THIS PAGE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED AS THE NEW STATESMAN BLOG IS NOW CLOSED FOR COMMENTS
At 10am this morning, the New Statesman finally closed the Mark Lynas thread on their website after 1715 comments had been added over a period of five months. I don’t know whether this constitutes any kind of a record, but gratitude is certainly due to the editor of of the New Statesman for hosting the discussion so patiently and also for publishing articles from Dr David Whitehouse and Mark Lynas that have created so much interest.
This page is now live, and anyone who would like to continue the discussion here is welcome to do so. I have copied the most recent contributions at the New Statesman as the first comment for the sake of convenience. If you want to refer back to either of the original threads, then you can find them here:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with all 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
Welcome to Harmless Sky, and happy blogging.
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10,000 Responses to “Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs.”
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Hi Peter,
Instead of backing up your statement with some specifics, you opined (7365):
That’s a great bit of empty polemic, Peter.
Unless you can back it up with specific comments indicating which of my 25 points is wrong and why it is just meaningless “hot air”.
You have not been able to pick any of the specific points I made and refute them. Since you have been totally unable to do so over the past many days, I can only conclude that your remark is totally unfounded and can be ignored.
Max
TonyN 7372
well done
Tonyb
Bob_FJ
Thanks for the links to the Jakobshavn exchange on RC.
I was actually referring to the Nick Barnes post (560) where he wrote to you:
This is what got me started digging out the Illulisaat temperature record back to the late 19th century, annualizing it and then plotting it.
To my surprise, I found that it warmed up sharply over the first half of the 20th century (peaking in the mid 1940s) and then decreased slightly over the second half, with an overall cooling trend over the entire century. The rapid rate of increase and high levels of the 1930s and 1940s have never been reached again.
This sort of indirectly confirms the conclusions of Chylek et al., Bengtsson et al. (incl. our old friend Ola Johannessen) and Smolyanitsky et al. of a warmer Arctic in the 1930s and 1940s.
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Chylek/greenland_warming.html
http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/publikationen/Reports/max_scirep_345.pdf
ftp://ftp.whoi.edu/pub/users/mtimmermans/ArcticSymposiumTalks/Smolyanitsky.pdf
To his credit, Nick did concede that there is a lot more at play than local temperature, but I think the whole history shows clearly that there is no evidence that AGW is playing any kind of a role in the recently observed retreat of the Jakobshavn glacier.
Max
Max,
Can you provide a reference for your “1000ppmv” if all oil and gas etc is burned. What about coal?
Max and Bob fj
Your conversation about Jakobshavn reminded me of the piece I wrote on historic arctic ice variation. This extract from the thread below;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#comments
“This is an extract from 1868 concerning a British expedition to Greenland, a land which was then an almost unknown quantity but whose coast it will be remembered Scoresby junior had found to be clear of ice in 1820, had subsequently iced up again, then found by Captain Graah in 1828 to be clear again. Apparently conditions had changed once more;
“We lived for the greater portion of a whole summer at Jakohshavn,a little Danish post, 69° 13? n., close to which is the great Jakohshavn
ice-fjord, which annually pours an immense quantity of icebergs into Disco Bay. In early times this inlet was quite open for boats ; and
Nunatak (a word meaning a ” land surrounded by ice “) was once an Eskimo settlement. There is (or was in 1867 ) an old man (Manyus)
living at Jakohshavn whose grandfather was born there. The Tessi-usak, an inlet of Jakohshavn ice-fjord, could then be entered by
boats. Now-a-days Jakohshavn ice-fjord is so choked up by bergs that it is impossible to go up in boats, and such a thing is never
thought of. The Tessiusak must be reached by a laborious journey over land ; and Nunatak is now only an island surrounded by the in-
land ice, at a distance — a place where no man lives, or has, in the memory of any one now living, reached.
Both along its shore and that of the main fjord are numerous remains of dwellings long unin-habitable, owing to it being now impossible to gain access to them by sea. The inland ice is now encroaching on the land. At one time it seems to have covered many portions of the country now bare. In a few places glaciers have disappeared. I believe that this has been mainly owing to the inlet having got shoaled by the deposit of glacier-clay through the rivers already described. I have little doubt that — Graah’s dictum to the contrary, notwithstanding — a great inlet once stretched across Greenland not far from this place, as represented on the old maps, but that it has also now got choked up with consolidated bergs.
In former times the natives used to describe pieces of timber drifting out of this inlet, and even tell of people coming across ; and stories yet linger among them of the former occurrence of such proofs of the openness of the inlet.”
tonyb
Peter,
Re ur 7373
We have already gone through Plimer’s 0.5°C estimate for a 2xCO2 GH impact (7356), as well as his statement about the natural GH effect of CO2 (7349), where he curiously stated that this was 18°C (where the estimates I have seen put this between 1.2 and 8.5°C).
It appears you have nothing new to add to these discussions, except to question whether the two figures would “fit”.
The 18°C natural GHE for CO2 alone appears to be an error.
But it would, however, theoretically correlate with the 0.5°C estimate for 2xCO2 if one assumes that the first 20 parts per quadrillion (ppqv) of CO2 (around 160 tons of total CO2 in the atmosphere) caused 1°C warming and from there on the relationship is purely logarithmic up to the theoretical “pre-industrial” level of 280 ppmv, with every doubling of CO2 causing an additional GH warming of 0.5°C.
Start: 20 parts per quadrillion
1750: 280 parts per million
ratio: 14,000,000,000
ln(ratio): 23.36
ln(2): 0.693
dT (2xCO2) = 0.5C
dT (from 20 ppqv to 280 ppmv) = 0.5 * 23.36 / 0.693 = 16.9°C
dT (natural CO2 GHE) = 16.9 + 1.0 = 17.9°C
But this discussion is moving from the ridiculous to the absurd here, Peter.
I personally do not believe that this is what Plimer had in mind, but rather that his natural CO2 GHE of 18°C is an error, as discussed earlier, while his 2xCO2 estimate of 0.5°C is probably based on the estimate by Lindzen, as also discussed earlier, and is therefore a reasonable number (if on the low side of most estimates).
Max
Peter
Regarding your #7379, requesting backup for my statement of 1,000 ppmv max CO2 concentration when all fossil fuels are gone, I’m getting that “déjà vu feeling all over again”, but here goes again, anyway:
1. World oil reserves
“Proven” (2007, O+GJ) 1,317 billion bbl (incl. part of Canadian tar sands)
Estimated new finds: 3,031 billion bbl
ANWR, new OCS, new Brazil OCS, added tar sand, Arctic O/S, Greenland, World oil shale
Total: 4,348 billion bbl
Today’s consumption = 75 million bbl/day
Equals: 159 years
2. World coal reserves
U.S. Energy Information Administration: 840 billion mt
Optimistically estimated new finds: 480 billion mt
Total: 1,320 billion mt
Today’s consumption = 6.2 billion mt/year
Equals: 213 years
3. World natural gas reserve
“Proven” 2007: 176 trillion cubic meters
assumed new finds: 200 trillion cubic meters
Total: 376 trillion cubic meters
Today’s consumption: = 2.8 trillion cubic meters/year
Equals: 134 years
4. CO2 generated from oil
Oil = 85% carbon
1 mt oil generates 0.85 mtC
Equals: 3.12 mtCO2
25% of oil used for “non-combustion”
75% of world reserves generate
0.75 * 569 * 3.12 = 1,330 GtCO2
5. CO2 generated from coal
Coal = 91% carbon
1 mt coal generates 0.91 mtC
Equals: 3.34 mtCO2
World reserves generate
0.91 * 1,320 * 3.34 = 4,404 GtCO2
6. CO2 generated from natural gas (assume methane)
1 cubic meter of natural gas generates 2.0 kgCO2
20% used for non-combustion
80% of world reserves equal: 301 trillion cubic meters
1 trillion cubic meters generate 2.0 GtCO2
80% of world reserves generate 603 GtCO2
7. Total fossil fuels generate 603 + 4,404 + 1,330 = 6,337 GtCO2
8. Currently around 50% of CO2 emissions “stay” in atmosphere and rest disappears (to oceans, outer space, etc.)
Assume this increases to 70%
9. Mass of atmosphere = 5,140,000 Gt
10. Increase of atmospheric CO2
0.7 * 6,337 * 1,000,000 / 5,140,000 = 863 ppm(mass)
Equals: 568 ppmv increase
Today: 385 ppmv
Future: 953 ppmv (atmospheric CO2 when all fossil fuels gone, 150-200 years from now)
That’s it, Peter. Ain’t no’ mo’.
Max
Hi TonyB
Interesting writeup about history of Jacobshavn glacier.
Too bad IPCC rejects historical evidence as “anecdotal” and then eagerly accepts tree-ring proxy studies (proving their AGW credo), which turn out to be frauds, without first even doing a good “due diligence” job.
Regards,
Max
Max,
I didn’t ask for “back up”. I asked if you had a reference for your 1000ppmv claim. That’s way too high BTW even if you are correct.
One assumption that you might want to take a look at is ” Today’s consumption = 75 million bbl/day Equals: 159 years” type of calculation.
Its a common mistake to assume you can project into the future on the basis of today’s consumption. If you’d made the same calculation just 20 years ago you’d have had a completely different result based on a much lower consumption at the time.
Incidentally, I think you’ll find that todays consumption of oil is 85mbpd not 75 mbpd.
Peter,
Your comments on whether we have 159 years or 120 years of oil left is silly.
You have no notion what will happen in the future.
There is only so much fossil fuel left on our planet.
I have made a rather optimistic estimate of how much this is, converted this to cumulative CO2 emissions and then calculated the resulting increase in atmospheric CO2, showing me that we might some day get to 1,000 ppm, but not much higher. Whether we get there in 120 or 180 years is immaterial.
If you have a better estimate, put it out there, or accept mine and shut up.
Max
Max,
“shut up” ??? That’s not very polite now. I was just asking if you had any scientific references. Didn’t those nice guys on Realclimate take issue with your calculation on this topic at one time?
I seem to remember that they suggested a reference, but I can’t remember where that was now.
All,
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Arctic:
The return of the “hockey stick”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8236797.stm
Just thought I’d cheer you up with this.
Max,
According to Wiki there is about 40 years of oil left
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel
Its not quite true that we have “no notion of what will happen in future”. From previous experience, I can tell you that if your gauge is showing that the petrol tank is nearly empty, you don’t have to be a clairvoyant to know that you are about to come to abrupt stop.
James P, Reur 7370 characterising John P. Reisman
I greatly enjoyed your ‘Psueds Corner’! Perhaps my favourite quote, partly because of its brevity was this:
I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear. Craig Raine, The Guardian
What irritates me about this pretentious alarmist word-smith is that he pontificates a great deal of nonsense on his ‘OSS foundation’ without inviting any corrective responses, and then invites people to visit his site via the high traffic alarmist site of RC.
Incidentally, further to me having had five comments recently deleted at RC, there has since been another, this one was addressed to John P. Reisman. Here is the screen copy:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BobFJ says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
29 August 2009 at 6:28 PM
John P. Reisman, in your 163 you linked to a recent report:
“…Accelerated thinning of the Pine Island Glacier represents perhaps the greatest imbalance in the cryosphere today, and yet we would not have known about it if it weren’t for a succession of satellite instruments …”
Has the work of the BAS, published January 2008 been forgotten maybe?
“…the volcano erupted about 2,300 years ago yet remains active… …This eruption occurred close to Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet,” Vaughan said. “The flow of this glacier towards the coast has speeded up in recent decades…”
http://www.livescience.com/environment/080120-antarctic-volcano.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It sat there in moderation for two days before being deleted. (Long enough for Reisman to be consulted maybe?).
Tony B, you wrote in part in 7380:
What splendid history!
If any readers here have not done so, I strongly recommend that you read it….. It’s just a click of the mouse away!
Peter
Your arctic story is the usual BBC cherry picking of a report which also felled a cherry orchard to arrive at its conclusions. ‘The arctic would still be cooling if it wasnt for human warming,’ the report says. This flies in the face of other evidence. It is neatly summarised here.
http://climatedepot.com/a/2769/Not-Again-Media-Promoting-Arctic-Hockey-Stick–Claim-Temps-Warmest-in-2000-Years–But-Scientists-Already-Rebuking-Latest-Study
This is the run up to Copenhagen Peter, we shall see lots more of this nonsense. By the way did you ever look at the numerous scientific stidies of the arctic I linked to in my own article (including ones from NOAA?) I referenced it a few posts ago.
It is likely not even warmer than the 1930’s let alone the Viking period and even the report agrees the Roman optimum was warmer.
tonyb
Correction: 40 Years and 35 days (according to Pete Martin). They didn’t add BP’s discovery from this week.
From Pete’s Wikipedia:
Looks like we’ll have to burn alot more coal and natural gas.
From Wikepedia: This says 54 years…..
Summary of Reserve Data as of 2008
Country Reserves [17]
Production [18]
Reserve life 1
109 bbl 109 m3 106 bbl/d 103 m3/d years
Saudi Arabia
267 42.4 10.2 1,620 72
Canada
179 28.5 3.3 520 149
Iran
138 21.9 4.0 640 95
Iraq
115 18.3 2.1 330 150
Kuwait
104 16.5 2.6 410 110
United Arab Emirates
98 15.6 2.9 460 93
Venezuela
87 13.8 2.7 430 88
Russia
60 9.5 9.9 1,570 17
Libya
41 6.5 1.7 270 66
Nigeria
36 5.7 2.4 380 41
Kazakhstan
30 4.8 1.4 220 59
United States
21 3.3 7.5 1,190 8
China
16 2.5 3.9 620 11
Qatar
15 2.4 0.9 140 46
Algeria
12 1.9 2.2 350 15
Brazil
12 1.9 2.3 370 14
Mexico
12 1.9 3.5 560 9
Total of top seventeen reserves 1,243 197.6 63.5 10,100 54
Notes:
1 Reserve to Production ratio (in years), calculated as reserves / annual production. (from above)
Again Wikepedia:
A 2008 United States Geological Survey estimates that areas north of the Arctic Circle have 90 billion barrels (1.4×1010 m3) of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil (and 44 billion barrels (7.0×109 m3) of natural gas liquids ) in 25 geologically defined areas thought to have potential for petroleum. This represented 13% of the expected undiscovered oil in the world.
In a televised address on April 18, 1977, president Jimmy Carter delivered a chilling prediction: “Unless profound changes are made to lower oil consumption, we now believe that early in the 1980s the world will be demanding more oil that it can produce. … Within 10 years we would not be able to import enough oil from any country, at any acceptable price.”
In 1914, the U.S. Bureau of Mines predicted American oil reserves would last merely a decade. In both 1939 and 1951, the Interior Department estimated oil supply at only 13 years. And in 1977, President Carter gloomily predicted that we “could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade.”
Consider that in 1970, experts believed the world had 612 billion barrels of proved reserves.
Over the next three decades the world pumped more than 767 billion barrels. By 2006, instead of running out of oil, world reserves had actually risen to 1.2 trillion barrels.
U.S. Geological Survey says the Chukchi Sea off Alaska holds more than anyone thought — 1.6 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered gas, or 30% of the world’s supply, and 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, 4% of the global conventional resources.
The Green River Formation, an oil-rich region in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, has been called the “Persia of the West.” This formation has the largest known oil shale deposits in the world, holding from 1.5 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude.
Then there are the riches beneath ANWR and the Outer Continental Shelf.
having had five comments recently deleted at RC
I admire your persistence, Bob. I look at RC occasionally, but I rarely contribute, as I don’t really see the point when the debate is muzzled. What I have to say may not be erudite, but then nor is most of the AGW support, and if they don’t allow serious dissent, what are they hoping to achieve? They can’t claim it’s a balanced debate and they are effectively making their own argument circular.
Glad you liked Pseuds Corner – I can’t help feeling that the increasing hysteria about AGW will provide a rich seam of material…
Max (7382)
Oil = 85% carbon
1 mt oil generates 0.85 mtC
Equals: 3.12 mtCO2
I know you’re being deliberately pessimistic, but do you know offhand how much actually converts to CO2 and how much to solid carbon (particulates)? I know it varies according to the fuel and the means of combustion (diesel smoke being a fine example) but I’d be interested to see an overall guesstimate.
I promise not to use it against warmists, who would only use it for ‘wriggle room’.. :-)
Everyone
Several people have asked to read my review of Peter Taylors book ‘Chill’ which was carried in the summer edition of ECOS-the quarterly journal of the British Association of Nature Conservationists.
As the content is entirely relevant to this debate I have repeated the review here-(ECOS is not available online) I hope that is OK with TonyN
Max has read the book and reckons it has less mistakes than Plimers book, so I hope others may buy a copy as I genuinely believe CHILL has important things to say, not only about the science but the agenda that is driving it.
**********
CHILL
A reassessment of global warming theory
Peter Taylor
Clairview Books, 2009, 404 pages
£14.99 Pbk ISBN 978 1 905570 19 5
CHILL is really two books in one, the first part covering the science in exhaustive detail, which provides an alternative to the orthodox view on climate change. Taylor-who has impeccable green credentials-describes “the technocratic and communalist approach” in a masterly analysis of how we arrived at this point through “a combination of zealotry which somehow has managed to portray the science is unequivocal when its not”.
The second part covers policy, politics and remedies.
A main theme of the first part is that we take too linear a view of climate-trend projections without recognising past patterns and cycles,
which could include future cooling. I am comfortable with that notion, as any observer of history is provided with clear evidence that climate oscillates in numerous cycles of warm and cold periods.
Readers who believe Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and who consider the IPCC climate assessments are factual, unbiased and objective will not like this book. As Taylor says:
“It is clear to me that IPCC has made such a forthright commitment to the standard (CO2) policy model that it has a biased attitude to new data that does not conform to that model.” And: “It is striking that a small group of
men working behind computer screens created a virtual reality in which the future climate became the enemy of mankind.”
This book is a breath of fresh air in pointing out the numerous contradictions in the orthodox climate science camps which believe themselves uniquely exempt to the notion that they should actually prove their scientific hypotheses – that mankind is altering the climate and doubling Co2 emissions will cause a rise in temperatures of up to 6 degrees C.
The author clinically examines areas of uncertainties, plain misunderstanding and assertions in the existing ‘consensus’ by reviewing numerous high quality ‘contrarian’ papers that rarely receive much coverage in the science and popular media, which is obsessed with the notion of anthropogenic global warming. Climate science is a very small world with authors frequently peer reviewing each other’s papers, some of which might be based on their own work in the first place (Google US Congress hearing by Wegman). Also, they often pronounce on subjects of which they have little knowledge.
When talking of Solanki – a leading solar scientist – Taylor comments:
“This is another classic example of senior scientists publishing in the peer reviewed literature and commenting on issues entirely outside of their field,such as carbon dioxide and atmospheric physics, without reference to other entire fields of relevant climatology, seriously compromised by compartmented approach or political correctness in the face of ‘controversial’ science.”
That Taylor (and many other commentators) believes that even the IPCC’s lowest CO2/temperature rise scenario exaggerates its case by at least a factor of three is amply illustrated, and as the author demonstrates, sea levels and temperatures have obviously not read the IPCC’s script.
Having demolished what currently passes for peer reviewed and settled science, Taylor moves on to the remedies and consequences of the politics in the second part of the book. He argues we are not doing enough to adapt to
inevitable changes and that in particular we are vulnerable to the climate cooling, for which there is no Plan B whatsoever. The author believes many of the actions for mitigating the supposed impacts of warming are counter productive. He stresses the need to create ‘resilient systems’ to cope with
all eventualities. As the author says in examining the ‘collusion of interests’ he has identified; “I can see how it works to everyone’s interest to believe in the scary climate story.”
This excellent but lengthy book deals with a difficult subject and therefore its structure is especially important to ensure accessibility and achieve the influence it deserves, but in this there are problems. For example,omitting the chapter number at the head of each page yet referring to chapter numbers in the text was irritating, as was the constant reference to papers placed on the author’s web site. As much of the science is complex and multi-layered it cannot be read like a novel at one go, so it would be
useful to provide a chapter summary. Also I felt it was missing a chapter on the IPCC’s politics, rationale and peer review processes, that would illustrate they are part of the ‘collusion of interests’ intent on scaring
everyone to death when really we have far more important things to worry about.
Nevertheless, the book remains essential and provocative reading.
Finally, to extract from the major review of the science in the first part of the book is not easy, given the volume of material covered. But here is a dip into the section on ocean cycles (page 131), which illustrates the tone of the message:
“the oceans play a crucial role in the absorption and dissipation of heat
over decadal and millennial timescales and with distinct cyclic patterns.
These patterns are poorly understood and not replicated in global warming models, and any conclusions drawn with respect to those models being able to isolate an anthropogenic global warming signal must be regarded as unproven
and unlikely”.
***
It is a very good book but assumes some existing level of knowledge. In particlar I think the second part exactly sums up the motives and attitudes behind the postings of those who implictly believe in AGW and at the same time state they are objective scientific observers untouched by politics or ideologies.
Tonyb
Not often I can say this but here goes. Expert opinion: A 2010 EPA certified heavy-duty diesel from Cummins, Detroit Diesel, Mack, Volvo or Daimler Benz will convert 99.999999% of the fuel to CO2 and water. Particulates are for the purposes of this blog zero. Nitrous oxides (NOx) will be at an almost unthinkable low level of .2 grams /Hp/h. And just for the benefit of my friends here most particulates for the last 10 years where due to either the sulphur in the fuel or to oil consumption of the engine due to wear and tear. Wear and tear has been banned and in service levels will be measured and must comply. And the oil companies must supply low sulphur fuel.
What does this mean? It means that what was thought impossible even 10 years ago, and lunacy 20 years ago has happened. Virtually zero emission diesel engines, that burn less fuel, produce more power and last longer whilst costing less in real terms. It may not be the glamour world of Hollywood, Wall Street or the City of London but there are some unsung heroes about. If only our so called politicians and environmentalist climate scientist were as half as clever.
Max et al
From 25 July 2008 until 13 August 2008 an exchange took place between Duae Quartunciae and Saturn.
In the light of my own increased awareness of the relevant issues, I found a recent rereading of this debate very informative.
So I thought you might like to access http://duoquartuncia.blogspot.com/2008/07/aps-and-global-warming-what-were-they.html
Regards
Jasper