Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Response to Don Cheadle

(This post was written to respond to Don's Twitter question here)

Don, off the top of my head, here are some things I believe:

1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas
2. Greenhouse gases have a warming effect
3. Human activity has caused atmospheric CO2 to increase over the last 100+ years
4. The Earth warmed during the 20th century
5. Global sea levels rose about 7.5 inches since 1901

6. We can't burn fossil fuels forever without running out
7. Alternative energy research is a good thing
8. Energy efficiency is a good thing
9. Completely destroying the environment is a bad thing
10. I want the best world possible for future generations

Some things I don't believe:
11. The Earth is a more dangerous place at 61F than at 59F.
12. Carbon dioxide taxes can prevent bad weather
13. Increased CO2 causes drought

If the hard evidence supported the idea that trace CO2 is dangerous, I would be fighting very hard ON YOUR SIDE.

CO2 hysteria risks making energy less available and affordable for poor people who currently have no connection to stable grid power. Many of those people's lives could be greatly improved by a big honkin' coal plant instead of some solar panels and wind turbines.

Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is the most massive scientific fraud in human history.

75 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good summary. It will be interesting to see if the cliamte obsessed can read that list rationally.

Otter said...

May I ask would brought on this direct response?

And would he even notice / care? :P

Tom said...

Otter--this was in response to Don's Twitter question (link now at top of the post). I do think Don will read it.

Anonymous said...

If CO2 causes warming, then their should be a change in warming rate as the amount of CO2 increases. 1950 is considered the point that CO2 really started to increase.

So I graphed the warming rate in the 20th century before and after 1950.

HADCRUT4

Trend: 1900 to 1950 = 0.0104022 per year
Trend: 1950 to 2000 = 0.00812206

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1950/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1950/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to:2000/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1950/to:2000/trend

As someone who believes in science, I would have to conclude
that CO2 causes the underlying natural warming trend to slow down.

Brad R said...

Congratulations on a calm and clear summary, which should help to dispel some of the pervasive myths about climate skeptics. If even one person (Don) reads and understands it, that will be progress.

Harry Dale Huffman said...

There is definitive evidence that there is no "greenhouse effect", of increasing global mean surface temperature with increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (see my "Venus: No Greenhouse Effect", from Nov. 2010). So both you and Cheadle are ignorant, as are the mass of "climate scientists". The debate is full of know-nothings on both sides, masquerading as well-informed and reasonable persons. A general scientific incompetence, stretching over the last 45 years in climate science, is at fault. The atmospheric temperature follows the century-old, stable Standard Atmosphere model, not the fantasy of an atmosphere balanced on a razor's edge of 0.04% carbon dioxide (and only the last quarter of that--0.01%, or 100 parts per million) supposedly due to man, above the pre-industrial level of 0.03%). Climate scientists have not even shown they are constructing the global mean temperature properly, out of widely scattered and uncertain data, and have resorted to outright fraud in their "adjustments" of the raw temperature data they have collected (see my Oct. 2012 "US Temperatures Have Been Falsely Adjusted According to the Level of Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere", for example). And there has been no increase in "extreme" weather events (see my Nov. 2012 "Hurricane/Tropical Storm Strengths, 1851 to 2010", for example).

Eric Simpson said...

Tom, ot, but first a quick note that I stopped commenting here at this blog a while back because it seemed by some quirk that many of my comments weren't getting through. Maybe is was my system.

Regardless, I nevertheless kept coming to this blog and relishing what you had to offer. Then, recently, I noticed, that offering stopped. I was told today on wuwt that you are doing twitter instead. So I check out twitter and, honestly, it is not as good at all as being able to read the short excerpts and get the basic idea and just occasionally follow the links when you want more depth. I made several comments on that at the wuwt article today: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/15/ditto-tom-here-are-some-things-i-believe/#comment-1614063

Tom said...

Eric, thanks for your comments.

I don't know how to cross-post my Twitter feed to Blogger, but I'm not sure that's a good idea even if it's doable.

One huge advantage of Twitter for me is it's allowing me to reach people who aren't already skeptical.

Brad R said...

I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but Googling "twitter feed on blogspot" returns lots of how-to results. Here are two:
http://tsbray.blogspot.ca/2013/03/twitter-feed-on-blogger.html
http://www.sylvialiuland.com/2013/02/how-to-embed-Twitter-in-blog.html

Eric Simpson said...

Thanks Tom. How about cut and paste? How about doing both, with the longer excerpts as well? Or perhaps just a little more with excerpts, maybe not quite as much as before because honesty I didn't usually have the time to read it all. But your old system was so great and I often tried to promote your blog on hotair etc (I'm "anotherJoe"). Perhaps there just isn't time. How about soliciting donations like Jo Nova did so I don't know.

And also, again, I guess I am out of the loop but I didn't even know that you had moved operations to twitter. NOW I see the "Follow me on Twitter" note but that just didn't register with me before, that you had switched over. I just thought you had moved on to doing something else.

harkin said...

Congrats to Don Cheadle who even though being a useful novice for the alarmist side still says he is open to hearing the "other side".

It would help his bonafides as an actual curious human if he could dispense with some of the snark.

And I take it that the airline travel are round trips....wow that's a lot of carbon he's using that might better benefit a poor family or someone who at least has cut down on the carbon usage.

David Appell said...

As someone who believes in science, I would have to conclude
that CO2 causes the underlying natural warming trend to slow down.


You are assuming CO2 is the only factor that determines surface temperature. It isn't.

David Appell said...

Harry Dale Huffman's "proof" that there is no greenhouse effect is fatally flawed -- he ignores planetary albedoes. After doing that, he obtains a numerical coincidence, but his physics is bad from the start.

Otter said...

You are assuming CO2 is the only factor that determines surface temperature. It isn't.

Good to see you finally acknowledge that, davey

David Appell said...

Finally? I've never said otherwise.

Anonymous said...

David Appell, I'm not assuming anything other than the rate of warming dropped after CO2 started to increase.

David Appell said...

But you are assuming that surface temperature should exactly track CO2, which isn't a valid assumption.

Almost all the extra, trapped heat goes into the ocean. The surface is just a tiny sliver of the climate system, and it's subject to short-term oceanic cycles, especialy ENSOs. The big El Nino in 1997-98 and the strong 2010 La Nina have influenced surface temperatures such that if you draw a line from one to the other the surface temperature looks flat.

At least, in some datasets. Not in the Cowtan & Way dataset, which does a better job of infilling regions with sparse or no temperature readings. In that dataset surface temperatures are on the same trendline, with the same kind and scale of fluctuations around it:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-pause-that-aint.html


In fact, this slowdown (it's not a "pause") isn't even as slow as the one in the 1990s:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-lesser-of-two-pauses.html

Anonymous said...

David Appell: "But you are assuming that surface temperature should exactly track CO2, which isn't a valid assumption."

Who said "exactly track"? I never said that. I said the rate of warming should be higher after 1945 when man-made CO2 started pouring into the atmosphere. It is lower.


David The Jokester: "Almost all the extra, trapped heat goes into the ocean. "

1) How does the heat bypass the atmosphere?

2) How did this heat drag some extra heat into the ocean from the atmosphere.

3) Why has the rate of ocean warming not change for 60 years?


David Appell said...

It is lower.

There we a lot of aerosols aloft in the post-war years. Less after the Clean Air Act.

David Appell said...

How does the heat bypass the atmosphere?

It doesn't, of course, But the ocean is 70% of the planet's surface area, and its heat capacity is ~1000 times that of the atmosphere.

David Appell said...

3) Why has the rate of ocean warming not change for 60 years?

It has. I'm not sure where you got this from, but it's not true.

David Appell said...

2) How did this heat drag some extra heat into the ocean from the atmosphere.

Why, if you put a heat lamp above a tub of water, does the water warm up?

Anonymous said...

Silly David:

"There we a lot of aerosols aloft in the post-war years."

What is "a lot"?

You didn't answer the question of how the heat bypassed the atmosphere.

You have offered no evidence the rate of ocean warming was different in the past.

"Why, if you put a heat lamp above a tub of water, does the water warm up?"

A heat lamp uses infrared. 51% of incoming solar radiation is in the infrared range.

You have now presented us with one reason CO2 dropped the rate of warming. It did so by blocking incoming infrared.

David Appell said...

Re: aerosols

"Historical Sulfur Dioxide Emissions 1850-2000: Methods and Results," S.J. Smith et al, PNNL (Jan 2004)
http://www.scscertified.com/lcs/docs/SO2%20Emissions.pdf

Also see:
"Monthly-Mean Optical Thickness at 550 nm"
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/modelforce/strataer/tau_line.txt

David Appell said...

You have offered no evidence the rate of ocean warming was different in the past.

That was your claim, not mine. Let me remind you what you wrote: "Why has the rate of ocean warming not change for 60 years?"

So prove your claim.

David Appell said...

You didn't answer the question of how the heat bypassed the atmosphere.

It doesn't. Why would you think it would??

David Appell said...

A heat lamp uses infrared. 51% of incoming solar radiation is in the infrared range.

You didn't address the question.

You asked, "How did this heat drag some extra heat into the ocean from the atmosphere."

Heat doesn't "drag heat."

Heat is the transfer of energy.

With that, are you asking, how is radiative energy transferred from the atmosphere to the ocean?

In the same way radiative energy is transferred from a heat lamp to the tub of water below it. That clearly happens, yes?

Anonymous said...

The rate of SST warming dropped almost in half after 1945.

CO2 prevents the heat lamp from working.

http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/could-co2-have-lowered-the-rate-of-natural-warming-in-the-oceans/

dbo's gh-gh-ghoooost said...

The rate of ocean warming has declined since 2001.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WO23iEOR38o/UuQtcntVxEI/AAAAAAAAFtQ/hgupxUPsy-M/s1600/www.cgd.ucar.edu+cas+Trenberth+website-archive+trenberth.papers-moved+Energy_Imbalance_OHC_v6_ss.pdf.png

Anonymous said...

David Appell,
Don't even bother with Harry.
As to the pause not being a pause, that would seem to conflict with a fair number of climate scientists.
As for Cowtan & Way, why should we believe any of the model based work as more than conjecture? The models have been shown to be useless for prediction.

David Appell said...

As for Cowtan & Way, why should we believe any of the model based work as more than conjecture?

The models that give the temperature data need to be continuously examined just as much as the climate models do. You have to choose some method of infilling blank spots, and kriging with reference to LT temperatures makes more sense than interpolating (as Cowtan & Way show in their paper).

The models have been shown to be useless for prediction.

No they haven't. Climate models since the 1960s have predicted the observed vertical structure of the atmosphere, and they predicted its changes too, especially stratospheric cooling. They predict Arctic amplification, and other observations, such as more warming at night than at day. Climate models reproduce 20th century climate, and Hansen's 1988 prediction has been quite good:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/hansens-1988-predictions/

Climate models don't need to predict every wiggle and turn in surface temperatures to tell us we hae a large carbon problem -- we are emitting so much carbon that the exact value of climate sensitivity doens't matter much.

And, in fact, you don't even need a climate model to know that -- just an understanding of why climate has changed in the past, which gives the same climate sensivitity for CO2 that climate models do.

David Appell said...

The rate of SST warming dropped almost in half after 1945.

Rate over what period of time?

But so what? There was a slight global cooling from abotu 1945-1975, thought to be for the reasons I gave earlier.

David Appell said...

The rate of ocean warming has declined since 2001

You don't say where you graph is from, so it's impossible to evaluate. But that certainly isn't the conclusion of Balmaseda et al, GRL (2013). Their plot of total ocean heat content is here, and it shows strong warming last decade:

http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2013/03/missing-energy-claimed-to-be-found.html

David Appell said...

CO2 prevents the heat lamp from working

Really? So a heat lamp placed above a tub of water won't warm the water if it's surrounded by air? It will only warm it if the air has no CO2?

David Appell said...

http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2014/04/17/could-co2-have-lowered-the-rate-of-natural-warming-in-the-oceans/

I'm sorry, but this is a silly post.

You cherry pick your time periods, and again imply that CO2 is the only factor that determines ocean temperature without considering anything else.

And have you ever heard of significant figures?

Anonymous said...

Looks like Toshinmack found a new venue to beak-off on! His own isn't doing the intended purpose so he trolls!

Anonymous said...

David,
The cooling for the 1945-1975 period was thought, by many of the same people now claiming dangerous warming, to be the start of an ice age.
But we do agree: CO2 is not the only factor in climate control: Trenberth's "CO2 control knob" is a dead end proposition.
as for the lack of usefulness in the modles, I said they are not good for predicting what the climate will do. That they can accurately describe something that was already known, like Arctic amplificiation, is not important. But what about the missing hot spot?

David Appell said...

The cooling for the 1945-1975 period was thought, by many of the same people now claiming dangerous warming, to be the start of an ice age.

No it wasn't. It was a time with very little observational data, with scientists trying to figure out what was going on. There was nothing like the understanding of climate forcings there is today, and there absolutely wasn't anything like the kind of consensus you see today:

"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus," W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337, 2008
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

In fact, by the 1960s plenty of scientists had already been worrying and warning about global warming from the buildup of greenhouse gases, as you can see from this list of their many papers:
http://www.davidappell.com/EarlyClimateScience.html

David Appell said...

Trenberth's "CO2 control knob" is a dead end proposition.

No, it's not -- CO2 is a major forcing on climate, and a good way to control it if you to:

Lacis, A.A, G.A. Schmidt, D. Rind, and R.A. Ruedy, 2010: Atmospheric CO2: Principal control knob governing Earth's temperature. Science, 330, 356-359, doi:10.1126/science.1190653
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/la09300d.html

David Appell said...

That they can accurately describe something that was already known, like Arctic amplificiation, is not important.

Stratospheric cooling in a GHG-warming world was not known before climate models predicted it.

And it IS important that models predict Arctic amplification, and the vertical structure of the atmosphere, and the doldrums and jet streams, because it shows the underlying physics and numerics are sound.

But what about the missing hot spot?

Before I address that, tell me: why do you think the missing hot spot (assume for now it is indeed missing) is important for policy decisions on climate change?

dbo's gh-gh-ghoooost said...

The rate of ocean warming has declined since 2001
----
"You don't say where you graph is from, so it's impossible to evaluate. But that certainly isn't the conclusion of Balmaseda et al, GRL (2013). Their plot of total ocean heat content is here, and it shows strong warming last decade"

The graph is figure 5 from Trenberth 2014. Your own link (figure 1 Balmaseda2013) shows virtually the same thing.

Anonymous said...

David,
Please do not be obtuse. The President's science adviser, along with many reputable, main stream scientists, were on record asserting that we were at the start of a terrible ice age in the 1970's. I am granting you a ration of good faith in your posts, please don't waste it.
oops, I read the rest of your posts. It seems you have likely already run out of it. Linking to rewrites of history about the ice age of the 1970's is not going to make what Holdren and pals stated at the time. If you can only repeat AGW fanatic talking points, we can shut this down now.
But for one last glimmer of hope that you are not a troll by actually want to talk- the hot spot, along with claims about unique levels of warming, increasing storms, accelerating slr, and more extremes in weather were all part of the AGW litany of doom. They have all failed the test of time.
If you choose to simply deny that, we don't need to communicate any more. If you would like to discuss it, we can talk some more.
It is up to you.

Anonymous said...

I'd say the trophospheric hot spot was important for the same reason as stratospheric cooling: One never formed, and the other stopped cooling around the same time as the current pause in temperatures began, almost 18 years ago.

Mrs. EntryReqrd said...

Katharine Hayhoe ‏@KHayhoe Apr 14 @IamDonCheadle more than 97% of scientists and over 10,000 peer reviewed studies

So very glad that K. Hayhoe a fellow Christian is living now in the present day of the new testament for otherwise I would have concern for her during the times of fire and brimstone.

BTW: Saw David Appell up above. Anyone ever get a pic from him of his GF in that Blue Hat?

David Appell said...

I'd say the trophospheric hot spot was important for the same reason as stratospheric cooling: One never formed, and the other stopped cooling around the same time as the current pause in temperatures began, almost 18 years ago.

(a) There really is not much of a pause. Please read

“As it turns out, the global warming ‘hiatus’ doesn’t exist,"
Eric Holthaus, Quora, November 15, 2013
http://qz.com/147049/as-it-turns-out-the-global-warming-pause-doesnt-exist/

(b) how accurate do you expect climate models to be? If they did correcty predict upper tropospheric warming, what else would you require them to reproduce?

Would it matter that they underpredict Arctic warming?

David Appell said...

Anonymous said...
I'd say the trophospheric hot spot was important for the same reason as stratospheric cooling

Except it's not at all clear that the "data" is right, from UAH and RSS.

UAH and RSS LT temperatures differ right now by a relatively large amount: by 0.11 C over the last 12 months.

Their MT temperatures differ by 0.03 C over the last 12 months.

These are fairly large differences, when the T_24-T_2LT difference is only 0.05 C/decade. (See Fu, Manabe and Johanson, GRL 2011.)

In other words, how do you know the data are accurately describing the tropospheric hot spot, when they vary as much as they do between groups?

David Appell said...

I am not being obtuse. A careful study of the 1970s scientific literature simply does not find support for your claim:

"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus," W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337, 2008
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

You wrote:
many reputable, main stream scientists, were on record asserting that we were at the start of a terrible ice age in the 1970's

List them.

Then explain why scientific positions are not subject to change as the data (especially) and theory get much better.

David Appell said...

Linking to rewrites of history about the ice age of the 1970's is not going to make what Holdren and pals stated at the time.

This is a systematic study of the literature of that time. Do you have anything equivalent?

"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus," W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337, 2008
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

This list of papers shows that at by that time plenty of scientists were well aware of the CO2 issue:

http://www.davidappell.com/EarlyClimateScience.html

David Appell said...

dbo's gh-gh-ghoooost wrote:
The graph is figure 5 from Trenberth 2014.

Do you honestly not know how to properly cite a scientific paper, and give a URL to it?

Mrs. EntryReqrd said...

Do you honestly not know how to properly cite a scientific paper, and give a URL to it? 7:44 PM, April 19, 2014

That is a skill that has been proclaimed by self-appointed 'science' communicators and prophets of the Global Warming Industry often and the bidding of their bankers. It is however important to note: " Since part of the diagnostic matrices are hobbit like, the reader should be careful to observe that the objective aesthetic, on the contrary, is by its very nature contradictory. Science tells us that our concepts are just as necessary as, so far as regards recursive flimflam and our observations, the duck of ignorance. As is proven in the ontological manuals, science tells us that social consciousness can be treated like our observations; in natural theology, environmental protection has lying before it my stapler. As will easily be shown in the next section, the consensus tells us that peer reviewed literature can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like the ideation of practical reason, it can not take account of climatic principles. Our intepretations, on the contrary, exist in instant psychology.

Our intepretations, what we have alone been able to show is that, constitute a body of demonstrated doctrine, and all of this body must be known a posteriori, since none of our judgements are synthetic. My Uncle Bob should only be used as a canon for our deviant squiggles, as any dedicated reader can clearly see. It remains a mystery why the diagnostic matrices (and let us suppose that this is the case) prove the validity of climate justice; as I have shown elsewhere, climate justice, indeed, would be falsified. As is shown in the writings of Descartes, I assert, in view of these considerations, that, then, my new car exists in the intelligible objects in the study domain, but natural causes (and it remains a mystery why this is the case) have lying before them the phenomena. As is evident upon close examination, the deniersphere, certainly, are just as necessary as my Uncle Bob; in view of these considerations, the objective aesthetic (and we can deduce that this is true) is a representation of the diagnostic matrices. The paralogisms would thereby be made to contradict, for example, anthropogenic causes; for these reasons, the strangle has lying before it, that is to say, our deviant squiggles.

As we have already seen, the consensus tells us that, in respect of the intelligible character, the never-ending regress in the series of empirical conditions can be treated like the Psychopathologies, and our deviant squiggles are a representation of carbon pollution. Consequently, our deviant squiggles, in view of these considerations, would be falsified, as will easily be shown in the next section. In the study of the pancake paradigm, the dead tomato plant in my garden, for example, depends on our conclusion. By virtue of practical reason, what we have alone been able to show is that, on the contrary, the Dunning-Kruger projection, as I have shown elsewhere, is by its very nature contradictory, and the 97% consensus (and it is not at all certain that this is true) stands in need of the leakage. Since all of the deniersphere are hobbit like, the noumena would thereby be made to contradict, so, the perpetual funding model."

Anonymous said...

David,
So you ignore what they people actually said in favor of an alleged "systematic history". Perhaps you should ask yourself why you would choose to do that.

Otter said...

Anonymous~ next, Davey will tell us how the MSM are SO powerful, so persuasive, that they were able to scare the military and the CIA into writing reports and making projections of the future, based upon global cooling / the Ice Age scare.

chris y said...

It is interesting that Appell prefers a proxy for what people said in the 1970's, instead of, well, what they actually said.
t is equally interesting that Appell has great faith in surface thermometer records, when they are continuously being overwritten with temperature increasing adjustments. It becomes a bit of an embarrassment when the adjustments are comparable to the apocalyptic increase about which the hand-wringing is expended.

What sort of proxy shenanigans are next-
deciding to use wind speed anomaly trends as a proxy for actual temperature measurements in the mid troposphere;
using the Appellantly untrusted satellite measurements as a proxy for surface temperature measurements;
using inverted lake sediments as a proxy for temperature;
using precipitation (inverted or not) as a proxy for temperature?

Oh, wait...

David Appell said...

Which military and CIA reports were those?

Anything like these?

"Pentagon, CIA Eye New Threat: Climate Change," by TOM GJELTEN, NPR, December 14, 2009.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121352495

David Appell said...

Chris y: Of the two of us, I'm the only one who's offered evidence for what scientists were publishing at the time. That evidence shows there was certainly no consensus about a coming ice age -- and nothing at all like the consensus on AGW today.

In the models used to calculate surface temperature, it is necessary to account for station failures and additions, as well as local changes that influence the station over time.

If you don't do that, you get the wrong answers. In particular, you lose the expected relationships between surface temperatures and those measured by satellites.

David Appell said...

So you ignore what they people actually said in favor of an alleged "systematic history".

What did people "actually" say?

Where's the evidence, besides a couple of articles in Time or Newsweek?

Here's an article for you:

"One Big Greenhouse," Time magazine, May 28, 1956.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,937403,00.html

Here's another one:

"How Industry May Change Climate," New York Times, May 24, 1953.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10D12F63858117B8EDDAD0A94DD405B8389F1D3

chris y said...

"...you lose the expected relationships between surface temperatures and those measured by satellites."

Interesting. Since RSS trend is lower than HadCRUT or GISS, but the 'expected' relationship is just the opposite, it appears that either the satellite data is wrong, the surface data is wrong, the 'expectation' is wrong, or two or three of these are wrong. I suspect all three are wrong. But, the least wrong is the satellite data, because it is the only data that has not yet been permanently contaminated with climate catastrophists.

In the meantime, the flat Earthers continue to predict the climate catastrophe just out of view on the future horizon.

What a stupid cult.

I earnestly wrote a few weeks ago that I think you were a decent technical writer before you glommed onto the pimple on the rectum of science known as the CACC movement. I hope you can extricate yourself from this useless climate change garbage and create the well-written articles on science and technology that I know you are capable of producing.


Anonymous said...

Are you incapable of looking for yourself, Davey? Or are you just afraid of what you will find?

CIA report 1974

http://www.climatemonitor.it/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/1974.pdf

David Appell said...

it appears that either the satellite data is wrong

Yes, it does, given the current significant divergence between UAH LT and RSS LT, which has averaged 0.11 C over the last 12 months.

It's a myth that satellite temperatures are somehow clean while surface temepatures are not. A huge amount of complicated modeling is required to change MSU readings into temperatures.

David Appell said...

This document from RSS shows how much processing must be done to get atmospheric tempertatures from the microwave readings:

"Climate Algorithm Theoretical Basis Document (C-ATBD)," RSS Version 3.3 MSU/AMSU-A, Mean Layer Atmospheric Temperature, 2013

http://images.remss.com/papers/msu/MSU_AMSU_C-ATBD.pdf

Anonymous said...

You somehow overlooked that CIA report, Davey.

Anonymous said...

David goes for the jigsaw puzzle of surface measurements that is cut to fit rather going with the satellite source data. And he calls us deniers. Irony, thy name is David.

David Appell said...

I am still reading it. But so far I see very few references to the scientific literature in it.

David Appell said...

David goes for the jigsaw puzzle of surface measurements that is cut to fit rather going with the satellite source data.

Bull. What evidence is there that the surface temperatures are manipulated? None -- it's just a lie made up by people who don't like what the data shows.

As I showed, there is an enormous amount of processing (viz. modeling) that goes into satellite temperatures, which is very open to errors -- which is why UAH's dataset has had to be corrected so many times in the past (usually despite their initial resistance). I don't see any reason to think the satellite results are less uncertain than surface measurements.

Anonymous said...

AVERTABLE* RISING VOLCANIC-INDUCED ICE, MOVES A ...BRIDGE!... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBytBlyMIg0 *http://scai-shield-craters-avert-iceages.webs.com/

David Appell said...

I don't see that this 1974 CIA report proves anything about the science, or that the CIA was very good about paying attention to it, since by the end of the 1970s there had already been some significant scientific reports on the dangers from CO2:

The Conservation Foundation, Implications of Rising Carbon Dioxide Content of the Atmosphere (New York: The Conservation Foundation, 1963).

“Restoring the Quality of Our Environment,” Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President’s Science Advisory Committee (1965), pp. 111-133.

SCEP (Study of Critical Environmental Problems), Man's Impact on the Global Environment. Assessment and Recommendations for Action (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), p. 12.

"Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action," National Academy of Sciences (1975).

Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics, National Academy of Sciences, Geophysics Research Board (1977).

URLs are here:
http://www.davidappell.com/EarlyClimateScience.html

The 1970s were a time of scant observational data, especially on aerosols, and scientists simply did not know enough to calculate the expected course of climate with all these factors.

David Appell said...

Even "The Omega Man," released in 1973, knew about the enhancing greenhouse effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xo7yZ9kG9A

Anonymous said...

David,
For those who lived as adults in the 1970's, you look really, really foolish. Picking the Omega Man as one of your references, even if tongue in cheek, only makes you look silly and foolish.

Anonymous said...

Toshinmack does it again! Bwaaaaaahahahahahaha!

Anonymous said...

Appell, read and weep...as it is a matter of record that real scientist were concerned about Global Cooling. back in the 1970s.
Your idea that this did not happen, or that only a few derange souls belived such a thing is proof of your self delusion.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf

Anonymous said...

Mr. Appell some of us lived and worked through this time.
If it was not for George Kukla letter to President Nixon in 1972 most of the climate agencies and institutions that are in your country now would not have happened.
To degrade the concerns of that age over Global Cooling is to insult and degrade the work of those who were there at the time.
Thank-you

http://www.loessfest2014.umcs.lublin.pl/index.php/george-j-kukla

David Appell said...

It is not the "public record" (whatever that means) that scientists were overwhelmingly concerned about global cooling in the 1970s.

The reality is that there was a wide range of opinions, based on little observation information, with nothing like the kind of observations and metrics we gained in the post-70s satellite era. Scientists were trying to figure out what was happening, and as your own citation shows:

“The views on long-term climate change, however, were split. Some scientists projected a
warming trend and others focused on the gradual cooling as suggested by the global
surface temperature record from the 1940s through the 1960s.”
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw29_proceedings/Reeves.pdf

The 1970s were when Manabe and Wetherald published the first real estimate of CO2’s climate sensitivity:

"The Effects of Doubling the CO2 Concentration on the Climate of a General Circulation Model," Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald, Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, vol 32 no 1 pp 3-15 (1975).
https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Greenhouse-effect/more/Manabe-Wetherald-1975.pdf

and there were several major reports that warmed of greenhouse warming -- 1963, 1965, 1970, and reports by the National Academy of Sciences in 1975 and 1977:

SCEP (Study of Critical Environmental Problems), Man's Impact on the Global Environment. Assessment and Recommendations for Action (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970), p. 12.
Weart, p.70: "In their concluding conference report, as the first item in a list of potential problems, the scientists pointed to the global rise of CO2. Here too effects were beyond their power to calculate. So the study could only conclude that the risk of global warming was 'so serious that much more must be learned about future trends of climate change.'"

"Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action," National Academy of Sciences (1975).
- page 43: "[changes of mean atmospheric temperature due to CO2 excess] could, however, conceivably aggregate to a further warming of about 0.5°C between now and the end of the century." (Actual warming from January 1975 to December 2000 = 0.44 ± 0.06 °C, according to the NASA GISS dataset of monthly average global surface temperatures.)

Energy and Climate: Studies in Geophysics, National Academy of Sciences, Geophysics Research Board (1977).
Spencer Weart, AIP.org: "The panel of experts, chaired by Revelle, announced that average temperatures might climb a dangerous 6°C by the middle of the next century, possibly with a catastrophic rise of sea level. They recommended 'a lively sense of urgency' for studying the problem."

Links at:
http://www.davidappell.com/EarlyClimateScience.html

A thorough, peer reviewed search of the literature of that time found no consensus on global cooling:

"The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus," W. Peterson et al, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 89, 1325–1337, 2008.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

Anonymous said...


1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas - agreed, by definition

2. Greenhouse gases have a warming effect - in the lab, yes. In the world, amongst all the other influences, self-evidently, no.

3. Human activity has caused atmospheric CO2 to increase over the last 100+ years - unproven.

4. The Earth warmed during the 20th century - agreed

5. Global sea levels rose about 7.5 inches since 1901 - unproven, but agreed

6. We can't burn fossil fuels forever without running out. Trivially true, yes, but see Julian Simon for why resources NEVER run out. This is no reason for not using fossil fuels.

7. Alternative energy research is a good thing. No. No research on a specific subject is ALWAYS a good thing. Research costs money, and has to be balanced against ability to pay for it.

8. Energy efficiency is a good thing. Again, no. Efficiency is NOT a single issue, it's a sliding scale. Forcing more 'efficiency' than the current market requires is counterproductive to development.

9. Destroying the environment is a bad thing. What does this mean? If I build a house I destroy one environment and create another. In practice, the initial sentence is often interpreted as: "Always do what GreenPeace says", which I disagree with..

10. I want the best, safest world possible for future generations. Apart from being meaningless cliche, this is a tautology. The 'best' is not necessarily the 'safest'. Again, this sentence frequently means: "Always do what GreenPeace says", because who determines 'best'?

David Appell said...

Anon, it's cute the way you made up your own physics there. Any and all journals would LOVE the opportunity to publish your peer-reviewed paper. Where will you submit it?

Simon said...

The jury is very much still out on 1 & 2, so not scientific (or wise) to "believe' in them.