This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
PS Are Obama’s czars “lone operators” or do they also have taxpayer-funded “staff”?
Clue: Have you ever seen a “czar” that doesn’t have a royal entourage?
Hey Max,
Yes, these are “paid political advisors” to King………I mean, President Obama. Their staff is also funded by the taxpayers.
First, you must be aware that these are not “official” cabinet level positions. These people reside outside the normal cabinet posts and answer directly to the President. They are unelected and unconfirmed by the Senate……a shadow government. They are unelected and cannot be fired except by the president. They can’t be voted out of office and cannot be prosecuted except by Obama’s Attorney General.
The United States Federal Government consists of three separate, but equal branches. The Legislative Branch/Congress (they pass laws), The Executive Branch/President (Commander in Chief) and the Judicial Branch/Supreme Court (they interpret law). Each has equal power under the US Constitution.
These checks were put into place to prevent one branch from becoming too powerful. Congress must approve these “official” presidential appointments.
Obama has bypassed all of this and has become a de facto dictator.
Within the Federal Government structure there exists numerous agencies. The Justice Department, The Department of Education, The Department of Energy, The Environmental Protection Agency, The Food and Drug Administration, The Federal Communications Commission, The Department of Treasury, The Department of Transportation, etc, etc, etc……………ad nauseum.
Obama has appointed radicals/socialist/communists (his czars)
to head all of these agencies bypassing the consent of Congress.
While many of the “official” posts have been filled through Obama appointment………they are handpicked Toadies and Clinton era retreads in an effort to maintain a level of propriety, the czars are Obama’s appointed “off the books” selections that could not pass Senate approval. A large portion remain unfilled.
The czars run the government agencies. These czars have the power to implement policy (law) through fiat, bypassing the legislative branch altogether.
What Obama has done in two short years is surreptitiously co-opted Congress (the voice of the people)……making them inconsequential.
They exist in name only and have no real power……………just a puppet show now.
So, Obama now has direct control of the media, the military, the justice system, the educational system, the treasury, the financial institutions, gas/oil/electric/nuclear power, the food industry, the airlines, the colleges, the railroads, the healthcare industry……………you name it.
The US government was not set up this way……………too much unbridled power in the hands of one man is dangerous.
Don’t be surprised if a “crisis” occurs just before or just after Election Day of 2012 which will either “postpone” the presidential election or “invalidate” the results.
The Rise of Unchecked Presidential Power
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/11/the_rise_of_unchecked_presiden.html
Oh Max, I forgot…………Obama now has supreme rule of the Internet as well as all of the Unions (think of all the stuff they have their hands in).
Homeland Security seizes domain names
Also, his Transportation Security Administration Brown Shirts now have his blessing to accost/grope/sexually molest law abiding citizens without due process.
Max,
It was you who first raised the subject of shutting down the world’s economy. That an interesting “what-if” but even your favourite hate -figure of James Hansen isn’t suggesting that. He’s suggesting a massive switch to nuclear power to minimise CO2 emissions.
Also you’ve still not understood that it’s not correct to say that my:
“argument is that the absolute amount ‘disappearing’ would remain ‘constant’ independently of the annual human emissions” [not constant but proportional to the excess above 2800ppmv]
and that therefore:
“the amount of the atmospheric CO2 reduction by 2100 from totally shutting down the world economy now would not be 200 ppmv, but rather somewhere between 300 and 400 ppmv, and the net warming avoided would be somewhere around 2.5 to 3C.”
Currently CO2 levels are at ~390ppmv. Which is 110ppmv above pre-industrial levels. So if the economy were suddenly halted and human CO2 emissions halted, then that’s what they would drift back down to.
That’s all pretty basic stuff , Max. If you can’t understand that, then it would be completely impossible for you thoroughly evaluate the scientific evidence, as you’ve claimed, and which has led the IPCC to its current position.
Pete,
Where did you get the 280 ppm number?
@Brute 2680
Exactly !
These numbers are simply (and fraudulently) made up.
There is NO SUCH THING as an “average world concentration” and it isn’t just Pete or Max, who blithely use these figures as though they were somehow carved upon stone tablets, by some omnipotent & omniscient Deity.
The concentration of CO2 varies from place to place, from day to day, and even from night to day, continuously. CO2 concentrations can go down as well as up.
The whole idea that CO2 from ancient ice cores collected at one end of the Globe, can then be directly compared to CO2 collected from the slopes of a volcano thousands of miles away in the present day to produce an “anomaly” is preposterous and fraudulent, AND YOU ALL KNOW IT.
I would advise you all to stop this perverse pantomime in your own brains, before you are called to account for your actions with regard to this mummery, in a Court of Law. – No Joke !
PeterM
No matter how you squirm and wiggle, Peter, the fact is that we (“mankind”) cannot change our planet’s climate, even if we were to “shut down the world’s economy” (an obviously ridiculous and suicidal extreme case).
And that was my point.
Shut down Australia: you get 0.02C reduction by 2100; shut down the largest CO2 emitter, China. you get 0.41C reduction (plus 1.3 billion very unhappy Chinese).
Other uncertainties are those pointed out by Axel and Brute above: we do not even know for sure that CO2 is “well mixed” (as IPCC claims) or that the “pre-industrial” level really was 280 ppmv (as was estimated based on Antarctic ice core analysis). Nor do we know that IPCC is correct in the assumption that CO2 has a residence time of over 100 years (some scientific studies point to a far shorter one).
But, even if these are all three correct, Peter, the figures show that we (mankind) cannot change our planet’s climate.
Your hero, Hansen has made proposals for “saving the world” from “irreversible tipping points” and other disaster too fierce to mention by shutting down coal-fired power plants. Strangely, he has left out any cost/benefit analysis: pretty stupid, one would say at first blush for such a proposal (but really quite clever, since he knows that the proposals will achieve no reduction in temperature at a very high cost).
I have demonstrated to you on this thread that these proposals will achieve no measurable change in our planet’s temperature (at extremely high cost), even if we accept the above IPCC estimates, as well as the highly unlikely estimate of a 2xCO2 climate sensitivity of 3.2C. In other words, the Hansen proposals all hare-brained.
You have been unable to show me a) that any of the proposals made by Hansen would result in a significant change in our climate or b) that any specific actionable proposal we could undertake (including totally shutting down the world economy) would have any major effect.
Face it, Peter.
It’s not about “reducing the (already questionable) ‘globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature’ construct” (which we are physically unable to do) – it’s about levying a trillion dollar carbon tax on the citizens of the developed world.
Max
Mauna Lua isn’t the only CO2 observatory.
There are alos observatories at:
Point Barrow,La Jolla, Christmas Island, Samoa, South Pole.
which all produce results in close agreement.
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/other_stations/global_stations_co2_concentration_trends.html
280ppmv is the figure obtained from historic ice core measurements in Antartica.
I’m not sure why the idea of an average world CO2 concentration should cause anyone anyone, at least of normal intelligence, any intellectual difficulty. It just the integral of the all measured surface concentations divided by the total area of the globe.
Some people do seem to have some sort of philosophical objection to the idea that “puny” mankind can change the Earth’s climate. It was perhaps understandable in the 19th century and previously, now that there is 7 billion of us all busily burning away what fossil fuel and native forests we can get our hands on it does seem a strange view to hold. Maybe its just me being “arrogant” in thinking that:-)
I know you want to equate CO2 emission control with shutting down parts of the worlds economy – but no-one other than yourself is suggesting it. Yes, there is a cost, just like with SO2 and CFC emissions, but there are benefits too and not just with CO2 emissions. For instance coal fired powered stations are orders of magnitudes dirtier, in terms of all pollutants, than their nuclear alternatives. So overall the growth of the world economy can proceed but growth in Co2 emissions has to be reversed into a reduction in emissions.
Way back at post #1 in this continuation thread ..
Robin Guenier said:
March 24th, 2010 at 7:30 am
Max et al:
It seems that Peter has moved to a new level of blind belief…. we found recently that, not only is he unable to refer us to any supporting empirical evidence, he is unable to refer us to any relevant evidence.
So what has changed in all this time?
I begin to wonder if “Peter” is for real?
Could it be that he is like a kind of uber-sophisticated computerised robot responder, which has a set of “stock phrases” which are then simply trotted out again and again in repetitive fashion, dependant of what questions are put by the other protagonists?
If if it isn’t the case, it might be best to consider him as such.
@tempterrain
In your 2683 you make some basic errors of logic.
Your flannelling is becoming very tedious.
There is no such thing as an average World CO2 concentration, except in bogus computer models, and hokum statistical analyses. This is a totally meaningless quantity measurement and bears no relevance at all to the Real World Situation, where CO2 concentrations can down as well as up, and do so regulary on a diurnal / nocturnal basis.
Brute
You paint a pretty dismal and frightening picture of the current state of US politics.
We hear over here about the ever-expanding US Federal government, the non-accountable “shadow government” of the “czars”, the astronomical budget deficits and the unbridled printing of “funny money” in a vain attempt to get the economy out of the hole, but I was not aware that the Obama administration was radically changing the balance of power by usurping the power of the Legislative branch.
To get this back on our topic here, if he tries to (and is successful) in circumventing the Senate rejection of “cap and trade” by edicting carbon caps and a carbon tax via the EPA, then this would be a clear example of usurping.
Of course, if he goes a step further and declares the next election invalid, as you fear he might try to do, then you would have an end to your representative democracy of the past 230 years and the beginning of a dictatorship.
Let’s hope for the whole world that it never goes that far.
The wild card here is the American people. I do not believe that they would tolerate a “putsch”. But I fear that it could become very ugly.
Max
PeterM
You are getting repetitive and rather boring (2683).
I have pointed out to you with figures based on clearly identified IPCC assumptions that mankind cannot change our planet’s global climate, even by the suicidal and absurd measure of shutting down the world’s economy.
You dream that if we were to shut down the world economy completely, we could theoretically get from the current 390 to a future 280 ppmv (although I fail to see the logic behind the arbitrary number of 280 ppmv, and it certainly does not agree with the IPCC notion of long CO2 residence time). You even hypothesize that we could eventually achieve a level of 280 ppmv by only shutting down half of the global economy (although you cannot back up your hypothesis with any figures).
But this is all hypothetical talk, based on unrealistic measures.
Show me a specific actionable proposal, which would result in a significant change in our planet’s climate, along with a cost/benefit analysis (how many degrees of temperature reduction would be achieved at what total cost).
If you are unable to do so (as Hansen was also unable), then you will have to admit that mankind cannot change our planet’s global climate. Period. And we can end this discussion.
Max
Axel,
Just because a parameter varies, like CO2 concentrations over the worlds surface, doesn’t mean there is no average.
For instance, the depth of a lake will vary over its area. So if you measured the depth over every square metre, or square centimetre if you had enough time, added up all the depths then divided by the area of the lake you’d have the average depth.
Simple really.
Max,
Yes you say “mankind cannot change our planet’s global climate. Period”.
Yes, I know that part of you does believes that. The other part does believe that man has already changed the Earth’s climate, but is probably over influenced by the first part, and the net result is that you’ve just about halved the IPCCs figures!
Even a halving still negates your statement though.
So, it seems there may be an internal psychological tussle going on in your head!
PeterM
Forget the “psychological tussle” you think is “going on in my head” and concentrate on your own head, instead.
Show me with specific actionable proposals (including cost/benefit analysis) that mankind can change our planet’s global climate (as requested previously), or admit that mankind cannot change our global climate.
Quite simple, actually.
Ball’s in your court and waffle time is over.
Max
PeterM
Only a fool would try to wade across a river that has an “average depth” of 1.5 meters.
(Nassim Taleb, in his book, The Black Swan.)
But c’mon Peter, show me how “mankind can change our planet’s global climate” (which you apparently believe to be true, but cannot substantiate).
Max
Max,
You say “show me how mankind can change our planet’s global climate”
I could have learnt it from you. You said:
” I showed earlier that curtailing new or shutting down existing coal plants in the USA (as proposed by Hansen and Gore) would cost 1 trillion dollars for a theoretical reduction in global warming of 0.05 degrees C.”
So I then calculated that curtailing three degrees of warming would cost 60 trillion dollars between now and the end of the century or less than 1% of the projected world GDP between now and then.
Axel 2681
Did you catch the article I wrote about Co2 concentrations carried over at TAv? As well as the article itself there are many comments plus additional links from these that lead to other articles on the subject.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/
tonyb
Peter 2683
That drastic alterations to the lifestyle of developed nations is planneed has been cited here many times.
Here is an article that appeared just yesterday in the often alarmist Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/8165769/Cancun-climate-change-summit-scientists-call-for-rationing-in-developed-world.html
I also wrote on this subject;
“Article: Politics of climate change.
Climate change has become highly politicised and the British Govt – long time leaders in funding research into the subject – were very heavily implicated in making it a political issue in order to promote their own agenda. An unsual subject for me, but very well referenced with numerous links and quotes from such bodies as the Environmental Audit Committee of the House of Commons.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/crossing-the-rubicon-an-advert-to-change-hearts-and-minds/#comments
Peter, the evidence is out there in numerous well authenticated quotes. I don’t know why you won’t accept the obvious.
tonyb
PeterM
In 2692 you wrote (to mankind changing our planet’s global climate):
Hansen’s harebrained proposal was to shut down US coal-fired plants.
Yours is to shut down 60 times that many coal-fired plants worldwide.
Where are these coal-fired plants, Peter?
Wiki tells us that the annual US coal consumption is 14% of world total, and that 90% of this is used for generation of electricity. Worldwide, 40% of world electricity is generated from coal today (in the USA this is 49%).
The World Coal Association confirms these numbers and estimates that by 2030 coal will fuel 44% of world electricity.
http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-coal/coal-electricity/
It also confirms Wiki’s estimate that other nations have a somewhat lower percentage of their electrical power coming from coal than the USA.
So there are (at most) only around 6 times as many coal-fired power plants to shut down globally as there are in the USA – not 60 times, Peter.
And by shutting them all down we will only theoretically decrease global temperature by an imperceptible 0.3°C (at a roughly extrapolated cost of $6 trillion).
In addition, we will have installed nuclear power plant replacements in several unstable regions of the world (a rather questionable undertaking, at best).
Sorry, Peter.
You have not shown that mankind can change our planet’s global climate. In fact, you have essentially proven just the opposite.
The fact remains: mankind is not able to change our planet’s global climate.
Keep trying, though.
Max
PeterM
You have taken issue with my estimate (2657) of what would happen to our global climate if various world economies were shut down, arguing that the impact would be far greater, due to the “natural” removal of CO2 from the system.
Let’s go through your logic here, Peter.
IPCC assumes that CO2 is a “well-mixed” greenhouse gas.
The IPCC models all assume that the lifetime of CO2 is 400 years ± 20% = 320 to 480 years
http://www.princeton.edu/~lam/TauL1b.pdf
If this assumption is correct, then we cannot count on “nature” to remove the CO2 emitted by man into the atmosphere over the short term, even if human emissions were to be curtailed significantly or even stopped completely.
Admittedly, human CO2 emissions are only a tiny part of our planet’s natural carbon cycle, but the prevalent theory embraced by IPCC is that they alone are responsible for the measured increase in atmospheric CO2 levels.
However, the “missing CO2” question is still a riddle. Humans currently emit 35 Gt per year of CO2 to the atmosphere, yet the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 amounts to only around half of this amount. It is postulated that the “missing” remainder is absorbed by terrestrial photosynthesis, the oceans (including photosynthesis by phytoplankton and conversion to carbonates, which sink to the ocean floor) and/or dissipated to space.
It is further postulated (based on Antarctic ice core data) that atmospheric CO2 remained fairly constant at around 280 ppmv prior to human industrialization, with no net “natural” absorption over several thousands of years.
So what would happen if human CO2 emissions were to stop completely?
Would the currently “disappearing” 17 Gt per year continue to “disappear” at that rate or would the system remain at the current CO2 level until the very long CO2 lifetime gradually had an effect?
Is the “rate of disappearance” related to the atmospheric concentration, with 17 Gt per year “disappearing” at 390 ppmv and 0 Gt per year disappearing at 280 ppmv, when some arbitrarily determined “equilibrium” is reached at the pre-industrial CO2 level?
These are all unanswered questions.
From the viewpoint of “dangerous AGW”, the “pessimistic” assumption is a) that CO2 remains in the system for around 400 years, b) that it would only disappear very gradually from the system if humans stopped emitting it, taking well over 100 years to asymptotically reach the level of 280 ppmv, at which point it would have reached a “natural equilibrium” and stop disappearing.
This is a rather simplistic point of view, but it is the assumption made by the IPCC models.
Another, more “optimistic” postulation would be that the “missing” CO2 would continue to be removed from our atmosphere each year, even if human emissions were curtailed drastically or stopped completely, with the “rate of disappearance” somehow related to the atmospheric concentration, with 0 Gt/year removed at 280 ppmv, 17 Gt/year removed at 390 ppmv, and some greater amount (30 to 50 Gt/year?) removed at twice the “pre-industrial” level or 560 ppmv.
This would be good news, indeed, since it would mean that we would never even reach the 560 ppmv level, because “nature” would be removing essentially all of the CO2 emitted by humans before we got there. This is obviously not in line with the IPCC models.
So you have a dilemma, Peter.
You agree with IPCC that CO2 has a very long residence time, and that it will continue to rise as long as humans emit 35Gt/year (or even more) into the atmosphere, eventually reaching levels that exceed 560 ppmv (twice the postulated “pre-industrial” level).
Yet you would like to believe that if human emissions were curtailed significantly or even stopped completely it would drop back down to the “pre-industrial” level fairly quickly (in less than 100 years), thereby “saving” our planet from “dangerous AGW”.
I think it must be clear to you that “you can’t have it both ways”, Peter.
Max
Max,
Yes if CO2 emissions were to stop then we’d very much expect them to drift back down to the same pre-industrial levels. Of course we can’t know for sure. Its possible that the Earth’s ecosystem has been damaged and they won’t quite go back to 280ppmv. Rather like a spring which has been pulled too far.
Also the decrease would be exponential. So , strictly speaking, it would never get there but it just gets closer and closer. Like a radiactive isotope which also never decays to zero it make more sense to talk about the half life of excess CO2.
We can tell from the 50% uptake figure just how long that might be. Yes you are right the “rate of disappearance ” related to the atmospheric concentration, with 17 Gt per year “disappearing” at 390 ppmv and 0 Gt per year disappearing at 280 ppmv,
Except “dissappear” isn’t quite the right word. Its not really that much of a mystery just where it all gets stored.
So say, just as a thought experiment, CO2 emissions stopped on Dec 31st 2010. The human emissions of Co2 are zero for 2011. The uptake of excess CO2 will still be pretty much the same as in 2010. Just to keep the artihmetic simple we assume that is 50% of what was emitted in 2010. So over the two year period levels will be stable. Agreed?
Say there are still no emissions in 2012. At the end of 2011 levels are now back to where they were at the end of 2009. So the absorption is slightly less but still equal to 50% of the 2009 emissions.
So we can repeat this argument to show that if CO2 levels were to stop then they would fall at approximately the same rate as they’ve risen over the past 150 years. Actually it will be a bit slower than that as I think the true figure for absorption 42% rather than 50% but that would put the half life of excess CO2 at about 70-80 years. Say 75 years. After 150 years it would be one quarter. After 300 years it would be one eighth etc.
A couple of mistakes in the above:
Should be ” At the end of 2012 levels are now back to where they were at the end of 2009.
And “So we can repeat this argument to show that if CO2 emissions were to stop then CO2 concentrations would fall at approximately the same rate as they have risen over the past 150 years.”
Pete,
I’m all for cutting carbon dioxide emissions…….how long can you hold your breath?
PeterM
We have drifted away from a practical discussion to a more philosophical “what if” ramble (as is often the case).
As far as the “missing CO2” is concerned you write:
Actually, Peter, it is a ”mystery”.
We know that forests and other terrestrial plants are growing more rapidly as a result of slightly higher CO2 levels and possibly also slightly warmer temperatures and longer growing seasons, so that is part of it (but we do not know how big a part).
We think that the ocean is absorbing some (how much is not known), and we do not know how much added photosynthesis (phytoplankton) is going on in the ocean due to very slightly increased water temperatures and higher dissolved CO2, nor how much of this CO2 is being converted up the food chain to carbonate, which eventually ends up on the ocean floor.
And we do not know how much is being dissipated out to space.
Quite a bit of “unknowns” there, Peter.
We think we know that atmospheric CO2 remained “constant” at 280 ppmv for several thousand years prior to the Industrial Revolution, but this is based on data from one single source (Antarctic ice cores) and (as TonyB has informed us) there are other data out there (actual physical measurements from several locations over the 19th and early 20th century) that tell a different story.
We know that sea water can dissolve slightly less CO2 when it is slightly warmer, but we still believe that this had no impact on “pre-industrial” atmospheric CO2 levels despite the warmer MWP and colder LIA.
We see that there is a discrepancy between the amount of CO2 emitted annually by humans and the amount of the annual increase in atmospheric concentration and that on average around half of the amount emitted shows up as added atmospheric CO2, with the rest “disappearing”.
But on an annual basis, this varies all over the place: in 1992 it was 17%, in 1998 it was 98% and in 2008 it was 29%.
One could imagine a correlation with average global temperature (HadCRUT anomaly for example): 1992 (a “cold” year): 0.06C, 1998 (a record “hot” year): 0.52C, 2008 (a “cool” year): 0.31C. The correlation with average sea temperature is slightly better, but even this correlation is not robust (so there must be something else at play, which we do not yet understand, as well).
All in all, there is a lot of “uncertainty”.
And the greatest “uncertainty” of all is “natural variability” (a.k.a. ”natural forcing”). The UK Met Office tells us this has been the cause of the past decade’s cooling, despite record increase in CO2. How much of our earlier climate change can be attributed to this and how will it affect our future climate?
As to “what would happen if human CO2 emissions stopped”: this is a purely hypothetical or even philosophical discussion in the category of “how many angels on the head of a pin”, because a) it will not happen and b) the many “unknowns” mentioned above, plus some probable additional “unknown unknowns”.
You make the hypothetical point:
But hey, Peter, how does the absorption system differentiate between what you call “excess” CO2 and all other CO2?
In either case, it is clear that mankind cannot change our global climate by fiddling around with our CO2 emissions, as I pointed out with specific examples and calculations.
For example, rolling out the harebrained Hansen scheme of shutting down all US coal fired plants to the entire world (at exorbitant cost) will only avoid around 0.3C warming by year 2100 (which is not going to happen in the first place and nobody in his right mind would define this as “changing our planet’s climate”).
You have been unable to refute this or come up with any specific actionable proposals to “change the planet’s climate”, showing the cost/benefit analysis.
Admit it, Peter, it’s all hype, hypothesis, hysteria and hot air.
Max
PS I think we need to break off this discussion, which is going nowhere, unless you can come up with specific actionable proposals for “mankind to change our global climate” (along with a rough cost/benefit analysis).