The pages of the New Yorker magazine and other publications have for decades featured the final crisis of human civilization as farce. Cartoon images of religiously inspired ascetics carrying terse placards announcing the end time provide comic relief in a world full of real troubles by invoking our commonsense scientific rationality. But the quote from Rep. Shimkus illustrates something else in the pronouncements of some pundits.
Climate scientists, by contrast, use geophysics, measurement and continuous confirmation through time to model the speed and impact of global warming. They conclude that severe environmental consequences are imminent – not indefinite – byproducts of our carbon based and ever expanding consumer economy. In fact, there is not much time, perhaps a Biblical seven years, for policy makers to confront an urgently needed transformation of society if the worst consequences of global warming are to be avoided.
It actually has nothing to do with science or religion. Just a new face of Bolshevism attacking capitalism.
“byproducts of our carbon based and ever expanding consumer economy.”
Yes, it is all about the evils of capitalism, about the servant class wanting to better themselves without the assistance of all-powerful leaders, about them flying cheaply to places that were once so exclusive – so much nicer you know than they are today. Good grief we can’t have that, they’ll want a better education for their awful children next.
Capitalism gives them more than they deserve – so kill it off with a big myth. Frighten them into staying at home, into knowing their place. Frighten their children too, tell them how evil – no – suggest how evil their parents are for being consumers, for driving a car and using electricity, for being well-informed about the real world.
“A sustainable society will require fairness (equity) and justice locally and globally.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).
“Preventing the collapse of human civilization requires nothing less than a wholesale transformation of dominant consumer culture.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).
“Just because there a professor of something denying climate change does not mean it is not true, it just that the professor is in denial. This is why one must make use of the *preponderance* *of* *evidence* in science, the collective view.” – John Cook (“Climate Change Denial”, 2011).
Yep, three quotes there leaving no doubt the stupidity of this kook.
John Cook (aka Kook) is a certifiable commie.
I say, Better Dead than Red.
So “justice” would involve me sending money to bureaucrats in Washington whenever I wanted to heat my house or cook some food?
Hi,
The science points to radiative forcing from anthropogenic sources of CO2, CH4, N2O, SF6, etc. leading to growing climatic changes.
Just pointing to carbon is a little simple, but CO2 is the main anthropogenic climate forcer, so what exactly is objectionable to a statement that a rapid increase in anthropogenic carbon (i.e., CO2) is going to cause problems.
There are lots of things that create externalities, and it is often efficient to put a price on these externalities that reflects their social cost. This is economics 101, not an attack on capitalism. Why give a free lunch to carbon users?
Best regards,
Don
Additional CO2 has very little impact on the radiative transfer balance.
A purely radiative model is far too simplistic to conclude limits on the effects on the atmosphere as a whole.
It is also clearly the place where you have to start. It is also not clear that the effects you are talking about are calculable more than 72 hours into the future.
Weather is not climate.
Only warm weather is climate
Hi Steve,
Greetings. Thanks for your reply.
If you would, please be more specific when you say that additional CO2 has very little impact on the radiative transfer balance. Just a simple cite to whatever you might be reading, so that I can understand better where you might be coming from.
Best,
Don
I’ve run RRTM myself, which is the radiative transfer model used by NCAR for their climate and weather models
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/co2-accounts-for-1-3-of-the-greenhouse-effect-in-the-tropics/ http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/27/co2-is-responsible-for-less-than-5-of-the-greenhouse-effect-in-the-mid-latitudes/ http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/runaway-methane/
Daniel Packman
you are a science dolt.
Stick with politics.
When there is evidence that Gore, Cameron and other super rich of the same ilk are making genuine sacrafices and reducing their standard to living as a serious example to us peons, it might be an indication of a real problem Until that point, the entire matter is a hypocritical farce.
Actions of the super rich don’t affect nature. Super rich people are more able to adapt to harsher conditions without changing their lifestyles.
So, are you saying that people having wealth is a good way to promote healthier, safer societies?
The relatively few people in the world who are wealthy are able to ignore environmental problems in their own lives if they want to. They don’t need to live near a waste dump the leaks deadly waste. But they can still throw out dangerous material. But everyone can’t be so “wealthy” since pollution is now a global issue.
What does that have to do with CO2?
Wait a few decades and see.
Then the governments should be trying to promote wealth creation, and quit reaching into my pocket and taking. It is interesting that most of the very rich are the ones that promote energy control through carbon taxes. Looks to me like they want to keep things the way they are, with them on top.
Can you just Consider me super rich even though I’m not so that I can be exempted from Carbon (everything) rationing?
Daniel, I am willing to wait for a few decades, if you can go silent. Otherwise the wait would be intolerable.
Workers unite, or be killed. That’s the true face of what came about in Russia as a result of 1917. Having the workers in control wasn’t what it was. There was an elite. Every one else’s life stank.
When you make people work for others there is no incentive to work. So they killed 10,000 to 12,000 every day —suddenly there was incentive to work while having the government confiscate most of your earnings.
Yuri Maltsev, who was involved in Russian government, gives more details of what Russia really is.
“Too Big Not to Fail: Imperial Governments from Moscow to Washington”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAxKAzpGmVA
So justice would involve me sending money to bureaucrats in Washington whenever I wanted to heat my house or cook some food?
It is a challenge to tie environmental cost (which is ultimately paid by all) to the initial consumption/pollution. An unregulated free market decouples the two.
It isn’t clear that there is any environmental cost to CO2. It may in fact be a net producer.
Wait and see.
We have been waiting. Manhattan is under water.
Sorry Steve, couldn’t resist.
Oh SHUUUT UUUP. You are spoiling my wait
Daniel Packman says:
May 27, 2011 at 3:30 pm
Wait and see.
PATHETIC. You are pathetic. It will always be wait and see with your crowd since every prediction you make doesn’t happen. You have to say wait and see, your next predictions will be right. And when they are wrong you will say wait and see. and when those fail—-repeat the process until the end of time!!!!!!!
Don’t forget about the tipping points. They can explain that things will happen even when they are not happening. Then, it will be “worse then we thought”.
Daniel,
Wow, that’s a dandy answer! You obviously took quite some time polishing that turd. I’d suggest that the real reason that you think the answer to everything is more money for central government is that you are an egotistical troll who hates people (communist). If you sincerely cared about people *and* the environment, you’d be working on energy efficiency or alternative energy. It’s obvious your real goal is to subjugate the common man to make sure your communist brethren don’t go without anything. Why don’t you back to Leningrad and climb back in whatever hole you came out of?
Thank you Eric for your well-reasoned, kind and profoundly insightful psychological analysis. I am sure that I will give it all the consideration it is due.
No problem Daniel,
Whenever you need help determining just how hypocritical and misanthropic you are just post here. I’ll spell it out for you gratis.
The warmist movement is a perfect fit for the communists. The former will get everyone use to less, and the latter will make it so.
Don McCubbin says:
May 27, 2011 at 10:16 am
Hi,
“The science points to radiative forcing from anthropogenic sources of CO2, CH4, N2O, SF6, etc. leading to growing climatic changes.
Just pointing to carbon is a little simple, but CO2 is the main anthropogenic climate forcer, so what exactly is objectionable to a statement that a rapid increase in anthropogenic carbon (i.e., CO2) is going to cause problems.
There are lots of things that create externalities, and it is often efficient to put a price on these externalities that reflects their social cost. This is economics 101, not an attack on capitalism. Why give a free lunch to carbon users?”
You forgot H2O. This little rascal causes rust. It eats away at bridges, railroad tracks, cars, melts statues, kills people if in abundance, etc. And as we know more molecules of H2O are produced by them bad SUV’s than CO2. So Don since I have known externalities caused by H2O should we start a cap and trade system for it.
Water vapor is part of a complex cycle that includes CO2. This is part of the reason you can’t run a pure radiative transfer program and expect to get a realistic understanding of the atmosphere.
Hour to hour variations in H2O contribute more to changes in the radiative balance than all the changes in CO2 over the last century.
And because water vapor is so significant on such a scale are you making some leap of faith that CO2 is not significant? That is why complex models are constructed. You can’t draw simple conclusions from an incomplete characterization of the system. You seem to cast a jaundiced eye on current models. Fine, be skeptical. But you can’t substitute simple models that clearly don’t capture all the physics of the atmosphere.
I don’t see any evidence that models provide any value more than a few days into the future.
We disagree.
Every modeler that I have talked to tells me that chaos kicks in after 72 hours and makes modeling unreliable.
Given that Hansen’s claims are based on feedback, modeling is necessarily iterative, and errors compound exponentially.
If climate models were trying to model chaos, this would be true. What you are talking about is weather modeling. Analogous to calculating detailed flow vs evolution of some quantity like prandtl number.
I don’t see much difference between weather and climate models. They both model the same atmospheric processes. For example, you can’t calculate changes in albedo due to snow unless you can accurately and continuously forecast snowfall and temperature. That is what weather models do.
Dan, you missed the point of Don’s statement. Which as I read it was we should pay for externalities caused by CO2 it being a GHG that causes radiative forcing. I can identify externalities of H2O we put in the atmosphere I cannot find any for CO2. So does Don what a cap and trade system for H2O which we know is distructive?
The thing to compare is the relative effects of human added H2O vs CO2. We know the global value of CO2 has increased since the industrial revolution by a large percentage and remains in the atmosphere for many decades.. Water vapor, on the other hand, is largely determined by temperature. If you increase water vapor above its saturated level, it rains out. This doesn’t mean that water vapor has no effect, but it is an immediate one. If we started to inject huge amounts of water vapor in a region, we would increase rain in the region. A much more detailed examination would be needed to see relative effects.
Again, you side step the issue. I have identified externalities caused by H2O. Don says that we should pay for externalities. So should we have a cap and trade system for H2O.
The costs of H2O are certainly there as you have said: rust, etc. But calculating the relative cost of injecting more H2O in the atmosphere is much harder. Most of what you pump in will just quickly rain out and the cost of injecting the H2O is zero additional cost. You will have to deal with rust in any case, but won’t see any additional problems.
Dan Packman says: “You will have to deal with rust in any case, but won’t see any additional problems.”
Isn’t the entire issue with CO2 based on feedback causing more H2O, which causes more heating…..until we hit a tipping point, or something like that.
Are you saying the IPCC is wrong about the effects of CO2?
Increasing CO2 affects the global water vapor in the air. Directly injecting water vapor in the air does not. It just rains out.
That’s all I need to see.
CO2 really is the magical molecule.
I am going to patent the CO2 humidistat/furnace. Works great at increasing the water vapor in your house, and reradiates heat at the same time to keep you warm in the winter.
My current humidistat is just getting me wet.
Works great for houses that have no roof so the sun can shine in, are large enough for global circulation patterns, and have 70% of the surface covered in water.
Daniel Packman says:
May 27, 2011 at 5:13 pm
Increasing CO2 affects the global water vapor in the air. Directly injecting water vapor in the air does not. It just rains out.
=====================
WTF! So there is a CO2 water!
CO2 is the Chuck Norris of the chemical world.
Here is a CO2ism:
H2O doesn’t rain, until CO2 tells it to.
Daniel Packman
You should change your name to Tireless Propagandist.
Sounds good, as long as I can start the market.
Mkelly, It seems like Dan is studiously avoiding your question.
“CO2 is the main anthropogenic climate forcer,” – Anthropogenic CO2 is tiny relative to “natural” CO2 and CO2 hasn’t been demonstrated to be a global climate forcer. There is also a little matter of all of the “social” benefits of convetional fuels.
a rapid increase in anthropogenic carbon (i.e., CO2) is going to cause problems.” – Cause problems for whom and how? Will there just as likely be off setting benefits? I never bought into the idea that a warmer climate is necessarilly all bad. The distribution of effects should be fairly mixed.
“Why give a free lunch to carbon users?” – Are people getting carbon based fuels for free now (of taxes)? Where is it. I could use some.
Dan says: “But calculating the relative cost of injecting more H2O in the atmosphere is much harder.”
So how could you calculate the relative cost of more CO2 if you cannot for H2O that demonstrably does damage where CO2 does not.
So you agree that Don is in error?
Detailed calculation of costs is difficult, but to first order, human increases in H2O don’t translate to an increase in the atmosphere so those costs are zero.
Statement not demonstrable. You stated the increase is regional. Have you not heard of RGGI cap and trade? I think the R is regional.
Stopping human induced CO2 into the atmosphere would result in a minor decrease in the CO2 concentration because additional warming also increased the natural CO2 in the Carbon Cycle. CO2 has a life span of roughly 7 years as found after the above ground testing of nuclear weapons. Your decades claim is PBS!( Pure Cow Excrement) Reducing the human contribution from the current estimate / Wild A$$ Guess of 3% to 0% would result in a net loss of maybe 1% and have little to absolutely no effect on long term global climate.
Your wait and see attitude is admirable if you follow it because your “Cure” is more hazardous to humanity than the imagined catastrophe / Fantasy that the Sky is Falling.
CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Calculations of lifetime of single molecules incorrectly lead one to conclude a lifetime of about 7 years.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:l8ts4nZ814UJ:geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2009.ann_rev_tail.pdf+co2+lifetime&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESikqtrfn4XnSq8FwWoUnvpKfVoDUAXxclcbn33Gaxk-I9qJldNHy5aswKtpMBPVffvyV9AgnN6c_jpOWy0C8VDkvePqFcSiHO-RN4Q-mRppcDsitO-85dl1daEBG4J4QBWcolGN&sig=AHIEtbS0GA-oF611QXfBGr9DJ6dLKDapxQ
Daniel:
B.S.
If that were the case there would be not seasonal variation in CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa. It would not matter where the CO2 measurements were recorded!
The seasonal variations of CO2 are well understood.
I meant humidifier above. laughing too hard.
Some people just do not comprehend that H2O kills more people every day than CO2 has during the last two centuries. Human induced H2O increases the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere but without a cold system to interact with the warm moist air you are left with warm moist air which causes more health problems than warm dry air.
I spent Summers living and working out side in temperatures over 105F with a RH of less than 10%. As the community grew the humidity also grew because of landscape and water features. I observed more people being affected by the “Heat Index” caused by the higher humidity. I currently live in a region with RH over 50% and must stay in a climate controlled area when the outside temperature is over 90F.
Those that claim human induced additional H2O has negligible results does not know what they are talking about.
DP: You may be a scientist or believe what the Chicken Little Brigade tells you but you need to spend more time studying water vapor in more regional conditions.
I don’t dispute regional variations, particularly in the scenario you mention with a constant increased input.
IF CO2 remained in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, then the ppm would be what???? That would mean all the CO2 ever released since the country’s founding????????? Are you freakin’ serious??? And all these years, I thought I understood the CO2 cycle.
If human contribution of around 3%, then that extra 12 or so molecules are SUPER CO2. Those are the ones that will cause cataaaastrooooophheeee!
CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is a result of the sum of sources and sinks. The mechanism of removal takes a long time. If we drastically reduced human sources of CO2 today, it still would be many decades before the level would return to that of the mid 1800’s. There are large natural inflows and outflows of CO2, but they are in balance. A relatively small increase by another source increases the level in the atmosphere significantly.
I don’t accept your claim that natural CO2 is “in balance”. Even Algore acknowledges that CO2 has fluctuated greatly pre-civilization. I’ve never seen an adequate explanation why nature, which doesn’t have a central control, requires a CO2 balance.
What do we gain by suffering all of the privations and burdens that would be required to return CO2 1800’s levels?
The balance between inflow and outflow isn’t perfect, but is relative to the human input. Variations in the past have been, as far as we can document from the data, over much longer time scales. There is nothing magical about nature finding an approximate balance given steady sources and sinks.
Depending on what mechanisms you are considering that would lead to deprivations, I could easily imagine policies that would be worse than doing nothing. Considering the time constants and the huge difficulty in decreasing emissions, we are probably going to be dealing with the effects of increased CO2 for the next century or two even if global cooperation were achieved.
Worrying over the rapidity of the variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration doesn’t seem to have any significance except as a vehicle for peddling alarmism.
except for its utility as a vehicle for peddling alarmism.
CO2 in the atmosphere is related to biological activity. Biological activity is related to temperatures. CO2 concentrations an be expected to increase and decrease with increase in decomposition and decease with plant growth. A warming world ALLOWS more growth and a cooling world RESTRICTS growth. Warming produces more H2O in the atmosphere due to evaporation but as CO2 does not produce warming it plays no part in water vapor concentrations.
Sorry Daniel, there is no balance in nature. What is evident is the attempts to achieve balance that is never achieved. The only time balance can be achieved would be to stop all activity, The universe would need to end to find balance. Life is about adapting to nature as we have found we can not control nature but some fools still try, Like thinking that controlling the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere will make some difference in long term weather patterns.
Your plausible connections of rates to temperature is at best a partial qualitative description of a complex system. There is no way to make conclusions based on such generalities, particularly ones that are incorrect. CO2 sources and sinks are not only biological. Your ideal of balance is not a useful concept in the real world. Balance is a measurable and sound concept within science. We can measure quantities over time and determine under what time constants and values we have a balance.