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Yes, that could happen. That, of course, assumes that the government has a bias towards results that the rest of the scientific community can accept. A PhD whose work kept getting rejected for publication might make the "expendable" list. Now all you have to do is prove that peer reviewed journals regularly reject papers just because they question the widely assumed basics that the world is getting warmer, that GHGs have increased due to human activities and that the latter is the primary cause of the former. Beyond that there is still plenty of room for exploration and a divergence of viewpoints. Questioning those basics, IS likely to get your work rejected. At the very least, you better be able to make a damn good case cause you've got quite a pile of papers and the evidence they've accumulated to overcome.
Now all you have to do is prove that peer reviewed journals regularly reject papers just because they question the widely assumed basics that the world is getting warmer,
Except for the last 15 years or so.
Even with "adjusted" data.
There certainly is no empirical data for the above claims.
Not as stupid as a guy who argues against a point not even made in the post he quoted.Are you illiterate?
The NSF: "...$370 million for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), an increase of 16%. They say they also need another $480 million for Atmospheric Sciences, an increase of 8.1%, and Earth Sciences, up 8.7%.
Please tell us how, say, the $280 million spent to build and launch a satellite (the price tag for OCO-2) ends up in the pocket of a scientist.
You're literally declaring that the budget for weather satellites and various other weather gear is a socialist plot. Damn, you're stupid.
All federal money is tracked to the penny. If those scientists are getting graft, it will be trivial to show it.
So show it. Or, if you want to be true to form as a gutless denier, scream an insane conspiracy theory about how all the financial records are faked.
Public support is waning for your cult. So, yes, I'm closer to the mainstream than you are.Pro-cultist groups raise over a billion and a half dollars a year:
Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club. "Pro-cultists groups". Wow.
Five environment-specific groups [listed above] alone raised $1.6 BILLION
Okay. First, calling these groups "pro-cultist", all by itself, throws you out in the tall grass with some serious whackos there Dave. Second, you're not paying enough attention to what you, yourself are saying. What does the word "raise" mean to you? These groups subsist on DONATIONS FROM THE PUBLIC you twat. Not research grants. They aren't research organizations. They do not conduct climate research. They are environmental ADVOCACY groups. I'm sure they do advocate for reduced GHG emissions, but among all their other causes, it certainly doesn't use up the $1.6 BILLION dollars that the AMERICAN PEOPLE gave them out of their own pockets to do what they've been doing for many years. This, then, would be some of that money you listed that goes no where near any climate researchers. It ought to also give you a better idea where you and yours stand in the regard of the general public in the great scheme of things. The American public GAVE THESE GROUPS ONE BILLION, SIX-HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS of their OWN MONEY in A SINGLE YEAR. And you call these very same groups "pro-cultist". Yeah, you're mainstream Dave.
So, you have no idea how much money skeptical scientists get. I knew you'd fail.When global warming activists claim global warming skeptics receive the lions share of funding in the global warming debate, they are lying through their teeth.[/INDENT]
Not by anything you've put up here so far. And if you want to even suggest that DONATIONS to environmental groups is equivalent to climate research, you'll need to pull out a mirror to see the liar in this debate.
And that's not counting the money the government spends on AGW cult "science":
Ahhh... there's the rub. As Cook et al found, the vast, vast majority of climate researchers accept AGW as valid. Most research these days BEGINS with the assumption that it is valid. So while there's a great deal of research being done to expland our knowledge of how the Earth's climate works - it being a very complex system, very little government money is being spent to convince the public that AGW is false and very few in government arguing that we need to know LESS about our climate or that we don't need to know ANYTHING AT ALL. Which seems to be where you're headed.
We need to spend money on climate research. And the results of the climate research done to date tells us that we need to spend money figuring out how bad it's going to get and how it's going to get bad. We need to spend money figuring out how to cut back on GHGs, how we might be able to directly reduce the GHGs we've already put into the air, how we might be able to counter their effects in general and in order to save and protect specific systems.
So, Dave, if you ask me, the thing we should be upset about is not that we're spending more money on climate change denial or more money on climate change research or remediation. I think we should be upset that ANYONE is spending ANYTHING trying to convince the public of a dangerous falsehood in order to maintain their obscene income. I think that ought to be a crime and they ought to go to jail for it. The Heritage Institute isn't conducting science. They're lying to the public on behalf of whoever pays them. The GWPF isn't conducting science. They're lying to the public on behalf of whoever pays them. The American Enterprise Institute doesn't care about the environment - they care about American businesses. Exxon/Mobil doesn't care about the environment - they care about Exxon/Mobil. The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition has no interest in sound science - they lobbied for the tobacco industry and now they lobby for the fossil fuel industry.
I sleep fine. And you're still screeching "Follow the money!!" when I've shown the cult gets far more than skeptical science?How is it you can sleep at night knowing that the core position you've taken here is that it's okay for people to lie to the public to get them to ignore a real threat they face in order for certain industries to continue to profit handsomely in the creation of that threat? How? Have you no shame?
All federal money is tracked to the penny. If those scientists are getting graft, it will be trivial to show it.
So show it. Or, if you want to be true to form as a gutless denier, scream an insane conspiracy theory about how all the financial records are faked.
Good for him.
Yes, good for him for breaking Federal ethics laws.Good for him.
Todd, I know your cult hands out brownie points to those who push the craziest conspiracy theories, but you need to understand how you look to those outside of your cult. If your goal is to gain status in your cult, your conspiracy tale method is the one to use. However, if your goal is to convince normal people, your method is counterproductive.
The CO2 problem in 6 easy steps
6 August 2007
We often get requests to provide an easy-to-understand explanation for why increasing CO2 is a significant problem without relying on climate models and we are generally happy to oblige. The explanation has a number of separate steps which tend to sometimes get confused and so we will try to break it down carefully.
Step 1: There is a natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that there is a natural greenhouse effect (that the atmosphere restricts the passage of long wave (LW) radiation from the Earths surface to space) is easily deducible from i) the mean temperature of the surface (around 15ºC) and ii) knowing that the planet is roughly in radiative equilibrium. This means that there is an upward surface flux of LW around \sigma T^4 (~390 W/m2), while the outward flux at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is roughly equivalent to the net solar radiation coming in (1-a)S/4 (~240 W/m2). Thus there is a large amount of LW absorbed by the atmosphere (around 150 W/m2) a number that would be zero in the absence of any greenhouse substances.
Step 2: Trace gases contribute to the natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that different absorbers contribute to the net LW absorption is clear from IR spectra taken from space which show characteristic gaps associated with water vapour, CO2, CH4, O3 etc (Harries et al, 2001; HITRAN). The only question is how much energy is blocked by each. This cannot be calculated by hand (the number of absorption lines and the effects of pressure broadening etc. preclude that), but it can be calculated using line-by-line radiative transfer codes. The earliest calculations (reviewed by Ramanathan and Coakley, 1979) give very similar results to more modern calculations (Clough and Iacono, 1995), and demonstrate that removing the effect of CO2 reduces the net LW absorbed by ~14%, or around 30 W/m2. For some parts of the spectrum, IR can be either absorbed by CO2 or by water vapour, and so simply removing the CO2 gives only a minimum effect. Thus CO2 on its own would cause an even larger absorption. In either case however, the trace gases are a significant part of what gets absorbed.
Step 3: The trace greenhouse gases have increased markedly due to human emissions
CO2 is up more than 30%, CH4 has more than doubled, N2O is up 15%, tropospheric O3 has also increased. New compounds such as halocarbons (CFCs, HFCs) did not exist in the pre-industrial atmosphere. All of these increases contribute to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
Step 4: Radiative forcing is a useful diagnostic and can easily be calculated
Lessons from simple toy models and experience with more sophisticated GCMs suggests that any perturbation to the TOA radiation budget from whatever source is a pretty good predictor of eventual surface temperature change. Thus if the sun were to become stronger by about 2%, the TOA radiation balance would change by 0.02*1366*0.7/4 = 4.8 W/m2 (taking albedo and geometry into account) and this would be the radiative forcing (RF). An increase in greenhouse absorbers or a change in the albedo have analogous impacts on the TOA balance. However, calculation of the radiative forcing is again a job for the line-by-line codes that take into account atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapour and aerosols. The most up-to-date calculations for the trace gases are by Myhre et al (1998) and those are the ones used in IPCC TAR and AR4.
These calculations can be condensed into simplified fits to the data, such as the oft-used formula for CO2: RF = 5.35 ln(CO2/CO2_orig) (see Table 6.2 in IPCC TAR for the others). The logarithmic form comes from the fact that some particular lines are already saturated and that the increase in forcing depends on the wings (see this post for more details). Forcings for lower concentration gases (such as CFCs) are linear in concentration. The calculations in Myhre et al use representative profiles for different latitudes, but different assumptions about clouds, their properties and the spatial heterogeneity mean that the global mean forcing is uncertain by about 10%. Thus the RF for a doubling of CO2 is likely 3.7±0.4 W/m2 the same order of magnitude as an increase of solar forcing by 2%.
There are a couple of small twists on the radiative forcing concept. One is that CO2 has an important role in the stratospheric radiation balance. The stratosphere reacts very quickly to changes in that balance and that changes the TOA forcing by a small but non-negligible amount. The surface response, which is much slower, therefore reacts more proportionately to the adjusted forcing and this is generally what is used in lieu of the instantaneous forcing. The other wrinkle is depending slightly on the spatial distribution of forcing agents, different feedbacks and processes might come into play and thus an equivalent forcing from two different sources might not give the same response. The factor that quantifies this effect is called the efficacy of the forcing, which for the most part is reasonably close to one, and so doesnt change the zeroth-order picture (Hansen et al, 2005). This means that climate forcings can be simply added to approximate the net effect.
The total forcing from the trace greenhouse gases mentioned in Step 3, is currently about 2.5 W/m2, and the net forcing (including cooling impacts of aerosols and natural changes) is 1.6±1.0 W/m2 since the pre-industrial. Most of the uncertainty is related to aerosol effects. Current growth in forcings is dominated by increasing CO2, with potentially a small role for decreases in reflective aerosols (sulphates, particularly in the US and EU) and increases in absorbing aerosols (like soot, particularly from India and China and from biomass burning).
Step 5: Climate sensitivity is around 3ºC for a doubling of CO2
The climate sensitivity classically defined is the response of global mean temperature to a forcing once all the fast feedbacks have occurred (atmospheric temperatures, clouds, water vapour, winds, snow, sea ice etc.), but before any of the slow feedbacks have kicked in (ice sheets, vegetation, carbon cycle etc.). Given that it doesnt matter much which forcing is changing, sensitivity can be assessed from any particular period in the past where the changes in forcing are known and the corresponding equilibrium temperature change can be estimated. As we have discussed previously, the last glacial period is a good example of a large forcing (~7 W/m2 from ice sheets, greenhouse gases, dust and vegetation) giving a large temperature response (~5 ºC) and implying a sensitivity of about 3ºC (with substantial error bars). More formally, you can combine this estimate with others taken from the 20th century, the response to volcanoes, the last millennium, remote sensing etc. to get pretty good constraints on what the number should be. This was done by Annan and Hargreaves (2006), and they come up with, you guessed it, 3ºC.
Converting the estimate for doubled CO2 to a more useful factor gives ~0.75 ºC/(W/m2).
Step 6: Radiative forcing x climate sensitivity is a significant number
Current forcings (1.6 W/m2) x 0.75 ºC/(W/m2) imply 1.2 ºC that would occur at equilibrium. Because the oceans take time to warm up, we are not yet there (so far we have experienced 0.7ºC), and so the remaining 0.5 ºC is in the pipeline. We can estimate this independently using the changes in ocean heat content over the last decade or so (roughly equal to the current radiative imbalance) of ~0.7 W/m2, implying that this unrealised forcing will lead to another 0.7×0.75 ºC i.e. 0.5 ºC.
Additional forcings in business-as-usual scenarios range roughly from 3 to 7 W/m2 and therefore additional warming (at equilibrium) would be 2 to 5 ºC. That is significant.
Q.E.D.?
--Gavin Schmidt - Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
RealClimate: The CO2 problem in 6 easy steps
The CO2 problem in 6 easy steps
6 August 2007
We often get requests to provide an easy-to-understand explanation for why increasing CO2 is a significant problem without relying on climate models and we are generally happy to oblige. The explanation has a number of separate steps which tend to sometimes get confused and so we will try to break it down carefully.
Step 1: There is a natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that there is a natural greenhouse effect (that the atmosphere restricts the passage of long wave (LW) radiation from the Earths surface to space) is easily deducible from i) the mean temperature of the surface (around 15ºC) and ii) knowing that the planet is roughly in radiative equilibrium. This means that there is an upward surface flux of LW around \sigma T^4 (~390 W/m2), while the outward flux at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) is roughly equivalent to the net solar radiation coming in (1-a)S/4 (~240 W/m2). Thus there is a large amount of LW absorbed by the atmosphere (around 150 W/m2) a number that would be zero in the absence of any greenhouse substances.
Step 2: Trace gases contribute to the natural greenhouse effect.
The fact that different absorbers contribute to the net LW absorption is clear from IR spectra taken from space which show characteristic gaps associated with water vapour, CO2, CH4, O3 etc (Harries et al, 2001; HITRAN). The only question is how much energy is blocked by each. This cannot be calculated by hand (the number of absorption lines and the effects of pressure broadening etc. preclude that), but it can be calculated using line-by-line radiative transfer codes. The earliest calculations (reviewed by Ramanathan and Coakley, 1979) give very similar results to more modern calculations (Clough and Iacono, 1995), and demonstrate that removing the effect of CO2 reduces the net LW absorbed by ~14%, or around 30 W/m2. For some parts of the spectrum, IR can be either absorbed by CO2 or by water vapour, and so simply removing the CO2 gives only a minimum effect. Thus CO2 on its own would cause an even larger absorption. In either case however, the trace gases are a significant part of what gets absorbed.
Step 3: The trace greenhouse gases have increased markedly due to human emissions
CO2 is up more than 30%, CH4 has more than doubled, N2O is up 15%, tropospheric O3 has also increased. New compounds such as halocarbons (CFCs, HFCs) did not exist in the pre-industrial atmosphere. All of these increases contribute to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
Step 4: Radiative forcing is a useful diagnostic and can easily be calculated
Lessons from simple toy models and experience with more sophisticated GCMs suggests that any perturbation to the TOA radiation budget from whatever source is a pretty good predictor of eventual surface temperature change. Thus if the sun were to become stronger by about 2%, the TOA radiation balance would change by 0.02*1366*0.7/4 = 4.8 W/m2 (taking albedo and geometry into account) and this would be the radiative forcing (RF). An increase in greenhouse absorbers or a change in the albedo have analogous impacts on the TOA balance. However, calculation of the radiative forcing is again a job for the line-by-line codes that take into account atmospheric profiles of temperature, water vapour and aerosols. The most up-to-date calculations for the trace gases are by Myhre et al (1998) and those are the ones used in IPCC TAR and AR4.
These calculations can be condensed into simplified fits to the data, such as the oft-used formula for CO2: RF = 5.35 ln(CO2/CO2_orig) (see Table 6.2 in IPCC TAR for the others). The logarithmic form comes from the fact that some particular lines are already saturated and that the increase in forcing depends on the wings (see this post for more details). Forcings for lower concentration gases (such as CFCs) are linear in concentration. The calculations in Myhre et al use representative profiles for different latitudes, but different assumptions about clouds, their properties and the spatial heterogeneity mean that the global mean forcing is uncertain by about 10%. Thus the RF for a doubling of CO2 is likely 3.7±0.4 W/m2 the same order of magnitude as an increase of solar forcing by 2%.
There are a couple of small twists on the radiative forcing concept. One is that CO2 has an important role in the stratospheric radiation balance. The stratosphere reacts very quickly to changes in that balance and that changes the TOA forcing by a small but non-negligible amount. The surface response, which is much slower, therefore reacts more proportionately to the adjusted forcing and this is generally what is used in lieu of the instantaneous forcing. The other wrinkle is depending slightly on the spatial distribution of forcing agents, different feedbacks and processes might come into play and thus an equivalent forcing from two different sources might not give the same response. The factor that quantifies this effect is called the efficacy of the forcing, which for the most part is reasonably close to one, and so doesnt change the zeroth-order picture (Hansen et al, 2005). This means that climate forcings can be simply added to approximate the net effect.
The total forcing from the trace greenhouse gases mentioned in Step 3, is currently about 2.5 W/m2, and the net forcing (including cooling impacts of aerosols and natural changes) is 1.6±1.0 W/m2 since the pre-industrial. Most of the uncertainty is related to aerosol effects. Current growth in forcings is dominated by increasing CO2, with potentially a small role for decreases in reflective aerosols (sulphates, particularly in the US and EU) and increases in absorbing aerosols (like soot, particularly from India and China and from biomass burning).
Step 5: Climate sensitivity is around 3ºC for a doubling of CO2
The climate sensitivity classically defined is the response of global mean temperature to a forcing once all the fast feedbacks have occurred (atmospheric temperatures, clouds, water vapour, winds, snow, sea ice etc.), but before any of the slow feedbacks have kicked in (ice sheets, vegetation, carbon cycle etc.). Given that it doesnt matter much which forcing is changing, sensitivity can be assessed from any particular period in the past where the changes in forcing are known and the corresponding equilibrium temperature change can be estimated. As we have discussed previously, the last glacial period is a good example of a large forcing (~7 W/m2 from ice sheets, greenhouse gases, dust and vegetation) giving a large temperature response (~5 ºC) and implying a sensitivity of about 3ºC (with substantial error bars). More formally, you can combine this estimate with others taken from the 20th century, the response to volcanoes, the last millennium, remote sensing etc. to get pretty good constraints on what the number should be. This was done by Annan and Hargreaves (2006), and they come up with, you guessed it, 3ºC.
Converting the estimate for doubled CO2 to a more useful factor gives ~0.75 ºC/(W/m2).
Step 6: Radiative forcing x climate sensitivity is a significant number
Current forcings (1.6 W/m2) x 0.75 ºC/(W/m2) imply 1.2 ºC that would occur at equilibrium. Because the oceans take time to warm up, we are not yet there (so far we have experienced 0.7ºC), and so the remaining 0.5 ºC is in the pipeline. We can estimate this independently using the changes in ocean heat content over the last decade or so (roughly equal to the current radiative imbalance) of ~0.7 W/m2, implying that this unrealised forcing will lead to another 0.7×0.75 ºC i.e. 0.5 ºC.
Additional forcings in business-as-usual scenarios range roughly from 3 to 7 W/m2 and therefore additional warming (at equilibrium) would be 2 to 5 ºC. That is significant.
Q.E.D.?
--Gavin Schmidt - Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
RealClimate: The CO2 problem in 6 easy steps
Just show the supporting work for all of this and then this becomes useful. without proof, it is all still the same old mumbo jumbo you can't backup! Let's see the experiment that doubling CO2 causes a 3 degree C change in temperature. you make the claim, back it up!!!
The "natural cycles" argument you're trying to invoke is really dumb.
Denier "logic":
1. Natural cycles have caused warming in the past.
2. We are seeing warming now.
3. Therefore, the warming must be from a natural cycle.
Equivalent logic:
1. Species have gone extinct naturally in the past.
2. The dodo bird went extinct
3. Therefore, natural causes were responsible for the extinction of the dodo bird.
Really stupid logic, in both cases. Yet almost all deniers rely on that stupid logic, even after you point out how stupid it is. In general, deniers tend to stink at logic and common sense.
The only problem you have is you can't refute it. That's why you fight tooth and nail to prevent anything about cycles to be published. Corrupt to the core describes you clowns.
The "natural" cycle now is trying to cool the earth, as has been happening since the Holocene Climate Optimum. Since it's currently warming, that would be one conclusively refutation of the weird claim that a natural cycle is currently driving climate.
The "natural cycles" argument you're trying to invoke is really dumb.
Denier "logic":
1. Natural cycles have caused warming in the past.
2. We are seeing warming now.
3. Therefore, the warming must be from a natural cycle.
Equivalent logic:
1. Species have gone extinct naturally in the past.
2. The dodo bird went extinct
3. Therefore, natural causes were responsible for the extinction of the dodo bird.
Really stupid logic, in both cases. Yet almost all deniers rely on that stupid logic, even after you point out how stupid it is. In general, deniers tend to stink at logic and common sense.
