The Great Global Warming Swindle

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Hogeye
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The Great Global Warming Swindle

Post by Hogeye »

The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4899458831
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8pU

Great video debunking global warming alarmism. Includes critique of Gore's blather, history of GW alarmism (started with Thatcher!), many notable scientists, members of IPCC, etc. 1 hr and 15 minutes.
"May the the last king be strangled in the guts of the last priest." - Diderot
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Post by Hogeye »

Here's a very informative letter from The Morning News (March 21, 2007).

Cause Of Warming Still Undetermined

Our useable, breathable atmosphere is broken down into the following parts, in the following percentages.

Nitrogen, 78 percent; oxygen, 21 percent. The remaining 1 percent consists of .93 percent argon; .04 percent carbon dioxide and the remaining .03 percent consists of other gases in trace amounts.

The atmosphere also contains water vapor to 4 percent by volume dependent on location and season.

One need not be a climatologist to obtain these facts.

They have been available to anyone with a scientific knowledge at a junior high school level.

First I must dispute a so-called fact that many consider to be common knowledge but is, in fact, incorrect. Carbon dioxide is not the single greatest cause of the greenhouse warming effect.

That honor befalls the greenhouse gas that causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming effect.

It is water vapor.

There is not a reputable climatologist on this planet who will, or can, dispute that true fact.

Allow me to dispel another warming myth. The rise in CO2 levels are not the ultimate cause of global warming.

Although CO2 levels continued to rise unabated throughout the entire 20th century, global mean temperatures lowered significantly and measurably from the latter 1930s through the middle 1970s. (Remember the warnings about "global cooling" and the coming ice age?)

How about a couple of other actually proven facts that are, thus far, undisputed by scientists and the scientific methods of study.

CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a natural gas.

Most, if not almost all, antipollution laws concern CO (not CO2) which is carbon monoxide, not carbon dioxide.

More CO2 (about 30 times more) is dispersed into the atmosphere than all the CO2 produced and dispersed into the atmosphere than the CO2 produced and dispersed by man's production of it combines.

CO2 is CO2. When a plant form utilizes it for photosynthesis and replaces it with oxygen, that plant cannot distinguish between CO2 from an automobile exhaust, released from a rotting stump in the Okefenokee swamp or the seven million tons of CO2 that is released each day by 61/2 billion people exhaling it into the atmosphere.

Water vapor is the cause of 96.8 percent of the warming effect.

Of the remaining 3.2 percent approximately three quarters is the result of CO2 warming. (About 1.9-2.1 percent).

Since man made CO2 is accountable for about 1/30th of that amount (remember mother nature?) then all anthropogenic CO2 (man-made) is responsible for only .01 percent -- that's 1/10 of 1 percent.

These figures, incidentally are straight out of the Kyoto accords playbook.

Do I believe that global warming is real? Absolutely. Without natural global warming cycles this planet would be another ball of ice hurtling through the cosmos.

Do I think that it is occurring at the horrendous levels that many alarmists say it is? (Think, Al Gore).

Some say there is evidence to support that notion, some say not.

I cannot support or refute that hypothesis and will (must) let history and nature make the call as to the ultimate severity of the global effects.

What I can, and do, refute is the arrogance of those who claim with unfounded and unsubstantiated certainty that we humans possess the ability to alter nature, weather, or natural cycles on a global scale.

That global warming is with us is an irrefutable fact.

The severity of it and our ability to cause, detract from, or to stop it is very much open to refutation and hearty skepticism with honest debate.

David Vance

Rogers
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Post by Doug »

Hogeye wrote:Here's a very informative letter from The Morning News (March 21, 2007).

Cause Of Warming Still Undetermined

Our useable, breathable atmosphere is broken down into the following parts, in the following percentages.

Nitrogen, 78 percent; oxygen, 21 percent. The remaining 1 percent consists of .93 percent argon; .04 percent carbon dioxide and the remaining .03 percent consists of other gases in trace amounts.

The atmosphere also contains water vapor to 4 percent by volume dependent on location and season.

One need not be a climatologist to obtain these facts.

They have been available to anyone with a scientific knowledge at a junior high school level.
DOUG
Assuming these are facts, so what?
First I must dispute a so-called fact that many consider to be common knowledge but is, in fact, incorrect. Carbon dioxide is not the single greatest cause of the greenhouse warming effect.

That honor befalls the greenhouse gas that causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming effect.

It is water vapor.

There is not a reputable climatologist on this planet who will, or can, dispute that true fact.
DOUG
So what? Is this crap supposed to be a rebuttal? That's like saying "Most of what is in the ocean is water, so therefore we can dump a bunch of oil into it and it won't bother us."

Does this person have anything of substance to say? I didn't see anything worth reading.

GIVEN that there is greenhouse warming, and given that it is known that human beings are the main cause of it, we must work with what we can change. Maybe we can't change much of the water vapor, but the water vapor was there before we started making the greenhouse gases worse for us. We must change what we can, and saying that some of the greenhouse gases are natural doesn't change the fact that humans made the situation worse. WE must now make it better.
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Post by Hogeye »

Doug wrote:GIVEN that there is greenhouse warming...
Yes, there exists a phenomena called "greenhouse warming." So what? (A more interesting question is: how much does it effect recent global warming? Compared to orbital path, solar effects, and others is it significant?)
Doug wrote:... and given that it is known that human beings are the main cause of it...
That "given" is almost certainly false. As the letter noted, "the greenhouse gas that causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming effect ... is water vapor." Humans did not create water. As for the .03% of the atmosphere that is CO2 which alarmists like Gore worry so much about, only about 1/30th of that is man-made. Volcanos make more; decaying plants make more, etc. As Ayn Rand said, "Check your premises."
Doug wrote:We must change what we can, and saying that some of the greenhouse gases are natural doesn't change the fact that humans made the situation worse. WE must now make it better.
Yes, of course. "No one" disagrees with that. The question is whether "we" should make it better by rational harm-reducing actions, or attempt ultra-expensive authoritarian schemes to change the climate which will likely have at most a marginal effect (while condemning people in developing countries to starvation by preventing development.)

In your comment above, you probably meant the statist/slave/collectivist "we," while I interpreted it as the distributive "we," opening things up to a broader range of solutions.
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Post by Doug »

Doug wrote:... and given that it is known that human beings are the main cause of it...
Hogeye wrote:That "given" is almost certainly false. As the letter noted, "the greenhouse gas that causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming effect ... is water vapor." Humans did not create water.
DOUG
That doesn't mean that humans are not the main cause, just because the main greenhouse gas is not manmade.

If I find a boulder near a cliff, and I push it off the cliff, I can be held responsible even though I didn't make the boulder, the cliff, nor did I put it near the cliff. What I DID do made the danger worse and could prove fatal for those down below.

Similarly, we didn't make the water vapor, but we make the problem worse by what we ARE responsible for.

LEARN:
If it takes X% of stuff in the atmosphere to put the planet in danger, and nature puts X-10% into the air, we can hardly claim that it doesn't matter what we do, that nature is the main culprit, if we provide the remaining 10% that puts us in danger. Blame nature via the water vapor? That is not the issue, is it? The issue is what WE have done, and the FACT that our actions are known to be putting ourselves in danger.

So again, regarding the water vapor, so what? None of this crap was even a rebuttal.

It is poor thinking like this that may yet be the demise of much of our population if we don't get moving on this global warming thing.
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Post by Dardedar »

Hogeye wrote:Here's a very informative letter from The Morning News (March 21, 2007).
DAR
The water vapor denier theory with various dingleberries attached. Same poop, same pile.

Okay, I'll cherry pick a few of Mr. Vance's blatant misrepresentations and give them a beat down.
One need not be a climatologist to obtain these facts.
They have been available to anyone with a scientific knowledge at a junior high school level.
DAR
At least he is honest about the level of understanding he is working with. That's refreshing compared to the usual bluster from these uninformed GW deniers.
Carbon dioxide is not the single greatest cause of the greenhouse warming effect.
DAR
Poor Vance forgot to cite anyone who claims it is. Maybe because he looked and couldn't find anyone and realized if he removed the major strawman from his letter, there wouldn't be much left.
That honor befalls the greenhouse gas that causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming effect.
DAR
Actually, that's crap. More on this in a moment.
It is water vapor.
DAR
Right. Here is what climatologists say about this:

"While water vapour is indeed the most important greenhouse gas, the issue that makes it a feedback (rather than a forcing) is the relatively short residence time for water in the atmosphere (around 10 days)."

How long for co2? Over a century. Whole different ball game.
There is not a reputable climatologist on this planet who will, or can, dispute that true fact.
DAR
Oh really? Look, I found one:

"So where does the oft quoted "98%" number come from? This proves to be a little difficult to track down. Richard Lindzen quoted it from the IPCC (1990) report in a 1991 QJRMS review* as being the effect of water vapour and stratiform clouds alone, with CO2 being less than 2%. However, after some fruitless searching I cannot find anything in the report to justify that (anyone?). The calculations here (and from other investigators) do not support such a large number..." link
Allow me to dispel another warming myth. The rise in CO2 levels are not the ultimate cause of global warming.
DAR
Poor Vance never does get around to telling us the "ultimate cause of global warming." Fundies do like to have their "ultimates" don't they.
Although CO2 levels continued to rise unabated throughout the entire 20th century, global mean temperatures lowered significantly and measurably from the latter 1930s through the middle 1970s.
DAR
Let me draw Vance a picture and see if we find his statement to be true:

Image

Ahh, so that would be a no. Even when he cherry picks a few decades he still can't get it right.
(Remember the warnings about "global cooling" and the coming ice age?)
DAR
Vance passes along this common myth. It doesn't work:

"In the 1970's, there was a book in the popular press, a few articles in popular magazines, and a small amount of scientific speculation based on the recently discovered glacial cycles and the recent slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking the sunlight."

How foolish or disingenious would one have to be to compare this with the science in support of GW today? More roast of this here.
How about a couple of other actually proven facts that are, thus far, undisputed by scientists and the scientific methods of study.
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a natural gas.
DAR
Unless you have a little too much of it. Then you choke and die. Some might consider that a pollutant. Some basic standards:

Pollution and toxicity
"NIOSH considers that indoor air concentrations of carbon dioxide that exceed 1000 ppm are a marker suggesting inadequate ventilation (1,000 ppm equals 0.1%). ASHRAE recommends that CO2 levels not exceed 1000 ppm inside a space. OSHA limits carbon dioxide concentration in the workplace to 0.5% for prolonged periods. The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health limits brief exposures (up to ten minutes) to 3% and considers concentrations exceeding 4% as "immediately dangerous to life and health." link
More CO2 (about 30 times more) is dispersed into the atmosphere than all the CO2... produced and dispersed by man's production of it combines.
DAR
I removed a redundant line and the rest is borderline incoherent. He doesn't give a source for this and considering how far out he is on everything else, I find little reason to believe he got this one right. Not that it is really relevant anyway.
Water vapor is the cause of 96.8 percent of the warming effect.
DAR
Here is what a real climatologist says:

"...it's clear that water vapour is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO2 alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O3 and the other minor GHG absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect, respectively. The remainders and uncertainties are associated with the overlaps which could be attributed in various ways that I'm not going to bother with here. Making some allowance (+/-5%) for the crudeness of my calculation, the maximum supportable number for the importance of water vapour alone is about 60-70% and for water plus clouds 80-90% of the present day greenhouse effect. (Of course, using the same approach, the maximum supportable number for CO2 is 20-30%..." link

Perhaps Vance should advance his understanding of such things beyond the junior high level before he sends off a letter.
Of the remaining 3.2 percent approximately three quarters is the result of CO2 warming. (About 1.9-2.1 percent).
DAR
Notice the discrepancy between Mr. Junior high school level information, and Dr. Climatologist. Who should a piano tuner go with?
all anthropogenic CO2 (man-made) is responsible for only .01 percent -- that's 1/10 of 1 percent.
DAR
And he just keeps digging.
These figures, incidentally are straight out of the Kyoto accords playbook.
DAR
Nope, they're from his bum. Or from the bum of another misinformed GW denier. Speaking of that, here comes one now.

Hogeye adds a little poop to the pile:
HOG
As the letter noted, "the greenhouse gas that causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming effect ... is water vapor."
DAR
Roasted above. This letter you call "informative" is garbage, top to bottom.
Humans did not create water.
DAR
Oh really? I'm a human and I just made some a few minutes ago.
As for the .03% of the atmosphere that is CO2 which alarmists like Gore worry so much about, only about 1/30th of that is man-made.
DAR
And your source for that is.... Vance the junior high fellow? You'll have to better. Not that it is really relevant.
Volcanos make more;
DAR
Oh they do? I checked, wiki says:

"Volcanic releases are about 1% of the amount which is released by human activities."

I don't trust that because that would make you off by about 99% and that is a little too erroneous even for you (you are usually in the low 90% error area).

What does Dr. Climatologist say?

"One point that is also worth making is that although volcanoes release some CO2 into the atmosphere, this is completely negligable compared to anthropogenic emissions (about 0.15 Gt/year of carbon, compared to about 7 Gt/year of human related sources) . However, over very long times scales (millions of years), variations in vulcanism are important for the eventual balance of the carbon cycle, and may have helped kick the planet out of a 'Snowball Earth' state in the Neo-proterozoic 750 million years ago." link

Another source gives:

"The sum total of all volcanoes emit CO2 at a rate about 1/150th that of anthropogenic emissions." link

Okay, so you are way way way off.
As Ayn Rand said, "Check your premises."
DAR
As Frank Zappa said, "Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe."

Follow Rand's advice on that one. Not much else.

D.

ps Oh, I see where Hogeye got his extremely erroneous (99% wrong) information about volcanos emitting more CO2 than humans. It was from his dumb Swindled movie above. Really, these guys go to the trouble of making a movie and then get a fact THIS wrong. It makes one shudder.

Extensive and interesting debunk of the volcano claim PDF. Turns out the 1% claim on wiki was right.

Good roast of the rest of the Swindle movie here. If anyone is interested in seeing the same old crap debunked yet once again.
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Post by Dardedar »

DAR
It's all well and good to give a good line by line debunking of the silly and blatantly dishonest movie, that's most important of course. But I also like to investigate the driving force behind the horse manure. What makes it fly? Why does it stink so? Hogeye hates when the crediblity of his source is demolished and he considers it, quite incorrectly, an "ad Hom" attack if someone checks to see if his expert witnesses are perhaps, shall we say (lots of sugar) "compromised" and "full of it."

A little background on the boys who made the "Great video" "Swindled."

***
"Distortions are hardly suprising. This programme was not a scientific documentary in any normal sense: it was a piece of political polemic.

The writer and presenter of the programme was Martin Durkin who is closely affiliated with the Revolutionary Communist Party which has a strong ideological opposition to environmental science. In 1997 Channel Four was forced to issue its first ever broadcast apology over extreme editing distortions in a similar series knocking environmentalism. It is a great shame that Carl Wunsch and the other legitimate scientists in the programme did not do a quick web search on Durkin before agreeing to contribute

There was only one scientific advisor on the programme, Martin Livermore, whose sole scientific qualification is that he is the Director of a web-based think tank, The Scientific Alliance. The Alliance was set up by in 2001 by Robert Durward, the fiercely anti-green director of the British Aggregates Association, and Foresight Communications, a Westminster public relations and lobbying company, to "counter scare-mongering by the so-called green lobby". The Scientific Alliance has no affiliation with any recognised scientific body but, like most of the contributors to the programme, it does have very strong links with the US public relations and lobbying organisations that have been so effective in setting the Bush agenda on climate change.

Many of the people who appeared on the programme were captioned to institutions and universities that they left years ago in order to pursue their political campaigning work: Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Philip Stott and Tim Ball are among them. Richard Lindzen is a practising scientist, but a highly politicised and criticised one. All of them have close associations with the Washington public relations and lobby groups that front for the fossil fuel companies and the libertarian right (whose ideology is often strangely indistinguishable from the Revolutionary Communists. Strange things happen at the political extremes).

Is it any surprise then, that these "scientists" were so persuasive. Most of the people on the programme are professional communicators who are more familiar with the chat show than the lab. Of course they give good interviews - it is what they do for a living.

And let us not forget that they are effective because they have a very willing audience. We would all like to believe them. Wouldn't it be wonderful to believe that the science is unsettled, that all that carbon dioxide that we are pumping into the atmosphere really has no effect, and that we do not have to worry about the future."

see comment #14

DAR
Just to give you an idea of how clueless this movie is. Remember the uncalibrated satellite data several years ago that fooled Tim Ball into thinking the earth is cooling and we should prepare for cooling? This erroneous information was corrected years ago, even dimwit Ball admits it. The movie uses this crap! Unbelievable!
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Post by Hogeye »

Doug wrote:If it takes X% of stuff in the atmosphere to put the planet in danger, and nature puts X-10% into the air, we can hardly claim that it doesn't matter what we do...
Stop. No one claims "it doesn't matter what we do." Strawman.
Doug wrote:... that nature is the main culprit, if we provide the remaining 10% that puts us in danger.
It's not ten percent, it's ".01 percent -- that's 1/10 of 1 percent ... straight out of the Kyoto accords playbook." If man-made gasses are insignificant compared to volcanos, natural decay, and animals exhaling, then its makes little sense to increase human poverty at great expense in order to reduce the insignificant amount. (As I like to joke: If you're so concerned, stop breathing!)
article wrote:Carbon dioxide is not the single greatest cause of the greenhouse warming effect.
Darrel throws some ad hom at this true fact, but does not explicitly deny it, let alone refute it. Even the alarmists now admit that other gasses such as carbon monoxide and water vapor are more important in the greenhouse effect. Later in his rant, he even provides a quote:
Darrel>Here is what climatologists say about this:

"While water vapour is indeed the most important greenhouse gas..."
Strangly, Darrel about-faces again and denies his own expert. In reponse to "there is not a reputable climatologist on this planet who will, or can, dispute that true fact [that water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas]", Darrel replies, "Oh really?," and gives an irrelevant quote on another topic.

Attempting to refute the article's claim that "Although CO2 levels continued to rise unabated throughout the entire 20th century, global mean temperatures lowered significantly and measurably from the latter 1930s through the middle 1970s," Darrel provides a graph showing that temperture declined from the early 1940s to the [/i]late[/i] 1970s. So even cherry-picking his data sets, he supports rather than refutes the article's claim. (Given the usual time discrepancies in climate measurement)

Well, I could go on, but in short, Darrel is mainly spouting ad hom. He's still on his Tim Ball kick, and even gets that point wrong. Contrary to Darrel's claim, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" does not claim that satellites and weather balloons show no warming. The documentary actually says they do show some warming, but at a much lower rate than surface temperatures. This is not what's supposed to happen according to the greenhouse gas models. If the greenhouse gas theory were true, the atmospheric temperatures would be rising faster than surface temperatures. When the facts contradict the theory, it behooves reasonable scientists to modify or change their theory. But if someone bases their "theory" on faith, no amount of evidence matters.

Here's an article, discussing this faith:
Environmentalism as Religion

Here's an article discussing how, in 1990, US rulers ignored and suppressed scientific research (sound familiar?) to pass "politically correct" legislation called the Clean Air Act Amendments (relating to acid rain):
Global Baloney
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Post by Barbara Fitzpatrick »

Something about water vapor that (as far as I can tell by reading the above) hasn't been addressed. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is heat related. The warmer the air the more water vapor it holds. We can do nothing about that (and don't want to - trust me - law of unintended consequences and all that) but we can reduce CO2 and methane, lowering the temperature of the air - and that will reduce the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.

Water vapor isn't exactly a "greenhouse" gas. Greenhouse gases permit high frequency ultraviolet rays to pass through them to the earth and don't permit the lower frequency infrared waves bouncing off the earth to get back out into space, but don't absorb heat themselves to any great extent. Water vapor absorbs heat, increasing the air temperature and the water-carrying capacity of the air. That's a positive feedback loop that will turn our planet into another Venus, if we don't stop it the only way we can - reducing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to start it cooling down, so it can't hold as much water vapor.
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Post by Doug »

Doug wrote:If it takes X% of stuff in the atmosphere to put the planet in danger, and nature puts X-10% into the air, we can hardly claim that it doesn't matter what we do...
Hogeye wrote: Stop. No one claims "it doesn't matter what we do." Strawman.
Then what is your point? People are trying to curb the damage we know is happening and which is known to be caused by human action. Humans put the greenhouse gas levels over the margin of safety, and we must do something about it.
Doug wrote:... that nature is the main culprit, if we provide the remaining 10% that puts us in danger.
Hogeye wrote:It's not ten percent, it's ".01 percent -- that's 1/10 of 1 percent ... straight out of the Kyoto accords playbook." If man-made gasses are insignificant compared to volcanos, natural decay, and animals exhaling, then its makes little sense to increase human poverty at great expense in order to reduce the insignificant amount. (As I like to joke: If you're so concerned, stop breathing!)
Again: So what? I still don't see any rebuttal in this material you've provided. Humans are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels and other things. We know this because the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere is dropping as greenhouse gases from burning increase. So it is NOT simply the case that more gases are going into the atmosphere. Burning is causing these gases to go into the atmosphere.

That lecture you attended last year, given by that out-of-town expert, showed this. You must have missed it.
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Post by Hogeye »

Hogeye> Stop. No one claims "it doesn't matter what we do." Strawman.

Doug> Then what is your point?
I've made several points. E.g. Man's contribution to recent warming is small compared to natural factors. It's not that warm compared to some previous times, such as the MWP. Various draconian policy measures attempting to change the climate should not be construed as science, but politics. That "end-timers" and chicken-little alarmists should be seen as what they are - crisis mongerers - and their claims evaluated by reason rather than by fear. That government interference in science (neo-Lysenkoism) and the politicization of science is a danger to real science.
Doug wrote:Humans are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels and other things.
Or to be more exact, humans are .01% of the cause of global warming. As you say: So what? That .01% is no reason to freak out and engage is stupid, authoritarian (and most likely ineffective) policies that would harm vast multitudes of people.

The claims of the lecturer were based on dubious computer models, not experimentation. Saying "my computer model predicts this" is not science. Especially when such models make hundreds of arbitrary assumptions. They're like spreadsheet "what-if" models - you can make them say anything. The current state of understanding about climate science makes all such models dubious. (I hear Gore has retracted his "oceans will rise 30 feet" movie claim based on such models; now he's saying a couple of inches.)
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Post by Doug »

Hogeye wrote:I've made several points. E.g. Man's contribution to recent warming is small compared to natural factors.
DOUG
To say that what we are doing is small is no rebuttal. Small or not, human activity is changing the climate on Earth.
Hogeye wrote: It's not that warm compared to some previous times, such as the MWP.
You've already been rebutted on this ad nauseum.

Hogeye wrote: Various draconian policy measures attempting to change the climate should not be construed as science, but politics. That "end-timers" and chicken-little alarmists should be seen as what they are - crisis mongerers - and their claims evaluated by reason rather than by fear. That government interference in science (neo-Lysenkoism) and the politicization of science is a danger to real science.
It's thinking like that, based on poor science, that will keep the planet in danger.
Doug wrote:Humans are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels and other things.
Hogeye wrote:Or to be more exact, humans are .01% of the cause of global warming. As you say: So what? That .01% is no reason to freak out and engage is stupid, authoritarian (and most likely ineffective) policies that would harm vast multitudes of people.
Even assuming that you are correct that it is only .01%, that is still no rebuttal. If I go to the boulder on the edge of a cliff and push it over with little effort, to say that I used little effort does not relieve me of the responsibility of pusing it over the edge.
Hogeye wrote: The claims of the lecturer were based on dubious computer models, not experimentation.
The part about the depletion of oxygen is based on measurement and observation. I guess you missed that part.
Hogeye wrote: Saying "my computer model predicts this" is not science. Especially when such models make hundreds of arbitrary assumptions. They're like spreadsheet "what-if" models - you can make them say anything. The current state of understanding about climate science makes all such models dubious. (I hear Gore has retracted his "oceans will rise 30 feet" movie claim based on such models; now he's saying a couple of inches.)
He said the oceans would rise 20 feet if Greenland's ice cap melted or if one large ice shelf in the antarctic melted. He has not retracted that as far as I know because he's still correct on that.
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Doug wrote:If it takes X% of stuff in the atmosphere to put the planet in danger, and nature puts X-10% into the air, we can hardly claim that it doesn't matter what we do...
Hogeye wrote: Stop. No one claims "it doesn't matter what we do." Strawman.
Doug wrote: Then what is your point? People are trying to...
DAR
Doug, Doug, Doug. When he makes a claim, I recommend you check it. It is often incorrect as I have shown repeatedly above. To debunk this one we needn't look very far. His buddy Mr. Vance above claims that he refutes the idea that humans even possess the ability to alter nature on a global scale:

"What I can, and do, refute is the arrogance of those who claim with unfounded and unsubstantiated certainty that we humans possess the ability to alter nature, weather, or natural cycles on a global scale."

The idea that we can't alter weather or nature on a global scale is a standard Rush Limbaugh line and quite false. If we can't alter weather or nature on a global scale, as Limbaugh and Mr. Vance claim, then with regard to GW, "it doesn't matter what we do."
Hogeye wrote:It's not ten percent, it's ".01 percent -- that's 1/10 of 1 percent ... straight out of the Kyoto accords playbook." If man-made gasses are insignificant compared to volcanos, natural decay, and animals exhaling, then its makes little sense to increase human poverty at great expense in order to reduce the insignificant amount.
DAR
This one is positively filled with whoppers. Lets take a look at each one:

The claim regarding .01 percent is unsourced and most certainly false.

"Kyoto accords playbook" is false. Terribly twisted.

Man made gasses are much more than just significant compared to volcanos. Humanity emits 46 times as much as vocanos (several references provided above, feel free to cry ad hom and ignore them). The claim that volcanos emit more than humans is not just false, it is ludicrously, astonishingly false. And yet Hogeye repeats it again as if nothing has been shown otherwise.

"natural decay" is a ridiculous example because it is simply a natural cycled release of stored carbon. It goes in a circle. What matters is when we come along and dig up and pump up mega-billions of tons coal and oil and burn it. About 85 million barrels of oil every day. As shown above, about 7 billion tons of human related CO2 per year.

I haven't seen the claim that animals exhaling is a problem. Hogeye is perhaps confusing the other end, the methane from their excretement. Methane is 30x more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2, so this is important considering how many animals we are breeding.

The claim regarding increasing human poverty is also bogus. The world's poor are in line to be greatly adversely effected by GW. The wealthy nations are tasked to carry the burden and there are very sensible ways to offset even this small percent.

That much nonsense in just one paragraph! That's Lew Rockwell calibre!

The pseudo-response to my careful and well sourced debunk of his "informative" letter by Mr. Vance, and "great video" "Swindled" is hysterical and non-responsive. I could give it a line by line roast but no one would need to read it. My points stand unresponded to.
HOGEYE
"Darrel provides a graph showing that temperture declined from the early 1940s to the [/i]late[/i] 1970s. So even cherry-picking his data sets, he supports rather than refutes the article's claim."
DAR
Vances claim was: "...global mean temperatures lowered significantly and measurably from the latter 1930s through the middle 1970s"

Hmmm... I must have misread my chart. The latter 1930's are not lower than mid 1970's as I first posted here. Turns out, if you cherry pick just the eight years from the late 30's to the early 40's, you do have slightly higher numbers than the early 70's (by '79 we were higher again and shooting straight up from there).

Here is another chart showing this:

Image

I disagree with the idea that this lowering was "significant" but it certainly was "measurable." If that little eight year .1 blip is so significant to Mr. Vance, I wonder if he is concerned about the rocketing (and predicted) .35 increase we have seen since 1976.

Summary:

In the future I encourage Mr. Hogeye to at least give a token attempt at checking the veracity of letters and videos he uncritically passes along before he recommends them so as not to serve as an excellent example of how to not think critically about serious matters.

D.

ps. Barbara's comments on water vapor are quite correct, and important.
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DAR
You know, one of the extra insidious things about this water vapor argument is how (just like many creationist tactics) it plays upon the populaces, often misleading, sense of intuition. It seems like a anvil should drop faster than a bread box because it is pressing down harder. But this is false. They fall at the same speed. The Watchmaker argument from design plays upon our sense that all things that appear designed should have designers because this is what our common experience teaches us. But this is wrong.

Similarly, the error made in this water vapor argument is so elementary it is hard to believe any one could seriously and honestly fall for it. Since CO2 makes up such a small amount of our atmosphere (.03 to .06%) what would it matter if it was doubled (as we have already done)? It's a tiny amount, so the story goes, so therefore it's effect must be tiny and any small change will have a tiny effect, if at all.

How utterly ridiculous.

The Vance letter, and I heard Tim Ball make the exact same argument the other day on the radio (and Mr. Hogeye swallows anything if it comports with dogma), pretend that any increase in CO2 will have a completely linear effect. And the calculations they give are based upon this line of country bumpkin reasoning (not to mention the blatant errors in the set-up for the specious argument). It seems to be intuitively true... but in reality, for those who know better, could anything be more perposterous?

Water vapor has it's somewhat larger an effect because there is so much of it. CO2 has a large effect (20%-30%, referenced above) and it does this even though it is a very tiny constituent of our atmosphere. And we know how it does it.

It's like comparing TNT to a nuke and saying what matters is not the design of the bomb how much a bomb weighs. Ah no, what matters is what kind of bomb it is. The first bomb ever dropped, "Little Boy", weighed 4.4 tons (and used 600 milligrams of uranium). That 4.4 ton device caused an explosion aproximately equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT.

More specific debunk of this later.

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VANCE
...the greenhouse gas that causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming effect... is water vapor.
DAR
The climatologists at realclimate.org have already dealt with this common contrarian assertion. Some excerpts, bold mine:

Calculating the greenhouse effect

# [regarding the claim:] "95% of this warming is caused by water vapour". This is sourced to a couple of chaps who may have worked for Accu-Weather, but a) is misquoted - their '90-95%' is for both water vapour and clouds, and b) just wrong and c) irrelevant anyway.
Dealing with b) first, if you remove all water vapour and clouds you still absorb about 34% of the long wave radiation, and conversely, if you only have water vapour and clouds you absorb 85% (calculations here). Thus the effect of water vapour and clouds is between 66 and 85% - the range being due to the spectral overlaps with the other absorbers. These calculations were done with the GISS GCM radiation code, which matches line-by-line codes to about 10%..."

# "The other trace gases contribute 5% ... amongst which carbon dioxide corresponds to 3.65%".
"That is just 100 minus 95% of course, but really it should be 15 to 34% - of which CO2 on its own is between 9 and 26% (op cit). If you were to naively estimate the total temperature contribution of the CO2 it would be between 3 and 9 ºC -..."
VANCE
...all anthropogenic CO2 (man-made) is responsible for only .01 percent -- that's 1/10 of 1 percent.
And Mr. Hogeye repeats this without blushing:
'it's ".01 percent -- that's 1/10 of 1 percent "
DAR
Let's see. In reference to a much higher claim (3%) by some other misinformed GW deniers, we have this response:

"# "The human-caused contribution corresponds to about 3% of the total carbon dioxide in the present atmosphere,".
This one is blatantly false and is erroneously credited to the US Dept. of Energy in the original source (their Table 1)! The '3%' number actually comes from comparing the human emissions with the gross emissions from natural sources while neglecting to consider the large natural sink.

DAR
HA, exactly as I pointed out, and I figured it out they were doing this on my own. Pretty good for a piano tuner.

Continues...

"Because of the rapid cycling between the biosphere, the atmosphere and the upper ocean, that is an irrelevant comparison - kind of like comparing the interest on your bank account and your salary and expecting to be able to say something about your savings without thinking about your spending. The correct statement is that CO2 is around 30% higher than it was in the pre-industrial period, and all of that rise is due to human emissions (fossil fuel use and deforestation principally)."

So Vance and Hogeye say .01% and the correct answer is about 30%.

So we find these boys are off by 3000x.

And based upon this nonsense we then get assertions like:
HOGEYE
"Or to be more exact, humans are .01% of the cause of global warming."
And this is when Mr. Hogeye is being more exact. Imagine when he is approximating! We find that in response to the more reasonable, but still very wrong contrarian claim:

"Therefore, the probable effect of human-injected carbon dioxide is a miniscule 0.12% of the greenhouse warming".

Dr. Gavin (climatologist) reponds:

"That's just 0.03*0.0365 of course - but even that is calculated wrong (it should be 0.11% by my calculator). But from our numbers, it would be between 3 and 8%." ibid

A much more indepth look at this question can be found here:

Attribution of 20th Century climate change to CO2

Excerpts:

"The discussion of climate change in public (on blogs, in op-eds etc.) is often completely at odds to the discussion in the scientific community (in papers, at conferences, workshops etc.). In public discussions there is often an emphasis on seemingly simple questions (e.g. the percentage of the current greenhouse effect associated with water vapour) that, at first sight, appear to have profound importance to the question of human effects on climate change...

One such question is the percentage of 20th Century warming that can be attributed to CO2 increases. This appears straightforward, but it might be rather surprising to readers that this has neither an obvious definition, nor a precise answer. I will therefore try to explain why."

BIG SNIP

Image

"What does this all mean in practice? Estimated time series of forcings can be found on the GISS website. As estimated by Hansen et al, 2005 (see figure), the total forcing from 1750 to 2000 is about 1.7 W/m2 (it is slightly smaller for 1850 to 2000, but that difference is a minor issue). The biggest warming factors are CO2 (1.5 W/m2), CH4 (0.6 W/m2, including indirect effects), CFCs (0.3), N2O (0.15), O3 (0.3), black carbon (0.8 ), and solar (0.3), and the important cooling factors are sulphate and nitrate aerosols (~-2.1, including direct and indriect effects), and land use (-0.15). Each of these terms has uncertainty associated with it (a lot for aerosol effects, less for the GHGs). So CO2's role compared to the net forcing is about 85% of the effect, but 37% compared to all warming effects. All well-mixed greenhouse gases are 64% of warming effects, and all anthropogenic forcings (everything except solar, volcanic effects have very small trends) are ~80% of the forcings (and are strongly positive). Even if solar trends were doubled, it would still only be less than half of the effect of CO2, and barely a fifth of the total greenhouse gas forcing. If we take account of the uncertainties, the CO2 attribution compared to all warming effects could vary from 30 to 40% perhaps. The headline number therefore depends very much on what you assume."

DAR
So we have good reason to conclude that these three main claims are not only false and misleading, but profoundly so:

"[water vapor] causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming"

"all anthropogenic CO2 (man-made) is responsible for only .01 percent [of total]"

"humans are .01% of the cause of global warming"

Oh, and what about Mr. Hogeye's claim: "Volcanos make more [CO2 than humans]"

Does he want to defend that one?

D.
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Post by Hogeye »

Doug wrote:Small or not, human activity is changing the climate on Earth.
Right. I've never disputed that. I've disputed the extent of change, and whether it will be catastrophic.
Hogeye> It's not that warm compared to some previous times, such as the MWP.

You've already been rebutted on this ad nauseum.
Yes, both sides have studies that support their view. I supply graphs like this, showing that the MWP was warmer:

Image
From Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, And Zachary W. Robinson.

You supply countering hockey-stick graphs. And we go round and round on which proxies are valid, e.g. I reject proxies affected by the CO2 fertilization effect and you don't.
Doug wrote:If I go to the boulder on the edge of a cliff and push it over with little effort, to say that I used little effort does not relieve me of the responsibility of pusing it over the edge.
If you drive to the Grand Canyon, park on the edge, release the breaks, and shove your car with one hand, causing it to plunge, then you can't rightly say the can fell off because of your little hand-push. Driving from Fayetteville had a greater effect.

Darrel tries to make a big deal out of my not putting quotes around "no one" the second time I used the phrase. I graciously admit that there may exist people who believe "it doesn't matter what we do" to the climate. No doubt there exist freethinkers who believe in homeopathy, too. But that is unusual, and not characteristic, of global warming catastrophe skeptics or freethinkers, respectively.
Darrel wrote:Humanity emits 46 times as much as volcanos...
But volcanos account for much more existing CO2 in the atmosphere. As your own citation says, "However, over very long times scales (millions of years), variations in vulcanism are important for the eventual balance of the carbon cycle, and may have helped kick the planet out of a 'Snowball Earth' state in the Neo-proterozoic 750 million years ago."

Here we need to put our critical thinking caps on. Our disagreement is based on equivocation. You (and RealClimate)) are taking "volcanos" to mean single episodes or yearly output; I am taking it to mean total accumulated output. Per year, we think volcanos put out 145-255 million tons of CO2 while man puts out 24 billion tons. Thus per year man puts out about 150x as much. But volcanos have been belching CO2 for millions of years; the man-made increment is very small.
Darrel wrote:"95% of this warming is caused by water vapour". This is sourced to a couple of chaps who may have worked for Accu-Weather, but a) is misquoted - their '90-95%' is for both water vapour and clouds...
Clouds are made of water vapor. I don't see your objection here.
Darrel wrote:b) first, if you remove all water vapour and clouds you still absorb about 34% of the long wave radiation, and conversely, if you only have water vapour and clouds you absorb 85% (calculations here). Thus the effect of water vapour and clouds is between 66 and 85%
That does not follow; one would expect a cumulative effect - a result higher than either alone. Like 95%.
Darrel wrote:The '3%' number actually comes from comparing the human emissions with the gross emissions from natural sources while neglecting to consider the large natural sink.
LOL! As if natural sinks care whether they are absorbing natural or man-made CO2. We're talking emissions here - CO2 sinks obviously affect both.
Darrel wrote:The correct statement is that CO2 is around 30% higher than it was in the pre-industrial period...
That's irrelevant to total emissions, of course. Putting it in bold doesn't make it any more relevant.
Dr. Gavin wrote:That's just 0.03*0.0365 of course - but even that is calculated wrong (it should be 0.11% by my calculator). But from our numbers, it would be between 3 and 8%.
As noted, Gavin incorrectly only considers current volcanic emissions, rather than total accumulated emissions.
Barbara wrote:Water vapor isn't exactly a "greenhouse" gas. Greenhouse gases permit high frequency ultraviolet rays to pass through them to the earth and don't permit the lower frequency infrared waves bouncing off the earth to get back out into space. ... Water vapor absorbs heat, increasing the air temperature and the water-carrying capacity of the air.
Your reasoning doesn't seem right. To show that water vapor isn't a greenhouse gas, you would need to show that it doesn't "permit high frequency ultraviolet rays to pass through them to the earth and don't permit the lower frequency infrared waves bouncing off the earth to get back out into space." Whether water vapor absorbs heat is irrelevant.
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Post by Doug »

Doug wrote:Small or not, human activity is changing the climate on Earth.
Hogeye wrote: Right. I've never disputed that. I've disputed the extent of change, and whether it will be catastrophic.
Yes, you are slowly coming around. Eventually you'll be where you need to be, at this rate.
Hogeye> It's not that warm compared to some previous times, such as the MWP.
Doug wrote:You've already been rebutted on this ad nauseum.
Hogeye wrote: Yes, both sides have studies that support their view. I supply graphs like this, showing that the MWP was warmer...
You supply countering hockey-stick graphs. And we go round and round on which proxies are valid, e.g. I reject proxies affected by the CO2 fertilization effect and you don't.
The difference is, your graphs get examined carefully and shown to be misleading, false, and sometimes deliberate fabrications.
Doug wrote:If I go to the boulder on the edge of a cliff and push it over with little effort, to say that I used little effort does not relieve me of the responsibility of pusing it over the edge.
Hogeye wrote: If you drive to the Grand Canyon, park on the edge, release the breaks, and shove your car with one hand, causing it to plunge, then you can't rightly say the can fell off because of your little hand-push. Driving from Fayetteville had a greater effectt.
Uh, Hogeye. That was an analogy about responsibility. That something took little effort to accomplish does not relieve one of responsibility. If it took little effort to push a boulder off a cliff, you are still responsible for the damage caused by your pushing it off the cliff. Simlilarly, even if humans are not the main contributors of global warming gases, that we are contributing enough to greatly effect the climate is enough to shift responsibility from nature to us.
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Hogeye wrote: Yes, both sides have studies that support their view. I supply graphs like this,...
DAR
Graphs addressing climatology, supplied by dishonest biologists (Robinson, Oregon petition creator). Does anyone use this chart besides this biologist and his homemade essay? Perhaps someone involved with climatology?
HOG
Per year, we think volcanos put out 145-255 million tons of CO2 while man puts out 24 billion tons. Thus per year man puts out about 150x as much
DAR
Right, so your comment, made twice above, that volcanos emit more CO2 than humans is false by 150x. Progress perhaps?
Recommendation: don't make that claim any more.
...the man-made increment is very small.
DAR
Didn't think so. It's always one step forward, two steps back. The man made amount, being added right now (not some 750 million year cycle or context), is 150x. I submit that 150 times something is not "very small." It is in fact 150 times larger.
150 = big
1 = small

Now listen up and put on your little hemp thinking cap:

If the volcano output is very important, as you say.

Yet it is only 1/150th of the human output, as you admit.

Then currently and in the future, the human output (which is 150x larger than the "very important" volcano output), should be very important indeed.
DAR cited:
"'90-95%' is for both water vapour and clouds..."
HOG
Clouds are made of water vapor. I don't see your objection here.
DAR
There is a difference between considering the climate effect of water vapor in the air, vs. places where conditions allow the water vapor to condense into light blocking clouds (and thus allow completely different frequencies of energy to be blocked). That you would be unaware of this extremely basic fact reveals your very redimentary knowledge of this subject.
HOG
As if natural sinks care whether they are absorbing natural or man-made CO2. We're talking emissions here - CO2 sinks obviously affect both.
DAR
No, sinks don't differentiate. No one said they did. I am sorry you don't understand the absurdity of comparing gross emissions from natural sources, without considering the natural sinks and that this is part of "the rapid cycling between the biosphere, the atmosphere and the upper ocean." I thought the bank account example was helpful.

My next comment shows what happens when the sinks are maxed out because of humans adding, every day, about 70 million tons of CO2 to this natural "cycling between the biosphere, the atmosphere and the upper ocean."
DAR cites:
"The correct statement is that CO2 is around 30% higher than it was in the pre-industrial period, and all of that rise is due to human emissions (fossil fuel use and deforestation principally)."

HOG
That's irrelevant to total emissions, of course.
DAR
Gee, we've done something to increase total planetary CO2 by 30%, and that's irrelevant? Actually, this makes "total emissions" irrelevant, because whatever "total emissions" are, our input has had very large effect upon the natural cycle.

A chart of the last 400,000 years (pay special attention to the green and black):

Image

So to conclude, we find that the three (unsupported, unreferenced) main planks, parroted from Mr. Vance's terribly misinformed letter, remain false, misleading and indefensible:

1) "[water vapor] causes 96.8 percent of the earth's warming"

2) "all anthropogenic CO2 (man-made) is responsible for only .01 percent [of total]"

3) "humans are .01% of the cause of global warming"

And the bonus whopper:

"Volcanos make more [CO2 than humans]"

The last one being off by an admitted 150x.

Anything else?

D.
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Post by Hogeye »

Hogeye> I've never disputed that [human activity is changing the climate]. I've disputed the extent of change, and whether it will be catastrophic.

Doug> Yes, you are slowly coming around.
But I haven't changed my position. Perhaps you are dropping your strawman and finally understanding my position.
Doug wrote:Even if humans are not the main contributors of global warming gases, that we are contributing enough to greatly effect the climate is enough to shift responsibility from nature to us.
Yes, to "us" distributively, the individuals who cause it, if it "greatly effects the climate," which is under dispute. If the effect is insignificant rather than catastrophic, as I contend, then responsibility is irrelevant.
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Post by Doug »

Doug wrote: Yes, you are slowly coming around.
Hogeye wrote:But I haven't changed my position. Perhaps you are dropping your strawman and finally understanding my position.
Haven't changed your position? At least now you acknowledge that global warming is taking place. A while back you weren't even at that point. You were citing a guy who was claiming that the Earth is cooling.
Doug wrote:Even if humans are not the main contributors of global warming gases, that we are contributing enough to greatly effect the climate is enough to shift responsibility from nature to us.
Hogeye wrote:Yes, to "us" distributively, the individuals who cause it, if it "greatly effects the climate," which is under dispute. If the effect is insignificant rather than catastrophic, as I contend, then responsibility is irrelevant.
The significance is already apparent to other industrialized countries. Only the big rogue state, the U.S., is out of the loop officially.
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