Discussion > Global warming Nazis
Is there anywhere on this site that I can go to without it being driven, or should I say interupted, by Entropic man? I'm getting dizzy.
David Porter
GeronimoIs Martin A incapable of researching this for himself?
Feb 24, 2014 at 6:10 PM Entropic man
Well, Martin A is not in fact completely incapable of looking things up for himself. But you might recall that he wrote:
EM - thanks for that. Something to think about (or re-think - I looked into it some time ago but it's mostly evaporated in the meantime).
The amount of energy being trapped by the greenhouse effect did not stop increasing after 1998...
....There is an imbalance between the outgoing energy and insolation.
There is no question, that is really one of the cornerstones of AGW theory. In a line or two, would you please say where does that information come from? (ie that the imbalance exists and its value).
In other words Martin A was asking where you got the information from. It would hardly be fair to you if he looked up a crappy source and then dismissed your answer because of the low quality of the information supporting it. He imagined you would willingly come up with the source providing the best evidence for what you had written.
As Martin A has said before, the evidence for there actually being a current energy imbalance seems a bit tenuous. It does not seem to come from measured data but from models. As Martin A has mentioned many times, what comes out of an unverified model is not data; it is an illustration of someone's hypothesis.
In researching for himself the origins of what EM had said, Martin A came across the following:
... The precision achieved by the most advanced generation of radiation budget satellites is indicated by the planetary energy imbalance measured by the ongoing CERES (Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System) instrument (Loeb et al., 2009), which finds a measured 5-year-mean imbalance of 6.5 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). Because this result is implausible, instrumentation calibration factors were introduced to reduce the imbalance to the imbalance suggested by climate models, 0.85 W/m2 (Loeb et al., 2009). ...
(from "Earth's Energy Imbalance and Implications" (James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Pushker Kharecha, Karina von Schuckmann)
[Martin's translation: "The measurements are clearly erroneous. So we fiddled adjusted them to fit our models (which, by the way, remain unvalidated because there is no way of validating them without precise measurements)."]
Martin A's conclusion: Asking where 'the missing heat' is hiding is about as meaningful as discussions of the number of angels dancing concurrently on a pinhead.
Or, to put it another way, a key cornerstone of AGW theory is bollocks.
.
Martin A
TinyCO2 :
>> It would be enough were it not for the propaganda campaign
of the various vested interests.
> Seriously? You seriously believe that?
Yes, without the hostile propaganda there would by now be carbon taxes in place in various big countries, maybe tax-and-dividend (which appeals to me), maybe just a tax and maybe not high enough. That wouldn't in itself cure the problem, of course, but it would be a first step on the ladder.
Chandra
Sandy S, Martin A
Sorry, not my best day. Some of my irritation with other problems is leaking into my posts here.
Entropic man
Chandra, "there would by now be carbon taxes in place in various big countries"
There are carbon taxes in big countries and they're not working. What do you think Europeans are complaining about? What is Germany and Spain back pedalling on? Even the US 'we believe in AGW' Democrats rejected a carbon tax on flights because it was un-American. How long has Obama been in now? What's he done? Fund a few failed businesses and made some grand speeches.
Unless the carbon tax is widespread, work is outsourced to places like China and India, who have said they won't join till they decide they've had a big enough bite of the cherry. Ultimately there is no saving on CO2. No sane western government is going to hog tie itself to that level of disadvantage... except maybe the UK and even our government seems to be rethinking (Cameron and Lib Dems excluded).
Gotta do better than that Chandra to prove that the only obstacle to reducing CO2 is us very persuasive sceptics.
TinyCO2
See also Carbon Emissions Trading. Whip, meet dead horse.
TinyCO2
EM - no worries. Hope the other problems are soon sorted out.
Martin A
I had always regarded regulars on Bishop Hill as people of above average intelligence and just as important; independent minded. We have been insulted (well I have not but never mind) by the opposition calling us "Deniers" (and lots of other things) for many years. We have many times discussed our opponents and their tendency to do group think and now we prove that we can compete with them on that score.
After years of ignoring the name calling, Roy Spencer has a bad hair day and decides he needs to start hurling insults at our opponents, oh dear. Now a substantial part of our online community is suddenly wishing to discuss throwing insults at the AGW brigade.
Dung
Nothing wrong with discussing things Dung and most have vetoed the Nazi insult. Personally I think it lacks imagination and there are far more interesting ways to be insulting ;-)
TinyCO2
TinyCO2
> There are carbon taxes in big countries and they're not
working.
There are few proper carbon taxes in big countries, exceptions being in part of Canada and in Australia. The EU carbon trading scheme is based largely upon giving away too many credits - do you call 'free' a tax?
> How long has Obama been in now? What's he done? Fund a
few failed businesses and made some grand speeches.
How do you suggest he gets a carbon tax through Congress? Got some ideas on that? A few failed businesses refers to Solyndra I guess. $500 million is small compared to the overall program from which it came. And if I were a US citizen I'd be much more worried about the $500 billion spent annually on importing fossil fuels.
> Unless the carbon tax is widespread, work is outsourced...
I think that depends how it is done and whether it applies to imports too. A tax on carbon can also be offset by cuts to taxes on labour, for example. And as taxes reduce the use of that which is taxed, it makes more sense to me to tax fossil fuel use (which it is reasonable to want less of) than to tax labour use (which everyone wants more of).
Chandra
Method A
Offer electricity sale price of 3 x fossil fuel price for wind power
In addition, pay wind farmers lucratively to turn off when you don’t need the power
Utilities eagerly build wind farms to cash in
Build new infrastructure to support wind power
Make public pay for over priced power and new infrastructure (including increased prices for goods and services)
Method B
Set a tax on fossil fuels
Build windmills and infrastructure with tax
Make utilities use windmills
Utilities and manufacturers make public pay for energy plus taxes
In what way does A and B differ to the poor sod at the end who has to pay for it?
The carbon offset markets fail because they've got no real value and are too easy to fiddle.
TinyCO2
Method C
- Levy a suitable carbon tax
- Use the proceeds (or part) to lower employment taxes (NI etc), and/or
- Distribute the proceeds (or part) at a flat rate per-capita
- Remove all subsidies and let the market decide how to generate electricity
Chandra
"Use the proceeds (or part) to lower employment taxes (NI etc), and/or
- Distribute the proceeds (or part) at a flat rate per-capita"
Which people then use to pay for higher energy bills and more expensive products. All that does is give the money a round trip, wasting some on paperwork in the process. CO2 saved zero.
TinyCO2
It is very simple. Taxes (all taxes) alter incentives and hence behaviour. Taxing carbon changes investment decisions throughout the economy in favour of low carbon energy sources. You probably knew that already.
Chandra
I said that carbon taxation wasn't working. You said there weren't carbon taxes. I gave you an example of carbon taxation by another route/name. It is not working in those countries that are trying that experiment.
We could impose green import taxes but the countries that would suffer most would be developing countries. Protectionism doesn't have a good track record.
TinyCO2
Entropic, Feb 24, 6:04 PM
If CO2 content stopped increasing today it would be easy. The imbalance would decrease as energy accumulated. until equilibrium was reached.
I see your logic and it corresponds with mine, however, under climate science's constant CO2 scenario;
As that quote is out of NASA, we can consider it to be at least known if not authored by Hansen who was in part the author of the quote provided by Martin A on Feb 24, at 7:24 PM.
Now, as climate science claims that a TOA imbalance indicates that warming is occurring and by how much, increasing warming from "..greenhouses gases already in the atmosphere" plus additional greenhouse gas would surely show as an increasing trend in that imbalance.
Chandra, Feb 23, at 11:43 PM
And is your understanding shared by anyone else?
Yes, by NASA as far as I can see but not by either you (if I have understood the thrust of your post if not the sense) or Entropic.
ssat
John Shade: ‘My question was a hypothetical one as part of an imagined conversation.’
I understand that. Your long post covers many points, too many to address in a blog post, and largely off the point.
The term ‘conversation’ is the relevant issue. What I was referring to were the type of debates carried out in popular media such as blogs and online media.
I take your point about the historical nature of the Holocaust – and that’s a major difference between the two issues -- but my three points were primarily about the style of debate rather than the content.
That’s why claims about the state of the science and the conduct of the scientists are irrelevant to my argument, since any such claims merely beg the question. It’s these issues that are in contention, so they cannot be used to settle the issue of who’s right and who’s misbehaving.
But on thinking further about this issue, I’m now uneasy about making the comparison between climate denial and Holocaust denial, so I withdraw that claim. And of course, the moral culpability in the two cases is not comparable.
There’s a couple of oddities about this episode, though, in that Spencer is by no means the first climate sceptic to use the N word and its variants; and that climate sceptics seem to regard denial as a worse offence than the perpetration of the original act.
Brendan H
As I said, taxing carbon will bias investment economy-wide towards lower carbon emissions. I doubt that is debateable. It hasn't really been tried properly in Europe or the US and that (as was my initial point) is mainly down to opposition from those (obviously including AGW "skeptics") who take the side of vested interests that would loose from such a tax.
> We could impose green import taxes but the countries that
would suffer most would be developing countries.
So if we increase our energy prices with a carbon tax it puts us at a disadvantage vis-a-vis developing countries, as you will all likely complain. And then according to you if we impose import taxes to counteract that effect we are now hurting developing countries!
> Protectionism doesn't have a good track record.
It is only protectionism if it is asymmetric. See above
Chandra
Ssat
NASA and I are saying the same thing. Their reference to temperature and mine to energy content are equivalent.
Current CO2 levels are close to 400ppm. The current energy content and temperature reflect a lower CO2 content at some time during the 20th century.There will be a delay while they catch up, even if we added no more CO2.
Under a stable 400ppm scenario we would see a continuing increase in temperature. The rate of increase would gradually decrease until stabilising 0.6C warmer than now.That would be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in the imbalance to zero over the same time period.
Unfortunately this scenario is hypothetical and will not occur as long as we continue increasing the CO2 content. Hence the constant instead of declining imbalance. What it does in future depends on how much extra CO2 we add and how fast.
Entropic man
Their reference to temperature and mine to energy content are equivalent.Feb 25, 2014 at 7:38 PM | Unregistered CommenterEntropic man
....Assuming you know the heat capacity of the system and the rate of heat transfers between all subdivisions and the total amount of work done and all dynamic changes to the above as the system responds.....
michael hart
Brendan H:
There’s a couple of oddities about this episode, though, in that Spencer is by no means the first climate sceptic to use the N word and its variants; and that climate sceptics seem to regard denial as a worse offence than the perpetration of the original act.
Where's your evidence for the second oddity?
Richard Drake
Michael hart
Yes. Heat capacity is known. Some of the energy flows are available by calculation from other data, others can be estimated. A flow digram like an extended Trenberth diagram can be constructed, subject to the usual uncertainties.
Entropic man
Chandra,
I wrote:
Chandra, unless geronimo really is an old friend of yours, it's perhaps best not to address him as such. It does not come across well.
To which you replied
Martin, you are very sensitive. Do you object to people calling me Chunder too? You haven't said so before, but I guess you have been equally upset about that. Strange that you didn't mention it.
You followed up with
Martin A - to be. So are you as upset about people calling me Chunder as you are about my mis-addressing geronimo?
I have to say that you do seem sometimes to understand something different from what commenters have actually written. I would not have thought that my sentence (above) indicated that I am very sensitive. Nor would I have thought that it indicated I am upset.
Let me, in a roundabout way, try to get across the point I was trying to make. I imagine that you have a viewpoint something along the following lines:
- The combustion of fossil fuel is causing atmospheric CO2 to increase rapidly.
- Increased atmospheric CO2 causes heat to be retained by the Earth, which results in climate change.
- The resulting climate change is dangerous and likely to lead to many adverse consequences
- Governments need to take urgent action to reduce fossil fuel use.
If those are not your views, please put me right but I'd make a guess that I'm not too far off.
You comment frequently on the BH blog, clearly devoting significant time and thought to it. But what you hope to achieve is unclear (to me, at least). Here are what seem to me to be just some possibilities:
[1] You hope to persuade BH readers that their views are wrong.
[2] You hope that invisible readers who drop by and read BH will realise that much of the stuff posted on BH is erroneous when they read your comments.
[3] You hope that people holding views similar to yours will admire what you do.
[4] You wish to humiliate BH commenters by exposing their foolishness.
[5] You want to disrupt discussions on BH which could otherwise reinforcement dangerous sceptic views.
I don't know which, if any, of those is your purpose. It's puzzling, because the tone you frequently adopt would be counterproductive to achieving most of those possible aims. My "does not come across well" comment was an attempt to get that across.
Any reaction to that?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
BTW - I never noticed anyone address you as 'Chunder'. Had I noticed, I would not have commented, just as I did not comment when someone called EM "Ectopic Man". I don't agree with addressing people by anything other than the name they choose. I think it's a bit silly doing so, that's all.
Martin A
Entropic Man
I gave up on this discussion as anything but a reader. However it seems to me that you have recently changed from someone who posts references to someone who posts opinions. The quote below seems to be a move to the next stage. Read the quote then I'd be interested in your answer to the question it raises. I'm sorry if you've actually posted your references earlier, but you don't say so.
Why would Martin A know where you got your information.