Greenpeace co-founder: No scientific proof humans dominant cause of warming climate

[fhl]

 

[jem]

If you had a half a brain you would have the analogy correct.

if pigs are the idea that man made co2 is causing warming... you are the moron asserting pigs fly and then pointing to a fake consensus of pro pig flying lobbyists.

The "skeptics" are the saying... no one has ever proven pigs can fly, so show us the proof before you start taxing and transferring.

Yes, and if pigs had wings they could fly. There is no proof pigs can't fly.

Shut the fuck up.

 

[piezoe]

Piezoe. I thought you and jerm would be interested to hear what Lacis actually says ...I take back my calling him an idiot. I should have seen what he actually says before assuming the selective quote you chose was valid.

"The bottom line is that CO2 is absolutely, positively, and without question, the single most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. It acts very much like a control knob that determines the overall strength of the Earth’s greenhouse effect. Failure to control atmospheric CO2 is a bad way to run a business, and a surefire ticket to climatic disaster.

My earlier criticism had been that the IPCC AR4 report was equivocating in not stating clearly and forcefully enough that human-induced warming of the climate system is established fact, and not something to be labeled as “very likely” at the 90 percent probability level. It would seem that the veracity of the human-induced warming would hinge on establishing the pedigree of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2. On this point, the IPCC report is crystal clear. Pages 137-140 of IPCC AR4 describe high-precision in situ measurements of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, documenting the steady increase in CO2 along with its characteristic seasonal fluctuation. These measurements, supplemented by analyses of air bubbles trapped in ice core samples, show unequivocally that atmospheric CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial level of 277 ppm in 1750 to present day concentrations that are approaching 390 ppm.

The IPCC report also shows the corresponding decrease in atmospheric oxygen, thus providing irrefutable verification that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is linked directly to fossil fuel oxidation."

The bottom line is that CO2 is absolutely, positively, and without question, the single most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. It acts very much like a control knob that determines the overall strength of the Earth’s greenhouse effect. Failure to control atmospheric CO2 is a bad way to run a business, and a surefire ticket to climatic disaster.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2...of-co2-in-warming/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Thank you. I think Lacis made that statement in bold in an earlier paper, around 2007. Its categorically wrong however. Water vapor provides the largest greenhouse effect, so I'm going to call it the most important greenhouse gas. Where Lacis is right I'm sure is in insisting that water can't do its job without CO2. In other words if all the CO2, or water, disappeared from the Earth, we had better leave for another planet. We both need to look at some 2013 or later Lacis stuff. But keep in mind, that he, like Hansen, now has an emotional investment -- the result of going out on a limb far to early and then being too proud to admit you were wrong. This is what happens to you as a scientist when you risk coming forward too soon, and you're later shown to be wrong. It has happened many times. And once in a while some scientist sticks out their neck, and after the initial, inevitable rush of critics, is proven right -- those are the ones that we say are brilliant! The quote I gave you was from an initial draft review of, I believe, IPCC 4, which came out, was it 2007? They did revise the summary statement to make him happier before it was released.

I wonder what his view is today, seven years later? There is no question that CO2 has increased in the last two centuries and more rapidly since the industrial revolution. (Why do they use data from Mauna Loa though? I could never figure that out, unless they wanted specifically the rate of emission from a volcano. That's an active basaltic volcano!!! Though hot basalt will scavenge CO2 to form CaCO3, these volcanoes emit copious amounts of CO2, and Hawaii has a bunch of them. I know there is an observatory near there, so it's a convenient location, but why there. That is certainly not at all representative of the average. But never mind.) CO2 varies depending on location and ranges from low three hundreds two high three hundreds, probably hits over 400 ppm now in a few places. The determination of a true average is fraught with difficulty. It varies with altitude and latitude also! The average for the entire troposphere is an educated guess at best.

Two things we need to keep in mind: 1) the rate of CO2 emission is very important and 2) simple linear mass equations, are invalid except over short time periods, because CO2 released to the atmosphere is involved with sinking equilibria, so releasing more CO2 results in shifting the sinking reactions to the right, and consequently much of what is released is scavenged out of the atmosphere over time. If you release 50 GT today, tomorrow morning it will still be there, but ten years hence it won't, only a fraction of it. So the rate of release and time are key factors (the kinetics). These are the things that these climate jockeys have not nailed down very well. Not enough observation time for very slow, statistically noisy reactions! They'll have those numbers for us in about a century. Then at the same time you have many new releases, man, mauna loa, oceans, plant decay, termites, etc., all going on simultaneously.

If you start to think of the greenhouse effect being one of slowing the rate of thermal energy dissipation in the troposphere you'll get a better understanding, in my opinion, maybe not Lacises. (He's a smart guy, but he has been contaminated by Hansen's thinking, which is becoming more wrong daily, and the guy just refuses to acknowledge all the new data and studies that show he is wrong and the terrible inconsistencies in his assertions. He's, sadly, becoming a bit of a science bore.)

Remember CO2 is not the source of energy. To have long term changes in temperature you have to increase, or decrease, the thermal energy input. In that regard, is it possible that man may not be an insignificant source of direct thermal pollution, i.e., direct thermal energy release to the atmosphere?

CO2 spectral absorption changes with concentration. At higher concentrations collisional band broadening and kinetic energy transfer (conduction) becomes more important, where as way out in the outer regions of the troposphere CO2 is acting more like independent gas molecules in its absorption emission characteristics.

It gives a person a headache to consider how really complicated this problem is. It is far too simple to say CO2 causes warming. (It doesn't -- the sun and the Earths core and surface combustion does that, not CO2. CO2 and water just changes the rate at which thermal input dissipates and how much solar thermal input gets into our biosphere in the first place.) If thermal energy is input faster then it can dissipate, the temperature rises, and vice versa. We have examples now of Earth periods where CO2 rose and temperatures dropped!!!. The CO2 Green House mechanism could not dissipate heat slowly enough to keep up with more rapid decline in thermal energy input, even though CO2 concentrations were relatively high! So just having high CO2 concentrations does not by itself assure that warming will occur! You have to have at least a steady state incoming thermal flux, then heat will dissipate more slowly and the integrated temperature will rise some.

I'm laughing at myself now, because I swore I would not get into a technical discussion with you guys, and now look what you've done. I have to call a halt at some point, I am wasting to much unproductive time with this. While we disagree, you do at least read . I thank you for that.
All of the very early prognostications have been either wrong or highly inaccurate. Let's hope Hansen and crew can do better going forward.

 

[piezoe]

Well, Ok, if you had steady state thermal flux input, and CO2 concentration increased, ceteris paribis, you should see, at least theoretically, an increase in the integrated temperature. The point here is that both thermal flux and CO2 are usually changing at the same time. You can't just look at one and ignore the other. And you can have a situation in which CO2 goes up, but temperature drops! Oh, and "irrefutable" is not the same as "consistent with". If you cut down the rain forests and kill the mangrove swamps you might also see a decrease in O2 and an increase in CO2 -- nothing to do with fossil fuels in that instance.

At this point I'll accept "consistent with" but reject "irrefutable."

 

[futurecurrents]

Let me get this straight pie. You question the accuracy of the readings from Mauna Loa. Really.

 

[futurecurrents]

Well, Ok, if you had steady state thermal flux input, and CO2 concentration increased, ceteris paribis, you should see, at least theoretically, an increase in the integrated temperature. The point here is that both thermal flux and CO2 are usually changing at the same time. You can't just look at one and ignore the other. And you can have a situation in which CO2 goes up, but temperature drops! Oh, and "irrefutable" is not the same as "consistent with". If you cut down the rain forests and kill the mangrove swamps you might also see a decrease in O2 and an increase in CO2 -- nothing to do with fossil fuels in that instance.

Agreed. That's why I said " All else being equal".

Volcanoes add both CO2 and SO2. The SO2 can so reduce solar that the planet cools while CO2 goes up.

Using SO2 to reduce GW is something being talked about. However, many on the right can't get that far because it would first mean admitting that there is a problem. And they don't play that game. Admitting the obvious and that they were wrong.

 

[murray t turtle]

http://www.ibtimes.com/patrick-moor...tific-proof-climate-change-caused-humans-poll

Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, known as one of the co-founders of the activist group Greenpeace, has a history of sharply dissenting from policies supported by major environmental groups, including the one he helped create. Moore’s latest departure is to assert that climate change, particularly the gradual warming of Earth’s surface temperature over the last century, is not caused by humans.

“There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years,” Moore said during an appearance before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Tuesday. “If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.”

The ecologist, who worked with Greenpeace from 1971 to 1986 and left “not necessarily by his own choice,” went on to found Greenspirit Strategies, an environmental and sustainability consulting firm in Vancouver.

“After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective,” Moore said. “Climate change was not an issue when I abandoned Greenpeace, but it certainly is now.”

Moore argued that the sophisticated computer models scientists use to predict patterns in global climate are “not a crystal ball.” He maintained that the claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that humans are “extremely likely” to be the dominant cause of global warming since the mid-20th century is bogus, given that the scale used to measure probability was constructed by IPCC members themselves.

“Perhaps the simplest way to expose the fallacy of ‘extreme certainty’ is to look at the historical record. …When modern life evolved over 500 million years ago, CO2 was more than 10 times higher than today, yet life flourished at this time. Then an ice age occurred 450 million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher than today. There is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia,” Moore argued.

Moore said this “fundamentally contradicts” the notion that man’s CO2 emissions are causing the planet to warm.

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Good points; I wish more people would have the common sense of Mr Moore.

 

[fhl]

 

[fhl]

 

[piezoe]

Let me get this straight pie. You question the accuracy of the readings from Mauna Loa. Really.

No, of course not. That's idiotic to assume something like that. I don't understand why they chose that site as a reference. The readings there will be heavily influenced by nearby volcanic activity, I would think. Wouldn't you? What is prone to error is an estimate of the average for the entire troposphere as that depends on sampling error. Which is the error that creeps in when sampling a non-homogeneous body when concentrations differ widely according to location and by necessity you can't sample everywhere.

SO2??? Yikes.