Myth, propounded by head climate change denier Richard Lindzen (and countless others):
Many interest groups have discovered climate change. Everyone of the will profit from it except the normal consumer. The latter must be maneuvered by propaganda. The scientists profit, they have increased funding by more that a factor of ten since the early 90s.
(From Eli Rabbet's translation of the Die Weltwoche interview)
Fact (U.S. climate science funding) from the blog of R. Pielke Jr.:
From 1995 to 2001:
Climate science funding was cut from $2.234B to $1.886B (constant dollars), representing a cut of 15.6%. With respect to climate science funding as a proportion of domestic discretionary spending the cut is 23%.
From 2002 to 2006:
Climate science funding was cut from $1.792B to $1.674B (constant dollars), representing a cut of 6.6%. With respect to climate science funding as a proportion of domestic discretionary spending the cut is 20%.
So don't let anyone tell you that climate scientists are getting rich off the global warming "scare".
I find the numbers game surrounding this issue to be incredibly frustrating, don't you?
ReplyDeleteWell, yes in that I think people like Lindzen abuse the numbers in some fairly obvious ways. I mean, I am NOT a climate scientist but in real life I AM a professional producer of statistics, so I have a rudementary grasp of the stuff, and some of the arguments that the deniers throw around are very shoddy.
ReplyDeleteIn this particular case, I should have pointed it out in the main post but Pielke Jr. is within the IPCC concensus but probably on the politically right side of it. He acknowledges warming but is unsure about actions. If you read the post I linked to, he actually says a few kind words on behalf of the Bush science policy, or at least compares it favorably to Clinton's. So he is not a particularly sympathetic source, and I would therefore have faith in the numbers he brings to the table.
Why are you quoting numbers? Shouldn't you just FEEL that there is a threat to funding?
ReplyDeleteyou Warmists are all the same . . . deny, deny deny.
ReplyDeletedo the math . .
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=034028d4-8a4a-4103-8012-6445ac5ba715
how to really screw with numbers . . . be one of the 650 or so IPCC members ( there names are listed 2000 times but there are not 200o unique members - a "minor" deception !!), refuse to release your data so other scientists can assess - violation of the basic tenet of science - replication and cook the books so to speak by ignoring data thay doesn't support your preconceived notions.
ReplyDeletehttp://antigreen.blogspot.com/
The following is an excerpt from a 1997 paper by T.V. Segalstad, Associate Professor of Geochemistry at the University of Oslo. The paper challenges many of the numerous assumptions in Warmism but some scientific background is needed to follow his arguments. His history below can, however, I think, be followed by anyone. It shows how past levels of CO2 were arrived at by the most dubious methods -- he shows that any data not suiting the assumptions of the Warmists were simply ignored. A highly variable history of CO2 measurements was "smoothed" simply by ignoring the values that did not fit the Warmist theory! So the CO2 history we normally have presented to us is, as Prof. Beck has also recently pointed out, a straight fraud.
3. The foundation of the CO2 dogma - early atmospheric CO2 measurements
In order to construct a "CO2 Greenhouse Effect Doom" dogma, it will be necessary to
justify that (1) pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 was lower than today, (2) atmospheric
CO2 has steadily risen from its pre-industrial level to today's level, (3) Man's burning
of fossil fuel is causing an increase in atmospheric CO2 level, (4) hence atmospheric
CO2 must have a long residence time (lifetime), and (5) atmospheric temperatures are
increasing due to Man's burning of fossil fuel.
Callendar (1938) revived the hypothesis of "Greenhouse Warming" due to man's
activity, proposed by Arrhenius (1896). Callendar may truly be regarded as the father
of the current dogma on man-induced global warming (Jaworowski et al., 1992 b). In
order to support his hypothesis, Callendar (1940, 1958) selected atmospheric CO2 data
from the 19th and 20th centuries. Fonselius et al. (1956) showed that the raw data
ranged randomly between about 250 and 550 ppmv (parts per million by volume) during
this time period, but by selecting the data carefully Callendar was able to present a
steadily rising trend from about 290 ppmv for the period 1866 - 1900, to 325 ppmv in
1956.
Callendar was strongly criticized by Slocum (1955), who pointed out a strong bias
in Callendar's data selection method. Slocum pointed out that it was statistically
impossible to find a trend in the raw data set, and that the total data set showed a
constant average of about 335 ppmv over this period from the 19th to the 20th century.
Bray (1959) also criticized the selection method of Callendar, who rejected values 10%
or more different from the "general average", and even more so when Callendar's
"general average" was neither defined nor given.
Note that Callendar (1940) wrote: "There is, of course, no danger that the amount
of CO2 in the air will become uncomfortably large because as soon as the excess
pressure in the air becomes appreciable, say about 0.0003 atmos., the sea will be able
to absorb this gas as fast as it is likely to be produced."
Callendar (1949) repeated this fact, but went on to say: "As the deep waters of the
sea move slowly and only shallow contact surface is involved in the carbon-dioxide
equilibrium, this reservoir does not immediately control a sudden eruption of the gas
such as has occurred this century. It will be hundreds or perhaps thousands of years
before the sea absorbs its fair share." Callendar believed that nearly all the CO2
produced by fossil fuel combustion has remained in the atmosphere. He suggested that
the increase in atmospheric CO2 may account for the observed slight rise in average
temperature in northern latitudes during the recent decades.
The "CO2 Greenhouse Effect Doom" was being substantiated by Revelle & Suess
(1957) who wrote: "Thus human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical
experiment of a kind which could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in
the future. Within a few centuries we are returning to the air and oceans the
concentrated organic carbon stored over hundreds of millions of years." But by
considering the chemical facts on the exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere and
the ocean, they concluded that only a total increase of 20 to 40% in atmospheric CO2
can be anticipated by burning all fossil fuel. This is comparable to the 20% increase
calculated by Segalstad from the air/sea CO2 partition coefficient given by chemical
equilibrium constants (Segalstad, 1996).
At the same time Craig (1957) pointed out from the natural (by cosmic rays) radiocarbon (14-C) production rate that atmospheric CO2 is in active exchange with very large CO2 reservoirs in the ocean and biosphere. However, Callendar (1958) had apparently more faith in his carefully selected CO2 data, because he commented Craig's conclusion by writing: "Thus, if the increase shown by the measurements discussed here is even approximately representative of the whole atmosphere, it means that the oceans have not been accepting additional CO2 on anything like the expected scale."
4. The building of the dogma - recent atmospheric CO2 measurements
The stir around the atmospheric CO2 data selected by Callendar made it necessary to
start compiling analytical data of contemporary atmospheric CO2. 19 North-European
stations measured atmospheric CO2 over a 5 year period from 1955 to 1959. Measuring
with a wet-chemical technique the atmospheric CO2 level was found to vary between
approximately 270 and 380 ppmv, with annual means of 315 - 331 ppmv, and there was
no tendency of rising or falling atmospheric CO2 level at any of the 19 stations during
this 5 year period (Bischof, 1960). The data are particularly important because they are
unselected and therefore free of potential biases from selection procedures, unlike the
CO2 measurements based on the procedures at Mauna Loa (see below). Note that
these measurements were taken in an industrial region, and would indeed have shown
an increase in CO2 levels if increasing amounts of anthropogenic CO2 were
accumulating in the atmosphere during this period.
During the same period atmospheric CO2 measurements were started near the top
of the strongly CO2-emitting (e.g., Ryan, 1995) Hawaiian Mauna Loa volcano. The
reason for the choice of location was that it should be far away from CO2-emitting
industrial areas. At the Mauna Loa Observatory the measurements were taken with a
new infra-red (IR) absorbing instrumental method, never validated versus the accurate
wet chemical techniques. Critique has also been directed to the analytical methodology
and sampling error problems (Jaworowski et al., 1992 a; and Segalstad, 1996, for
further references), and the fact that the results of the measurements were "edited"
(Bacastow et al., 1985); large portions of raw data were rejected, leaving just a small
fraction of the raw data subjected to averaging techniques (Pales & Keeling, 1965).
The acknowledgement in the paper by Pales & Keeling (1965) describes how the Mauna Loa CO2 monitoring program started: "The Scripps program to monitor CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans was conceived and initiated by Dr. Roger Revelle who was director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography while the present work was in progress. Revelle foresaw the geochemical implications of the rise in atmospheric CO2 resulting from fossil fuel combustion, and he sought means to ensure that this 'large scale geophysical experiment', as he termed it, would be adequately documented as it occurred. During all stages of the present work Revelle was mentor, consultant, antagonist. He shared with us his broad knowledge of earth science and appreciation for the oceans and atmosphere as they really exist, and he inspired us to keep in sight the objectives which he had originally persuaded us to accept." Is this the description of true, unbiased research?
The annual mean CO2 level as reported from Mauna Loa for 1959 was 315.83 ppmv (15 ppmv lower than the contemporaneous North-European average level), reportedly rising steadily to 351.45 in January 1989 (Keeling et al., 1989), by averaging large daily and seasonal variations (the significance of all their digits not justified), but still within the range of the North European measurements 30-35 years earlier. Hence a rise in global atmospheric CO2 level has not yet been significantly justified by validated methods and sound statistics.
5. Setting the dogma baseline - CO2 measurements in ice cores
In order to show that recent atmospheric CO2 levels have risen due to Man's burning of fossil fuel, it was necessary to show a significant level increase above pre-industrial CO2 levels. We saw how Callendar was able to set a baseline of about 290 ppmv by rejecting values deviating more than 10% from his desired value.
It was believed that snow accumulating on ice sheets would preserve the contemporaneous atmosphere trapped between snowflakes during snowfalls, so that the CO2 content of air inclusions in cores from ice sheets should reveal paleoatmospheric CO2 levels. Jaworowski et al. (1992 b) compiled all such CO2 data available, finding that CO2 levels ranged from 140 to 7,400 ppmv. However, such paleoatmospheric CO2 levels published after 1985 were never reported to be higher than 330 ppmv. Analyses reported in 1982 (Neftel at al., 1982) from the more than 2,000 m deep Byrd ice core (Antarctica), showing unsystematic values from about 190 to 420 ppmv, were falsely "filtered" when the alleged same data showed a rising trend from about 190 ppmv at 35,000 years ago to about 290 ppmv (Callendar's pre-industrial baseline) at 4,000 years ago when re-reported in 1988 (Neftel et al., 1988); shown by Jaworowski et al. (1992 b) in their Fig. 5.
Siegenthaler & Oeschger (1987) were going to make "model calculations that are based on the assumption that the atmospheric [CO2] increase is due to fossil CO2 input" and other human activities. For this modelling they constructed a composite diagram of CO2 level data from Mauna Loa and the Siple (Antarctica) core (see Jaworowski et al., 1992 b, Fig. 10). The data from the Siple core (Neftel et al., 1985) showed the "best" data in terms of a rising CO2 trend. Part of the reason for this was that the core partially melted across the Equator during transportation before it was analysed (Etheridge et al., 1988), but this was neither mentioned by the analysts nor the researchers later using the data (see Jaworowski et al., 1992 b). Rather it was characterized as "the excellent quality of the ice core" and its CO2 concentration data "are assumed to represent the global mean concentration history and used as input data to the model" (Siegenthaler & Oeschger, 1987). The two CO2 level curves were constructed to overlap each other, but they would not match at corresponding age.
In order to make a matching construction between the two age-different non-overlapping curves, it was necessary to make the assumption that the age of the gas inclusion air would have to be 95 years younger than the age of the enclosing ice. But this was not mentioned by the originators Siegenthaler & Oeschger (1987). This artificial construction has been used as a basis for numerous speculative models of changes in the global carbon cycle.
Oeschger et al. (1985) postulated this "air younger than enclosing ice" thesis from an explanation that the upper 70 m of the ice sheets should be open to air circulation until the gas cavities were sealed. Jaworowski et al. (1992 b) rejected this postulate on the basis that air is constantly driven out of the snow, firn, and ice strata during the snow to ice compression and metamorphism, so that ice deeper than about 1,000 m will have lost all original air inclusions. Deep ice cores will fracture when they are taken to the surface, and ambient air will be trapped in new, secondary inclusions. Both argon-39 and krypton-85 isotopes show that large amounts of ambient air are indeed included in the air inclusions in deep ice cores, and air from the inclusions will not be representative of paleoatmospheres (Jaworowski et al., 1992 b).
Contamination from drilling fluids and more than twenty physical-chemical processes occurring in the ice before, during, and after drilling, make ice cores unsuitable for paleoatmospheric work (Jaworowski et al., 1992 b).
The most famous ice core, the Vostok (Antarctica) core, with air inclusions allegedly representing the global paleoatmospheres over the last 160,000 years, show CO2 levels below 200 ppmv for many tens of thousands of years spanning 30,000 to 110,000 years BP (Barnola et al., 1987). "Most geochemists were convinced that changes such as these could not occur", says Sarmiento (1991) about these low alleged paleoatmospheric CO2 levels. Such low atmospheric CO2 levels below approximately 250 ppmv (McKay et al., 1991) would have led to extinction of certain plant species. This has not been recorded by paleobotanists, showing clearly that the ice core CO2 results are not representative of paleoatmospheres (Jaworowski et al., 1992 b), hence the CO2-ice-core-method and its results must be rejected.
This might a bit petty from the most recent long winded poster who did cut and paste, but has this 'scientist' done any recent research. I can only discern that his last publication date was 1997, which is 10 years ago.
ReplyDeleteIs his article that you pasted been through peer review journal?
This is really weird. Here there are maybe a couple of guys who know how to measure stuff who have been measuring CO2 at a Hawaiian location for decades. They put out the data and hope somebody will pay attention. I remember seeing a movie about the failure of the American government to pay attention to early radar measurements, also from Hawaii. In the movie these two soldiers are looking at an early form of radar and saying it sure looks like a lot of planes, and the officers up the line have this or that explanation. Anything to avoid effort. The result was the attack on Pearl Harbour.
ReplyDeleteI mean if the planet is not undergoing a shift in climate regime caused by ourselves what in hell is all the fuss about? Everyone knew the Japanese would be attacking, so why the surprise when they finally did. Is there anyone in the world dumb enough to buy the twaddle put out by second rate debaters like Lintzen, or clowns like Tim Ball?
And why on earth do you rely on Pielke. I do believe if he said it is night I would check the window expecting it is day and time to get up.
But what about those numbers. Surely it is time to square up this stuff. I read that over a decade or more Exxon has put out about $38 mill to finance the production of uncertainty among 30 or 40 fund seeking outfits. And here is climate science getting over $1 1/2 billion? Can that be right? Why has peanuts from the evil one caused such a surpression of holy truth? What are the billions being spent on? Is a good chunk on that science funding being spent on satellite or geo data collection that would have been funded on military grounds and Science is a good place to tuck it In? I would be astounded if these figures were even broadly correct. The money is going to create uncertainty and point us in a direction that will assist the already insanely rich to progress even further in their destructive lunacy, and real science gets...what? I would like to see someone dig out the facts on this and let us know.