I first heard about global warming in the late 1970s. It seemed very believable, as there had been a dramatic climate shift in the southwestern US – where I was living. (We didn’t know about the PDO at the time.)
By the late 1990s, winters in Europe had gotten so mild that it almost never froze in London. The grass was always lush green.
Around 2000, a drought struck the US southwest. Fires burned up vast areas of forest. I remember looking up at the cloudless skies and imagining all that heat trapped by the CO2.
But then something unexpected happened. The climate turned cold and snowy, and it became obvious that something cyclical had occurred – like in the 1930s (only much less severe.)
Some of us grew up, evolved and moved on. Others still cling to discredited theories of the past.
Using weather to prove global warming, sorta backfired on them,
didn’t it?
Steve,
In the 1970’s a college professor was saying that CO2 was reaching a saturation point and most excess beyond that point would settle out. He did not think CO2 was that important as a greenhouse gas. Was he wrong in that regard?
The first few tens of ppm of CO2 has a significant impact on the greenhouse effect. Beyond that, additional CO2 has little impact on the Earth’s radiative transfer budget.
Is this some sort of joke??? LOL
Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is pressing forward on his drive to vote this month on his plan to delay Obama administration climate regulations for two years, threatening to go directly to the Senate floor and force a vote to include it in a catch-all spending bill.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1210/46508.html#ixzz18OFTO83X
Um… it’s WV… Coal… and Elections matter. But it’s only poltical tactics, Rockerfeller is a traitor who has exposed classified information and violated the Logan Act and should be in jail.
Steve, so you agree that adding extra CO2 at this point will have little bearing on the greehouse effect. Then if the science behind global warming is that flawed, how did this all get started?
Hansen believes that feedbacks massively amplify the small CO2 signal
Andy – here’s a link you should find interesting. It takes you to a page which has a pdf article by Marjorie Hecht entitled “Special Report 1975 “Endangered Atmosphere Conference” Where the Global Warming Hoax was Born.
You won’t be surprised to find the usual suspects in attendance (Mead, Erhlich, Schneider, Holdren, Lovelock) formulating the scare process to be followed. They had original concepts of the earth being destroyed by humans and were seeking ways to control population. As their other tactics weren’t working too well, they seized upon the destruction of the climate.
Since humans have nothing to do with water vapor, CO2 got the nod to be the fall guy, so to speak.
In respect of its absorptive powers, you really just need to see how much IRR bandwidth it occupies. Its only about 8 – 9% of the spectrum – which essentially means that even with a 100% CO2 atmosphere, it cannot absorb more than the 8 – 9% of the IR spectrum. Much of that 8-9% is also overlapped by the water vapor spectrum anyway.
The whole AGW argument was based on a desire for social engineering and power, and of course, the money being thrown around wasn’t unwelcome either. Its still politics and money.
I for one can’t wait until actual science without the spin comes back into vogue. I’m not sure how long I’ll have to wait !
Darn I actually forgot to copy the link.
Here it is.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
Well, my experience was a bit different. I spent the late 80’s and early 90’s in Alaska. After living through that experience, I came to 2 conclusions.
1) Hell is not hot, hell is the absence of Light and the warmth provided by the Light. Hell is cold.
2) Any climate change to warmth is a good thing.
It was a few years later that I concluded all of the gibberish about the planet warming was simply a globalist socialist contrivance. I had hoped that the scam was rooted in some base of reality, but its just a wealth/power grab that uses well-meaning, if not simple-minded, earth worshipers as pawns.
Just for the record I didn’t believe in the ice age scare of the 70s, I got in school, I didn’t by into AGW, I didn’t even buy into the ozone hole stuff.
Hansen has obviously been proven incorrect. It’s incredible that we were supposed to make huge sacrafices and dismantle the economy during a recession based on totally flawed science.
Here is a reason not be believe them anymore.
Compare this with:
Sorry Steve, I never believed in Man Made Global Warming.
As a trained scientist, I held firmly to the “belief” that the peer-reviewed literature was unasailable as a source of verity. No matter what the errors or omissions that they might exhibit, the process would correct and provide sensible advice.
In 2006, my first foray into CAGW, I happened upon the Vostok ice core data. At first, it looked gloomy and seemed to confirm the upcoming ice-age was only a matter of time and that further warming could only advance that eventuality. Upon closer investigation, and being very familiar with graphical representations of data, I remarked the obvious fact that [CO2] changes followed temperature values. If a fundamental premise of CAGW was obviously erroneous, what else might be?
The rest was slow and arduous until climategate. My consternation and disgust with the actions of those climate scientists involves solidified my resolve and convinced me of the reality of climate change, its provenance and the utterly unimportant contribution of man-made CO2 to the process.