Timothy Birdnow

Here is a discussion between myself, Bill H., and Dana Mathewson about Global Warming and why it's at best a misunderstood subject. It's a worthwhile read:

From Bill:

One fundamental flaw in the reasoning which never seems to arise is the assumption that all processes continue indefinitely in a linear fashion. If, for instance, adding CO2 at a certain rate for five years will have X effect, then adding it for that same rate for twenty years will have 4 times X effect. That is demonstrably false.

Put a pot of water on your stove and turn the heat on. Do not touch the heat control and watch what happens. The temperature of the water in the pot rises until it reaches 212 degrees. Then, no matter how much heat you add, it never goes above 212 degrees. Other things happen, but the temperature of the water never increases.

That clearly illustrates that not all processes continue indefinitely at the same rate or in the same manner, and any prophecy which relies on that assumption is bogus.

From Dana:

Ya got it right, Bill. But that's what happens when people learn their science from "Bill The Science Guy" on TV instead of from real science teachers in school. That dude on TV knows no more of science than my dog.

Sorry -- that's "Bill Nye, the Science Guy." Gotta get these things right even if they don't.

From Tim:

Absolutely Bill! It's a component of the argument against global warming theory, too; as scientists put it, there is a logarithmic relationship between co2 and temperature. The more co2 added to the system the less the temperature rises until the whole thing craps out (at around 2* C.) After that you can add all the carbon dioxide you like, but there will be no temperature increase.

The argument made by serious people (not the media or the idiots who argue online) is that this will lead to positive feedback, meaning water will evaporate. Water is the primary greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere. This will lead to more warming, which will lead to more outgasing of co2, which will lead to more water vapor which will eventually lead to outgasing of methane from the Earth's permafrost - which will raise the planet's temperature by ten degrees, perhaps.

This is what is referred to as the "climate sensitivity". How much co2 can you add, and how strong are the feedbacks?

The idiots all say "the science is simple" but they don't know the science.

The reality is there are also negative feedbacks, things that tamp all this down. When you evaporate water you create clouds - something we don't really understand BUT we do know they reflect solar radiation back into space. That is called planetary albedo, and the Earth's albedo did in fact increase during the end of the nineties and early two thousands. It was at this point the "pause" began in planetary temperature rise.

I always point to Mars; Mars has an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide but it is bitterly cold, colder than it should be at that distance from the Sun. Much of Mars' atmosphere is frozen in the ground and at the poles as dry ice. When the planet warms this melts, doubling the thin surface air pressure, which increases the strength of Martian winds, which kick up dust, which blot out the Sun, which drops temperatures back down and refreezes the atmosphere. It's a cycle that has gone on for millions of years. The planet is stuck in a permanent ice age despite all that carbon dioxide. Why? Negative feedback loops.

But the IPCC estimated a very low climate sensitivity, and disregarded negative feedback.

Of course, the useful idiots all talk about the "established, basic science" completely oblivious to the actual argument here.

Oh, so why do people like me say "climate change is a hoax"? Because the catastrophic version, the one that predicts doomsday, was designed to stampede America and the rest of the world into a New World Order scheme that would make the United Nations into a true world government and would restructure the economic system, de-industrializing the great powers (like the U.S.) and transferring wealth to the poor nations. They have as much as admitted it.

In fact, they discussed it at something called the Endangered Atmospheres Conference back in the '70's where they kicked around ideas about how to backdoor their Utopian vision. They settled on Global Cooling, but kept Global Warming as their backup if the planet warmed (which they knew it would as these are normally 40 or so year cycles and they were nearing the end of the cooling phase). This conference was a who's who of left wing scientists, including Obama's "Science Czar" John Holdren.

Subsequent comments by people at the U.N. and others show this is still there goal. See here for a partial list of comments by our Gang Greenous friends.

Whether Global Warming/Climate Change/Global Climate Flatulence was a hoax to begin with or not, it is one now. We know this because of the Climategate e-mails, which show there was a systematic effort by top people at the Climate Research Unit of the U. of East Anglia (which produces the much- used HADCRUT data) and with Penn State and others to squash disagreement, to control peer review, to bully editors, to manipulate data, etc. Michael Mann, one member of the "hockey team" as they have been dubbed by "deniers" (itself a libelous term) is forever suing people who point out he fudged data results (his hockey stick used "Mike's Nature trick" which was to splice two contradictory data sets together without telling anyone.)

Almost invariably, these big sensational discoveries wind up being just computer simulations or of dubious data quality.

So it IS a hoax, one based on a rather esoteric science with data that is at best statistically marginal.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:24 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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