2019, 7.00pm-10.00pm
Venue: Anson Rooms, Richmond Building, 105 Queens Rd, Bristol, BS8 1LN
Tickets Sliding scale – pay what you want, from £12.00-£20.00 (80 student tickets available at £10.00)
More information

George Monbiot & George Marshall: How to Break the Silence on Environmental Collapse, at Festival of Debate, Sheffield (in association with Sheffield Climate Alliance)
Thursday 16th May 2019, 7.00pm-9.00pm
Venue: SU Auditorium, Sheffield Students’ Union, Western Bank,
Sheffield, S10 2TG (no. 120 on campus map)
Tickets £13.00-£10.00 (book here)
More information

George Monbiot – Annual Lecture for Biodiversity Network, University of Oxford: Can We Prevent Climate Breakdown by Restoring Ecosystems?
Thursday 20th June 2019, 5.00pm
Venue: University of Oxford, details tbc
Tickets free, but booking essential

Apr 19, 2019 at 10:04 PM | Unregistered Commenterdougie

Alex Thomson - C4 "News" chief correspondent says Attenborough prog should be "shown in every primary and secondary school everywhere forever" really.

Apr 19, 2019 at 10:19 PM | Registered Commentertomo

BTW On Homewood's blog posts with lots of links in , automatically go into premoderation.

No, he has shut me down, apparently he has no desire to go around the houses, and my most recent contribution had no bearing on the post.

I am not sure either point has much merit, judge for yourself …

===============================================================

UAH - with trend

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/plot/uah6/from:1998/trend

The only way you can support a claim of 'no change since 1998' is by examining the points at the start and end of the period and throwing out everything inbetween. If an unusually warm February day and an unusually cold July day were the same temperature, you would presumably deny the arrival of summer.

In any event, daily temperature extremes are not increasing, in the UK at least. The hottest day in CET was 33.2C, set in 1976, and equalled in 1990. No day last summer got anywhere near that

Given the 1976 maximum occurred in July/August and the 2018 heat wave peaked in April, that conclusion simply does not follow. Last year's heatwave shattered records for the time of year.

As for “drier climate” what planet are you on? The US is much wetter than it was prior to 1970.

A point made by Michael Mann. Just maybe a nationwide average does not preclude the existence of areas made drier and warmer…

Increased forest fire activity across the western United States in recent decades has contributed to widespread forest mortality, carbon emissions, periods of degraded air quality, and substantial fire suppression expenditures. Although numerous factors aided the recent rise in fire activity, observed warming and drying have significantly increased fire-season fuel aridity, fostering a more favorable fire environment across forested systems. We demonstrate that human-caused climate change caused over half of the documented increases in fuel aridity since the 1970s and doubled the cumulative forest fire area since 1984. This analysis suggests that anthropogenic climate change will continue to chronically enhance the potential for western US forest fire activity while fuels are not limiting.

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11770

See also Human-caused climate change is now a key driver of forest fire activity in the western United States

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11649

Corals – instead of believing the Guardian, try reading what the scientists themselves say:

Well, that is just one scientist, expressing an opinion for the GWPF. I thought you might follow the links to the report, but hey-ho.

Great Barrier Reef saw huge losses from 2016 heatwave

One-third of reefs in the world’s largest coral system were transformed by warmed waters, finds comprehensive underwater and aerial survey.

Extreme heat in 2016 damaged Australia’s Great Barrier Reef much more substantially than initial surveys indicated, according to ongoing studies that have tracked the health of the coral treasure. The heatwave caused massive bleaching of the corals that captured worldwide attention.

In a paper published on 18 April in Nature, researchers report1 that severe bleaching on an unprecedented scale triggered mass death of corals. This drastically changed the species composition of almost one-third of the 3,863 individual reefs that comprise the Great Barrier Reef.

The world’s largest coral reef is unlikely to recover soon. The damage is a harbinger of what a warming future might hold for a wealth of tropical reef ecosystems, says lead study author Terry Hughes, director of the coral-reef centre at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. “If we fail to curb climate change, and global temperatures rise far above 2 °C [above the pre-industrial level], we will lose the benefits they provide to hundreds of millions of people.”

Nature News

Apr 19, 2019 at 10:44 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

@geoff chambers
lille Greta got the last 5 minutes? sheesh .... was she dressed up as Pippi Longstocking or Santa Lucia?

dougie - iirc Monbiot is utterly OCD about listing his income since he goes around accusing others of being in the pocket of corporate interests etc... it's on the web site somewhere.

@PC why not run you own blog then?

Apr 19, 2019 at 10:46 PM | Registered Commentertomo

thanks for Monbiot link - I had no idea he was such a busy guy, wonder what his fee is!!

This is a comprehensive list of my sources of income, and any hospitality or gifts I receive (except from family and friends), beginning in September 2011.

I have opened this registry because I believe that journalists should live by the standards they demand of others, among which are accountability and transparency. One of the most important questions in public life, which is asked less often than it should be, is “who pays?”.

https://www.monbiot.com/registry-of-interests/

Apr 19, 2019 at 10:50 PM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

Mr Moonbot doesn't care for direct challenges.

His chums at the BBC would love him as a regular panelist on "Question Time" - but George treasures his safe space.

Apr 19, 2019 at 10:57 PM | Unregistered Commenterfred

ATTP, what you are calling basic science is just vague verbal formulations without quantification. It's temperature gradients that drive storms not absolute temperature. The IPCC says attribution of extreme events is speculative. Homewood just cites some of this evidence. He's right and Mann is wrong as he often is

Apr 20, 2019 at 12:21 AM | Unregistered CommenterDpy6629

ATTP," It's independent of what is causing the warming..." Agreed..."and is essentially an indicator of a negative feedback."
No.
That is not the physics of this universe.

More heat trapped by more absorbing molecules (H2O or CO2) means more warming. - the opposite of a negative feedback - a positive feedback.
Half of the extra captured heat still goes up (escapes to space) but half goes down (warms us).

Look at the Dessler paper that Stormfront Phil linked. It shows that the physics works as expected.
And also that the magnitude is not a problem.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL035333

This should be self-evident. The effect is not dependent on the initial cause of warming. Even just being nearer the Sun (like the Equator vs 35 degrees latitude) should cause the effect. But no-one notices it.

97& of climatologists knew about AGW since Arrhenius. And they knew it was not significant. They were right.

Extra funding to disagree has been vocal but unscientific. That's why the "paid for" science has failed to refine climate sensitivity since the first IPCC report.

97% of paid for scientists are wrong. If they were right they would follow the scientific method and would have made some progress in the last quarter century.

Apr 20, 2019 at 12:40 AM | Registered CommenterM Courtney

I remember a debate amongst Astronomers ten years ago. Astronomers knew that the key to whether Carbon Dioxide causes Global Warming or not, would be found if a formula worked for the Greenhouse effect on both Venus and Mars. An attempt using the assumed radiant heat absorption greenhouse effect on Mars of 3 Kelvin, transferred to Venus, failed, and the scientist concerned gave up on Venus. Then we had a German scientist who found out why, with the paper (Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, Gerhard Gerlich, 2009).
Then the paper (Unified Theory of Climate, Ned Nikolov & Karl Zeller, 2011) provided the formula that works for both Venus and Mars, proving that the atmospheric mass/gravity/pressure Greenhouse effect of James Clark Maxwell, found in 1888, is correct. Gravity pulling molecules downward producing the heat gradient. Therefore the climate sensitivity of CO2 is proven to be zero. As Donald Trump says “it’s a Hoax”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/05/maxwell-established-that-gravity.html

Apr 20, 2019 at 1:27 AM | Unregistered CommenterRichard Pinder

"Some of the energy is indeed transported from the surface via non-radiative processes."

A small correction ATTP, that should be:

"Most of the energy is indeed transported from the surface via non-radiative processes."

But that is of course standard atmospheric physics, not exactly your strongest point, perhaps?

Apr 20, 2019 at 9:10 AM | Unregistered Commentertty

@ATTP Ken. I suspect your head is in the stars rather than down here on Earth. I recall that early on IPCC recognised the MWP but it became an embarrassment because of the need for a CO2 driver so various folks including the hockey team decided that it must go. One way was simply to model it out. Another was to say that it was a local effect. Actually there is lots of evidence that it was worldwide. You really need to talk to some geologists rather than modellers. Anyway what about the RWP and those before it. Are you extending your argument that they were all local affairs? Whilst I have studied meteorology since I started flying in the early 1960s I must admit that I did not take an interest in climate change mechanisms until circa 1990. I waited about 20 years before I started giving talks on the subject. So with so little experience your explanation: "There are a large number of factors that can influence our climate. For example, CO2 emissions (both anthropogenic and natural), changes in solar forcing, volcanoes, and even internally-driven processes. It is, however, much more difficult to make causal claims about periods in the past than it is now." is very helpful. Actually when I was arranging for Alan Thorpe, Director of then Hadley Centre in the early 2000s to produce a monograph on climate modelling for the IOP he made similar helpful comments but then largely concentrated as you do on anthropogenic emissions. The big flaw in this is Henry's Law, the other in my simple minded view is the massive overestimate of the sensitivity for CO2. If you want to put more effort in on climate mechanisms I would recommend that you have a look at work on Sun Earth magnetosphere interactions and the work of Svensmark, Zharkova and others.

Apr 20, 2019 at 9:16 AM | Unregistered CommenterPeter F Gill

M Courtney,
The hot spot is an indicator of more warming aloft than on the surface. It's essentially a consequence of lapse rate feedback which is a negative feedback because in its absence the surface would warm more.

Apr 20, 2019 at 9:20 AM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

tty,
Pretty sure that the surface radiates more energy than it loses via non-radiative processes.

Peter,


The big flaw in this is Henry's Law

Why is this the big flaw? I understand Henry's law quite well, but am not sure what you mean by this.


If you want to put more effort in on climate mechanisms I would recommend that you have a look at work on Sun Earth magnetosphere interactions and the work of Svensmark, Zharkova and others.

I have looked at these people's work. The recent warming is almost certainly not pre-dominantly due to Sun-Earth magnetosphere interactions. Zharkova, in particular, is simply studying solar cycles and not climate. There is clearly a link between solar activity and climate, but Zharkova's work provides no indication that this impact is any different to what we would expect (i.e., small compared to our impact).

Apr 20, 2019 at 9:26 AM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

@ATTP Ken I shall try to explain to you as I did with Paul Hardaker some years ago. In a warm period on Earth (and irrespective of mechanism) the seas heat up a little. As the solubility of CO2 varies inversely with temperature CO2 bubbles out. In circumstances when this effect is in control when Ken lights a fire in his garden, drives his car down to the shops or takes a flight from Edinburgh and in so doing emits CO2 then because of Henry's Law an equivalent amount of CO2 that would have come out of the sea to contribute to the correct partial pressure balance of CO2 is .suppressed. Of course as there is not quick enough mixing there are of course imbalances. It is basically for this reason that the C12/C13 isotope argument is wrong.
As regards Svensmark and Zharcova you have missed the main point which concerns cooling not warming. I suggest that you read more into the detail of their work.
It looks like the start of your most recent piece was directed at someone else. I may have misinterpreted what you said but the hot spot predicted by the CO2 hypothesis has not been found. Other hypotheses faced with a failure of this nature would have been abandoned.

Apr 20, 2019 at 9:53 AM | Unregistered CommenterPeter F Gill

Peter,
I worked through ocean carbonate chemistry in some detail (here) and you certainly can't explain the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 as pre-dominantly being ocean outgassing, or simply a suppressing of ocean outgassing.


As regards Svensmark and Zharcova you have missed the main point which concerns cooling not warming.

Well, I know people have used Zharkova's work to suggest that we're heading into a cooling phase. They're almost certainly wrong. The potential reduction in solar forcing is about the same as the increase in anthropogenic forcing that we would induce with one decades worth of emissions. In other words, we probably wouldn't really notice, although it would probably lead to slightly slower warming.


I may have misinterpreted what you said but the hot spot predicted by the CO2 hypothesis has not been found. Other hypotheses faced with a failure of this nature would have been abandoned.

The hot spot is not predicted by the CO2 hypothesis. It would be expected for any kind of warming. Its potential absence does not challenge CO2-driven warming. However, you could try reading Sherwood's contribution here. Not only is the data possibly not good enough to be confident about its absence, if it is absent we would expect slightly more surface warming than if it is present.

Apr 20, 2019 at 10:01 AM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

Then we had a German scientist who found out why, with the paper (Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, Gerhard Gerlich, 2009).

In this journal, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner claim to have falsified the existence of an atmospheric greenhouse effect. Here, we show that their methods, logic, and conclusions are in error. Their most significant errors include trying to apply the Clausius statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to only one side of a heat transfer process rather than the entire process, and systematically ignoring most non-radiative heat flows applicable to the Earth's surface and atmosphere. They claim that radiative heat transfer from a colder atmosphere to a warmer surface is forbidden, ignoring the larger transfer in the other direction which makes the complete process allowed. Further, by ignoring heat capacity and non-radiative heat flows, they claim that radiative balance requires that the surface cool by 100 K or more at night, an obvious absurdity induced by an unphysical assumption. This comment concentrates on these two major points, while also taking note of some of Gerlich and Tscheuschner's other errors and misunderstandings.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263873234_Comment_on_falsification_of_the_atmospheric_co2_greenhouse_effects_within_the_frame_of_physics

Did you mean Nikolov and Zeller or Den Volokin and Lark ReLlez? Crazy names, crazy guys!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/19/scientists-published-climate-research-under-fake-names-then-they-were-caught/?utm_term=.a479854a0b58

Apr 20, 2019 at 10:02 AM | Unregistered CommenterPhil Clarke

I said "On Homewood's blog posts with lots of links in , automatically go into premoderation."
@PC replied "No ..."
FFS that is just denial from PC
What I said was right ...I have such posts in PH's go into moderation all the time
and Phil did indeed submit a post which went into moderation
and then appeared
In a later post PH chose to enforce the rule about sticking to the topic ..so modded a PC post from PC

Apr 20, 2019 at 10:15 AM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

@ATTP Ken I can see my simplified analysis did not satisfy you and I guess that if I invoke Murry Salby's analyses too I will be wasting my time. Clearly your mind is made up. In my case my mind is open to the possibility that in the next 5 to 10 years we will be able to determine if Zharcova's predictions are right or wrong. Sadly the same cannot be said for the CO2 set of hypotheses as they have no predictions other than temperature increases and these have consistently proved to be overestimates by the models. Now I think I shall leave this space and get on with Easter and the fine weather.

Apr 20, 2019 at 10:27 AM | Unregistered CommenterPeter F Gill

Should we speak up if White Supremacism cult had taken over the BBC
..and our streets ?

.. Well it certainly seems like the #GreenDreamSupremacism Cult has taken over the BBC and our streets
.. therefore we are right to speak up.

Apr 20, 2019 at 10:32 AM | Registered Commenterstewgreen

Peter,
Murry Salby's analysis is appalling bad. I'm don't think "wasting your time" is the right way to describe invoking it. There was actually a lengthy Discussion Thread about this very topic.

Apr 20, 2019 at 10:36 AM | Unregistered Commenter...and Then There's Physics

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