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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Why should I hold my breath waiting for availability of Methane fuels when we have all of this oil?
Peter Martin 946 wrote
My responses:
[1] Yes
[2] Yes, that’s reasonable, if you are talking about the biosphere, but what is your point here? The Earth does not consist of only the biosphere; It has some other bits too, such as its mantel!
[3] Concerning volcanoes, on Earth, I don’t think so from my reading. My understanding is that methane from the bowels, in consort with the conditions in earthly volcanoes, breaks down to H2O + CO2. Earthly volcanoes largely emit CO2 and H20. (Although Erebus in Antarctica is said to also emit lots of chlorine)….. And volcanoes on Venus, under very different conditions, are said to do heap big lots of methane
[4] I don’t know if I can find time to read Gold’s book, (have you BTW?), but I do observe that Kenny has a low opinion of him.
[5] It is not unusual within Western technologies to find dry exploratory bores, in fact it is fairly common according to some sources. Please advise the cost per barrel of oil from such typical dry bores?
Max,
Here you go…….
One day later: Mauna Loa CO2 graph changes
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/one-day-later-mauna-loa-co2-graph-changes-data-doesnt/
PeterM 942,
I’m sorry to bring you BAD NEWS, but there seems to be good reason to say that the Russians are overcoming some political/taxation/investment problems, and bringing on new oil fields, according to this report by the EIA, of May 2008:
As I’ve said, it’s not easy to cut through the confusion on Russia.
BTW, why do you quote wikipedia, which is strongly flagged twice, thus:
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s quality standards…
To comply with Wikipedia’s quality standards this article may need to be rewritten…
Robin, regarding your post (933) questioning the abiotic oil debate. I’m so far away from being an expert on this subject I’d have trouble seeing the debaters with a telescope, but my understanding on this is that if it’s true (the abiotic oil theory), then there are likely VASTLY larger oil reserves than we have yet found. Furthermore, it is even possible that new oil is being produced NOW deep within the Earth, and this oil may be seeping up to replenish fields thought to have been pumped dry.
Frankly, it all seems a bit crack-pot to me, but there are those—particularly in Russia—who strongly support this theory.
JZSmith,
“…..that if it’s true (the abiotic oil theory), then there are likely VASTLY larger oil reserves than we have yet found.”
Why is that then? It may not make any difference at all.
The oil companies don’t particularly care how the oil was formed, they just want to get it out of the ground and sell it.
They’ve had over a century of experience in finding the stuff. Is it really likely that they are now making the mistake of drilling in very difficult conditions, such as 200 km or more offshore in deep waters, when all they really need to do is drill a little deeper on land?
I think you are right. It is all too far-fetched. Tony has used the term ‘barking mad’. I wouldn’t go that far. It’s more just a lot of wishful thinking.
Bob_FJ,
It’s true that the Russians have increased their production quickly in recent years, to such an extent that they have at times exceeded Saudi Arabian production. What they haven’t been able to do is find any significant new reserves however. Their reserves are reported to be less a quarter of the Saudi reserves and slightly less than Venezuela’s stock.
The size of the reserves is the key issue. If they increase their production now, without finding any more deposits , it will just mean they’ll run out quicker.
Show us the Evidence, Penny Wong!
Dr David Evans
BSc, BE-EE, MA (Sydney), MS-EE, MS-Stat, PhD EE (Stanford)
[A slightly shorter version of this article appeared in The Australian newspaper on Friday 18 July 2008.]
I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector. FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology, and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good -CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects. The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together, and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet!
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon plays only a minor role and is not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hotspot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes – weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hotspot whatsoever. Not a little hotspot, but none at all.
If there is no hotspot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of the global warming. So we now know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hotspot is there but went undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hotspot. Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hotspot. If you believe that you believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None.
There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed), but there are no observations that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming. The world has spent $50b on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that support the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the last year (to the temperature of 1980). Land based temperature readings are corrupted by the ‘urban heat island’ effect – urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA report only land based data, and report a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice cores shows that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these four points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician’s assertion.
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. In the mind of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved. If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don’t you think we would have heard all about it ad naseum by now?
The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.
The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be before wrecking the economy. It is the job of our opposition politicians and press to demand the evidence from the relevant minister, Penny Wong.
And what is going to happen over the next decade as the global temperature continues not to rise? When the public find out that all the above points were known in 2008, might they feel deceived, furious at the futility of the economic sacrifices?
Who is going to be held responsible? Perhaps the political class, for not having the wit to examine the evidence? Maybe the press, for not have not done even the most elementary job of informing a debate and asking questions? (If any of the missing signature, the lack of actual evidence, the lack of temperature rises since 2001, or the 800 year lag of CO2 in the ice cores are news to you, then no, your press has not been keeping you well informed.)
Don’t you think some evidence is required before wrecking the economy? Someone simply has to demand to see evidence. You will find that there is none.
July 20th, 2008
Challenging the basis of Kyoto Protocol
Vladimir Radyuhin
http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/10/stories/2008071055521000.htm
This is getting into a ‘yes it is’ , ‘no it isn’t’ argument.
Penny Wong, as an Australian Government Federal minister, has to listen to her scientific advisors. Not get embroiled in the scientific argument herself by providing the sort of evidence you are asking for.
It is interesting that Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper’s always run this type of article on climate change, even though he himself is supposed to be a believer in the AGW theory. It’s fair enough to give each side of the argument some colomn inches, but what about a right of reply?
For every David Evans, there are 50 equally qualified scientists who would happily write articles for The Australian newspaper explaining why Penny Wong was advised as she was.
Chuckle,
PeterM 959, you naively wrote in part:
My reply [1]…. my impression is that most of the media, including Rupert’s is swamped with AGW doomsday hysteria, and that in this rare case that you condemn, it is quite refreshing to see the odd dissenting voice. You must be hallucinating if you have not noticed the vastness of the media Armageddon stuff around. (Is it right that kidney stones are caused by ACW?) Do politicians perhaps take into account public sentiment which might just possibly perhaps maybe get driven by the media?
My reply [2], the 50 eager scientists that you refer to would not by any chance work for the BoM, or CSIRO, or some Oz university eagerly seeking funding for AGW research by any chance?
I admire David Evans for refusing a year or more ago to regurgitate crap for his government department employers, and thus sacrifice his very materialistically comfortable well-paid job. I suspect his motives were driven by principles that can be briefly enshrined in the one word; ‘conscience’
I don’t know what he does now; recycling plastics from garbage tips, just plain unemployed; or maybe he works for Exxon? What do you think Peter? I’m sure you can think of something illuminating to say!
Snort!
Further my 960;
I should add that I was talking about the Oz media and have not been outside Oz for about ten years, so I might be a tad parochial. Nevertheless I will say on recollection, and from scant overseas media reports, that Rupert Murdoch (A US CITIZEN, born Australian, I cringe), is in my opinion a media arseole of the first order, and as for FOX dumb-down news etc, I regard it as a crime against humanity.
BTW, I intend (Plan A) to venture forth firstly to the UK via either Austrian Air or Swiss Air with thus a few days in Vienna or Zurich/Bern from around mid September. Then, as the weather might get colder to Italy through October. Plan B includes a ‘round-the-world-flight” via USA to meet up with a long-dear friend, but said person works for a US airline which may close-down in Detroit, and rebase in Florida, and… and…. It’s complicated, so there is also plan C
NEWSFLASH!
EXXON takes the lead again!
http://oilismastery.blogspot.com/2008/08/exxon-claims-titan.html
Bob_FJ,
I really don’t know where your get your opinions from. If you can find me an equivalent article to the one by David Evans, but giving a mainstream view of the AGW issue, and published in one of Murdoch’s newspapers, I’d be pleased to see it.
” well-paid jobs ” ? Whatever the vices of government scientists might be, moneylust is not really one of them! At least in Australia. They are some of the smartest guys in the community, but they don’t earn anywhere near what they could, if they’d chosen banking or financial jobs in ‘the city’. In fact, they’d probably earn more if they drove a digger or a crane on a building site or in the mines.
If you think otherwise, it’s you who are being naive.
PS Any references to zero 14C in oil yet?
PPS: I should have written “PS Any references to non-zero 14C in oil yet?”
Hi Tony, I’ve just got spammed (I think) with a modest post containing just one fairly modest link.
I also sometimes go to a rather gung-ho strange sort-of-feral AGW site Ideonexus, because it can be good FUN there. It is also a WordPress site and one of its biggest contributors (Clint) also runs a WordPress blog. I also had problems at Ideonexus with evaporating posts, and you may care to take-up my subject post there in the following link for system information:
http://ideonexus.com/2008/03/25/more-global-cooling-evidence-embarrasses-the-ipcc-orthodoxy/#comment-5451
Clint, who seems to know about this stuff makes various helpful comments about cookies “spam avoidance” and what not, that MAY be helpful, I dunno, although it seems that not all WordPress sites are the same!
Oh! BTW, there is some stuff on AGW there too, which Mark Ryan, THE Idionexus site owner seems to have evacuated from. (Got too hard?)
PeterM 963,
what with your TRIPLE follow-up on C14 ratio in oil, I can now see that you are wanting to bite me like a crocodile….. Me no understand why you are so hot on this relatively trivial thing, but hey hoh, let‘s play along with you!
First of all, let me give you an introduction on some carbon dating issues, to further your education.
Please read this following extract with great care and precision. It may not be absolutely definitive, but perhaps it might stimulate your cerebral neurons into exploring some new possibilities of thought!
HOWEVER, please note some of the conditional statements, and I, Bob_FJ can indicate that the standard Egyptology is maybe NOT inviolate.
What I recommend that you do Peter, is Google around, and you will probably find that reportedly, oil has been found with too much C14 in it^. You have to try various combinations of search-words of course, and I can’t be bothered to try to locate my own research from decades ago.
^ BTW, I THINK the most sensible explanation for oil is that the C14 dating method is faulty! That the oil, REGARDLESS of its origins, and WHEREVER it may be found, MUST be very much older! (And it, whatever it is, cannot be reliably dated)
There is other carbon dating stuff too, such as contamination doubts on the “Dead Sea Scrolls”
Hi Peter,
Sorry to cut in, but your statement on Oz scientists on taxpayer payroll caught my eye:
“they’d probably earn more if they drove a digger or a crane on a building site or in the mines.”
Yeah. And they’d have to work a lot harder, too.
It’s called the “pay for performance” principle.
Regards,
Max
Bob_FJ,
My question, was on your statement ” However, there are reports of substantial amounts of C14 being found in oil, giving it a theoretical surprisingly young age.”
I was genuinely curious to know if there was anything in this, but if the best reference you can give is that I should ‘Google around’, I guess I’ll just have to assume that there isn’t.
Just to put some numbers on what climate scientists actually do earn here in Australia, I’d say that they’d start on about Aus$55k, after graduation. After that their salaries would improve but they wouldn’t expect to do much better than Aus$90k, ever. There are guys in the city who would spend more on their coke habit!
So, the idea that they distort their findings for financial reasons, or to wreck the world economy is laughable. ‘Pay for performance’ is not a bad idea. If that were the norm, we would certainly be due some refunds from those who, in recent years, have peddled such financially toxic products as ‘collateralized debt obligations’, and ‘exchange traded derivative contracts’ and really are on their way to wrecking the western economy.
Hi Peter,
“‘Pay for performance’ is not a bad idea. If that were the norm, we would certainly be due some refunds from those who, in recent years, have peddled such financially toxic products as ‘collateralized debt obligations’, and ‘exchange traded derivative contracts’ and really are on their way to wrecking the western economy.”
Yeah. Or carbon offset hedgefunds or carbon offset trading companies (like Al Gore’s).
Regards,
Max
That’s because they are substandard as scientists. If they were any good they would ply their trade in the private sector and make more money, (and possibly create/discover something useful and marketable) instead of suckling off the teat of the taxpayers.
Any GOOD, self respecting scientist would market his/her skills to Dupont or any number of companies in the private realm instead of being parasite attached to the neck of the public.
JZSmith 955, you wrote in part concerning abiotic oil:
Frankly, it all seems a bit crack-pot to me, but there are those—particularly in Russia—who strongly support this theory.
Yes, it does seem a bit strange, I agree, but have you really worked through the vegetable and/or animal origin options? How for instance are such vast amounts of dead biota trapped and accumulated without bacterial/chemical decay. The favourite option assumed is based primarily on phytoplankton (vegetable), but if vast amounts have accumulated on the seabed long ago, one would expect to see evidence of it happening today, but I see no mention of it anywhere so-far. On the other hand, there is evidence today of sedimentary ooze on the seafloor, which one day will arguably become some kind of sandstone. (e.g. the White Cliffs of Dover; a very pure form) This comprises primarily of the skeletons of zooplankton. (animal), which do NOT decay.
An eloquent short write-up on the three main theories follows, which I’ll post separately, (it is certain to be delayed because of it‘s links ….. or you could Google the title of ‘The unclear Origins of Oil’ kk.org) It has a link to Wikipedia, which has a surprising long treatise of the three main theories, although it lacks some citations etc.
Third theory you ask? Well it’s a variation on mineral origins except that it is bacterial rather than chemical.
And yes, I think plankton or dinosaur origins seem a bit crackpot too. It’s a tough one!
Further my 971
http://kk.org/ct2/2008/06/the-unclear-origins-of-oil.php quoted in full:
The Unclear Origins of Oil
Crude oil is almost $140 per barrel.
By now you’d think we would know where it comes from.
No one really knows. The conventional wisdom is that oil descends from algae from eons ago. Lots and lots of algae. Unimaginable mounds of dead algae in quantities no longer found on this planet, pressed, and cooked into hydrocarbon liquids. Thus: fossil fuel. Others, notably the Russians, have an alternative theory that oil comes from non-biological carbon compounds deep in this planet, like the methane oceans we find on other planets. In this scenario oil is a planetary phenomenon. Indeed this abiogenic oil could still be forming in the earth. Thousands of Russian papers supporting this view have still not been translated. The American astrophysicist Thomas Gold also advocated a similar idea (which may or may not have been influenced by the Russians) in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere : The Myth of Fossil Fuels”.
The best overview for this alternative genesis is this recent scientific paper by G.P. Glasby reviewing the Russian/Gold view in light of research as of 2005. It assumes too much knowledge, and is not the ideal introduction, but it does capture the evidence to date. Ultimately the paper is not sympathetic to the theory. It is available as a PDF here. Excerpt:
The success of the abiogenic theory can be seen by the fact that more than 80 oil and gas fields in the Caspian district have been explored and developed in crystalline basement rock on the basis of this theory.
An emerging third theory is that bacteria living within rocks produce oil. In this theory there is a biological component (the bacteria) which constitute the oil-generating process, but the originating material in not degraded organic material, but rather geological carbon gases. The path is carbon gas –> bug –> oil. Craig Venter and others are exploring the idea of engineering bacteria to make oil from other carbon gases, like CO2. Different bacteria could also be involved in reforming organic material into oil; there may be a multitude of ways oil forms.
In any case I am betting on bacteria as the creators of oil simply because I’ve learned to never bet against bacteria. June 28, 2008
I have not read Glasby or Gold yet, but the final link is well worth a cautious look
Further my 972,
Of course the other links WITHIN the post did not appear, so you can find them by clicking the leading link.
Sorry
Its interesting to note that the oil companies are very reluctant to build refineries anywhere in the world at the moment, even though all the existing ones are running to nearly maximum capacity.
Aparently, not only have no new refineries been built in the USA since 1976 but many have actually been closed down.
Could this be because the oil companies, who are normally pretty smart and shrewd operators, know that we are at or close to ‘peak oil’? Do they know that there’ll be less of the stuff to refine in future, and that they won’t need any new ones?
Brute,
“That’s because they are substandard as scientists.”
And you’d know?