Canada Kicks Ass
The Amazing Story Behind Tho Global Warming Scam

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ManifestDestiny @ Thu Jan 29, 2009 3:34 pm

The key players are now all in place in Washington and in state governments across America to officially label carbon dioxide as a pollutant and enact laws that tax we citizens for our carbon footprints. Only two details stand in the way, the faltering economic times and a dramatic turn toward a colder climate. The last two bitter winters have lead to a rise in public awareness that CO2 is not a pollutant and is not a significant greenhouse gas that is triggering runaway global warming.

How did we ever get to this point where bad science is driving big government we have to struggle so to stop it?

Here is the rest
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscor ... 74742.html

   



karra @ Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:00 pm

Good article,

I've stated afore, here, there, and elsewhere, that our very own and loco(al)Chinese Communist, aka Mowreece Strong, was part and parcel of this incredible scam that only the unshaven and unwashed far-left sheep bought into.

Read about Strong on Wiki - the incredible physical love he harboured for his Aunt who resided in China, his visits to her, the amount of time he spent there - did I neglect to mention he's a good friend of Boob Rae, you know, he who would be PM - Strong's push for a UN World Government as well as having UN control of the internet where both you and I and most posters here would not be permitted to post the stuff we do - this bunghole is a pariah with a truly 'hidden agenda' - unlike Robair's belief - observed any soldiers on our streets carrying anything more dangerous than a snow shovel?

As for Strong Link <----Read it, and be very afraid. . . .

Someone that should be causing us all sleepless nights, and days too.

   



Zipperfish @ Thu Jan 29, 2009 4:15 pm

I don't know, thea article struck me as somewhat confused. It mixed up the science of global warming with the policy repsonse to it. The article admits that CO2 levels have increased in the atmosphere, but presents no rationale as to why. And the statement that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas is bizarre. A molecule that radiates in the infrared spectrum is a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is such a gas; I wasn't aware that this was a controversial point.

   



N_Fiddledog @ Fri Jan 30, 2009 11:27 am

Zipperfish Zipperfish:
I don't know, thea article struck me as somewhat confused. It mixed up the science of global warming with the policy repsonse to it. The article admits that CO2 levels have increased in the atmosphere, but presents no rationale as to why. And the statement that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas is bizarre. A molecule that radiates in the infrared spectrum is a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is such a gas; I wasn't aware that this was a controversial point.


I didn't see him claiming CO2 was not a greenhouse gas. The closest I saw to it was...

$1:
There is now awareness that there may be reason to question whether CO2 is a pollutant and a significant greenhouse gas.


If I missed something where he does claim CO2 is not a greenhouse gas somewhere in the article, please point it out to me.

As to why CO2 levels rise from time to time throughout geologic history the explanation one usually hears is oceans are the big release mechanism. Lately the one we hear mentioned most often is human-released CO2 from land use, industry, and transportation. The estimate I hear on that is about 5% of the released CO2 at present is human-released. I suspect maybe that one might not consider land use though. If you know of another estimate on that, please point me to it.

Back to the idea CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas for a sec. CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere. It's about 385 parts per million. My admittedly bad math sees that as saying if you have 100,000 molecules of atmosphere, about 4 of them will be CO2.

People often argue that with the observation, "So what if it's small. Look what a tiny amount of chemical can do to a human body. It can kill it".

The problem is that's a bad analogy. It doesn't describe what CO2 actually does as a GHG. I keep trying to come up with a better one. Here's the best I can do.

Suppose you have a smoke house with multiple racks in northern Canada somewhere. In the middle of winter you go out and place 100,000 ice cubes on the racks. Measure the temperature. You then throw 4 ice cubes away, and replace them with 4 heated stones of ice cube size. Close the door to the smokehouse, then come back, and measure the temperature at say 10 minute intervals. Each time you do add another heated stone 1/20th the size of the original 4. What do you expect to discover after a couple of hours? I don't expect evidence of any significant heat forcing in the smoke house.

The problem with that one though is from the perspective of the CO2 heats the planet crowd it also is a bad analogy.

The way they see it the heating process in the atmosphere involves more than just the trace amount of CO2 we see.

The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor. I think water vapor makes up 95% of the physical greenhouse gases. What the CO2 guys say though is "No, CO2 makes up 20% of the greenhouse effect". The way they get from under 5% to 20% is they say CO2 causes a chain reaction - a positive feedback. CO2 warms a little section of space, but that space is shared with water vapor. As CO2 warms the water vapor that vapor also radiates heat, and the larger effect of that feedback process is an overall 20% heat rise.

Here's the best I can do to provide an analogy for that one. This time wait for a bright sunny day. Go out to a plain with 99,996 mirrors on sticks of varying lengths. The mirrors are positioned at varying angles. Stake them. OK now jump in a helicopter. Get up high, and measure the overall brightness of the mass of light-reflecting mirrors below. Go back down and add 4 mirrors. Now jump back in your helicopter, get up high again, and measure the brightness once more. The CO2 guys say the mirror mass will now be 20% brighter. I call bullshit myself. For one thing that analogy would have to be tons more complex to approach anything like an accurate approximation of what happens in the real world.

In fact here's the problem with both those analogies. Neither are precise, and both are unnecessary. There's actual data with actual CO2 which describes the whole process much better. The problem is nobody bothers to check it out. They'd much rather just pay the carbon tax, pay the inflated food and energy prices, let the nanny state into their homes to micro-manage their energy use, or whatever else they choose to control while they're there, watch energy based industries move elsewhere, enrich cap n trade, scamming, crooks like Al Gore, kill off the actually endangered population of orangutans with bogus carbon offset schemes while claiming to be worried by the not endangered polar bear population, and change the dictionary to accommodate Obama's new definition of CO2 as a pollutant.

If however you would like to see what the actual data says, here's the best explanation of it I've seen so far.

Chicken or the egg argument with CO2 and temperature

   



Zipperfish @ Fri Jan 30, 2009 8:31 pm

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
If I missed something where he does claim CO2 is not a greenhouse gas somewhere in the article, please point it out to me.


This line here, from the article:

$1:
These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas.


So it's clear we're dealing with eihter someone who hasn't a clue what they are talking abouit or is deliberately trying to deceive the reader.

$1:
As to why CO2 levels rise from time to time throughout geologic history the explanation one usually hears is oceans are the big release mechanism. Lately the one we hear mentioned most often is human-released CO2 from land use, industry, and transportation. The estimate I hear on that is about 5% of the released CO2 at present is human-released. I suspect maybe that one might not consider land use though. If you know of another estimate on that, please point me to it.


Could be. I've seen lots of different estimates. CO2 isn't really released per se, it's part of a carbon cycle that's in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Adding CO2 currently not a part fo teh carbon cycle (from oil that has been underground for millions of years) changes the equilibrium state. In matehmatics involving it's quite common to see a small forcing move a differential equation from a stable to an unstable solution.

$1:
Back to the idea CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas for a sec. CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere. It's about 385 parts per million. My admittedly bad math sees that as saying if you have 100,000 molecules of atmosphere, about 4 of them will be CO2.


385 parts per million is about 4 in 10,000.

$1:
People often argue that with the observation, "So what if it's small. Look what a tiny amount of chemical can do to a human body. It can kill it".

$1:
Suppose you have a smoke house with multiple racks in northern Canada somewhere. In the middle of winter you go out and place 100,000 ice cubes on the racks. Measure the temperature. You then throw 4 ice cubes away, and replace them with 4 heated stones of ice cube size. Close the door to the smokehouse, then come back, and measure the temperature at say 10 minute intervals. Each time you do add another heated stone 1/20th the size of the original 4. What do you expect to discover after a couple of hours? I don't expect evidence of any significant heat forcing in the smoke house.


A better analogy would be stones that didn't cool down. They would continue to generate heat (as a CO2 molecule continues to radiate infrared radiation to the earth's surface). Depending on the level of insulation in the smokehouse, the effect could be quite noticeable after a while.

$1:
The primary greenhouse gas is water vapor. I think water vapor makes up 95% of the physical greenhouse gases. What the CO2 guys say though is "No, CO2 makes up 20% of the greenhouse effect". The way they get from under 5% to 20% is they say CO2 causes a chain reaction - a positive feedback. CO2 warms a little section of space, but that space is shared with water vapor. As CO2 warms the water vapor that vapor also radiates heat, and the larger effect of that feedback process is an overall 20% heat rise.

Here's the best I can do to provide an analogy for that one. This time wait for a bright sunny day. Go out to a plain with 99,996 mirrors on sticks of varying lengths. The mirrors are positioned at varying angles. Stake them. OK now jump in a helicopter. Get up high, and measure the overall brightness of the mass of light-reflecting mirrors below. Go back down and add 4 mirrors. Now jump back in your helicopter, get up high again, and measure the brightness once more. The CO2 guys say the mirror mass will now be 20% brighter. I call bullshit myself. For one thing that analogy would have to be tons more complex to approach anything like an accurate approximation of what happens in the real world.


I don't think that's a good analogy. You're assuming a linear correlation between the concentrationof a molecule in the atmosperhe and its contribution to the the thermal radiation budget.

$1:
In fact here's the problem with both those analogies. Neither are precise, and both are unnecessary. There's actual data with actual CO2 which describes the whole process much better. The problem is nobody bothers to check it out. They'd much rather just pay the carbon tax, pay the inflated food and energy prices, let the nanny state into their homes to micro-manage their energy use, or whatever else they choose to control while they're there, watch energy based industries move elsewhere, enrich cap n trade, scamming, crooks like Al Gore, kill off the actually endangered population of orangutans with bogus carbon offset schemes while claiming to be worried by the not endangered polar bear population, and change the dictionary to accommodate Obama's new definition of CO2 as a pollutant.


Irrelvant screed.

$1:
If however you would like to see what the actual data says, here's the best explanation of it I've seen so far.

Chicken or the egg argument with CO2 and temperature


The problem here is that the writer is trying to say that CO2 lags temperature and temperature therefore controls CO2 concentrations. A few problems: first of all, if this were true, why is it cooling right now, according to the sceptics who keep telling us global warming is over? The second problem is that it does not account for the billions of tonnes of CO2 we have pumped into the atmosphere. Doesn't even mention it. Shouldn't that be included in any mass balance? If the CO2 rise is natural, what happened to all the anthropogenic CO2?

   



PluggyRug @ Fri Jan 30, 2009 9:03 pm

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

The problem here is that the writer is trying to say that CO2 lags temperature and temperature therefore controls CO2 concentrations. A few problems: first of all, if this were true, why is it cooling right now, according to the sceptics who keep telling us global warming is over? The second problem is that it does not account for the billions of tonnes of CO2 we have pumped into the atmosphere. Doesn't even mention it. Shouldn't that be included in any mass balance? If the CO2 rise is natural, what happened to all the anthropogenic CO2?



It is cooling. Who really cares about CO2, the net affect is negligible. Higher concentrations of CO2 are not producing the results the alarmists predicted.
Global warming never really existed, fluctuations in average temperature are natural.
Of course the alarmists must latch onto anything to perpetuate their existence.

Why don't these alarmists concentrate their efforts on the reduction of pollutants.
CO2 is a extremely important, and is essential to life on this planet, to label it otherwise is badly informed, and purposely idiotic.

   



N_Fiddledog @ Sat Jan 31, 2009 2:05 am

Zipperfish Zipperfish:
This line here, from the article:

"These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas."

So it's clear we're dealing with eihter someone who hasn't a clue what they are talking abouit or is deliberately trying to deceive the reader.


No, what's clear is he's talking about 2 papers; one in 1957 by Revelle, and another in 1960 by Keeling. The one in 1957 "raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming." The one in 1960 was "showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels." Coleman's claim was, "These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures." Coleman himself is not claiming CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. His claim is it is not a significant greenhouse gas.

$1:
Could be. I've seen lots of different estimates. CO2 isn't really released per se, it's part of a carbon cycle that's in a state of dynamic equilibrium. Adding CO2 currently not a part fo teh carbon cycle (from oil that has been underground for millions of years) changes the equilibrium state. In matehmatics involving it's quite common to see a small forcing move a differential equation from a stable to an unstable solution.


To be honest that 5% figure never made sense to me based on the math I estimate in my head, but as you've seen my math is horrendous so I have to resort to trusting what others tell me, until somebody makes more sense telling me different.

5% is what I hear most often, but here's another one...

$1:
Humans can only claim responsibility, if that's the word, for abut 3.4% of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually, the rest of it is all natural (you can see the IPCC representation of the natural carbon cycle and human perturbation here or a simple schematic from Woods Hole here).


OK, now that's from here, but don't freak out on me without considering it, and tell me that source sucks therefore the info sucks. Notice they give you links to IPCC WG/1, and Woods Hole (that's NOAA, I think). So check them out. Tell me if that source you hate correctly interpreted the info from the sources you adore.

Now as far as that small increase creating an instability goes, what do you mean by unstable? CO2 has been much, much higher than it is today, and life thrived. As a result of the recent CO2 increase Biomass on earth has experienced a similar increase. By unstable to you mean there's more plant life. If so, yeah, I agree, but so what?

$1:
385 parts per million is about 4 in 10,000.


Thanks. I knew you'd come through for me. Me with math is like a bad speller with writing. Even though he has access to a dictionary he still screws it up.

$1:
A better analogy would be stones that didn't cool down. They would continue to generate heat (as a CO2 molecule continues to radiate infrared radiation to the earth's surface). Depending on the level of insulation in the smokehouse, the effect could be quite noticeable after a while.


No.

"The arithmetic of absorption of infrared radiation also works to decrease the linearity. Absorption of light follows a logarithmic curve (Figure 1) as the amount of absorbing substance increases. It is generally accepted that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough to absorb almost all the infrared radiation in the main carbon dioxide absorption bands over a distance of only a few km. Thus, even if the atmosphere were heavily laden with carbon dioxide, it would still only cause an incremental increase in the amount of infrared absorption over current levels."

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

The way I've heard that "logarithmic" thing explained is it's kind of like if you have a window, and you paint a thin layer of paint over it. With the first layer light will still pass through, but the more layers you place over the window, the less light will pass through, until finally none passes. Translated into the stone analogy, I see it as the stone cooling and dying. However new, but much smaller stones are being added.

$1:
I don't think that's a good analogy. You're assuming a linear correlation between the concentration of a molecule in the atmosperhe and its contribution to the the thermal radiation budget.


It's admittedly a weak analogy, but I submit it's still far superior to the one that goes a small amount of the right drug can kill a man, therefore a small amount of CO2 will burn the planet.

$1:
The problem here is that the writer is trying to say that CO2 lags temperature and temperature therefore controls CO2 concentrations.


You mean the writer of this article, right?

Chicken or the egg argument with CO2 and temperature


$1:
A few problems: first of all, if this were true, why is it cooling right now, according to the sceptics who keep telling us global warming is over?


First of all, it is cooling right now. 2002 to 2008.

Secondly you have to stop grouping everybody into a single group based on a remark you heard one time from a single individual. Not all skeptics think the warming trend is necessarily over. Most think it wasn't any big deal, or anything unexpected to begin with. Some think the current cooling correlates with ocean cycles. The PDO for example is 30 years long. It's currently in it's cool phase. It usually lasts about 30 years, so that cycle could run it's course, then the long term warming trend going back to the time we started to pull out of the little ice age could continue. But yeah, some are talking a possible return to the cool period of the LIA based on the current quiet sun. I'm with the ocean guys at present myself.

$1:
The second problem is that it does not account for the billions of tonnes of CO2 we have pumped into the atmosphere. Doesn't even mention it. Shouldn't that be included in any mass balance? If the CO2 rise is natural, what happened to all the anthropogenic CO2?


Nobody said the present CO2 rise was 100% natural. Whether it is, or isn't is irrelevant to what he showed. He showed, CO2 followed temperatures in the past. Therefore temperatures in the natural world force CO2. It is not CO2 that forces temperatures. He also showed how temperatures go down when the same amount of CO2 is present in the atmosphere under which they were going up. Therefore it is some force other than CO2 which dominates the global temperature process.

   



N_Fiddledog @ Sat Jan 31, 2009 12:10 pm

Specifically on what some skeptics believe concerning the cooling here's a clip from an interview with Joseph D'Aleo they released yesterday...

$1:
We're looking very much like the early 1800s, a very cold period when Charles Dickens was writing his novels about the icy streets of London. We're heading back into that kind of mode, I think, where the sun and the ocean cycles are about to give us a couple of decades of cooler temperatures.


http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_11589528

He's not talking ice age, or permanent cooling. He's talking a cycle.

   



sandorski @ Sat Jan 31, 2009 6:22 pm

The Deniers certainly stick with it, I'll give them that.

   



fifeboy @ Sat Jan 31, 2009 8:33 pm

sandorski sandorski:
The Deniers certainly stick with it, I'll give them that.

Image

   



sandorski @ Sat Jan 31, 2009 10:53 pm

fifeboy fifeboy:
sandorski sandorski:
The Deniers certainly stick with it, I'll give them that.

Image


Keep sticking to it.

   



fifeboy @ Sat Jan 31, 2009 11:12 pm

sandorski sandorski:
fifeboy fifeboy:
sandorski sandorski:
The Deniers certainly stick with it, I'll give them that.

Image


Keep sticking to it.
Actually, I don't know if global warming is happening or not. And if it is I don't know if its AGW. However, I do believe there needs to be more real science, without political interference from either side, done on the subject.

   



sandorski @ Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:20 pm

There is a massive amount of "Real Science". It unfortunately does not support the Deniers, so they have Politicized the debate. Congratulations.

   



mtbr @ Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:22 pm

sandorski sandorski:
There is a massive amount of "Real Science". It unfortunately does not support the Deniers, so they have Politicized the debate. Congratulations.



XD

   



Zipperfish @ Sun Feb 01, 2009 1:22 pm

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:
No, what's clear is he's talking about 2 papers; one in 1957 by Revelle, and another in 1960 by Keeling. The one in 1957 "raises the possibility that the carbon dioxide might be creating a greenhouse effect and causing atmospheric warming." The one in 1960 was "showing the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and linking the increase to the burning of fossil fuels." Coleman's claim was, "These two research papers became the bedrock of the science of global warming, even though they offered no proof that carbon dioxide was in fact a greenhouse gas. In addition they failed to explain how this trace gas, only a tiny fraction of the atmosphere, could have any significant impact on temperatures." Coleman himself is not claiming CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. His claim is it is not a significant greenhouse gas.



This just strikes me as the old sceptic sleight of hand. The advantage the sceptics have is that they simultaneously argue several theories, and just pick the one that suits the argument at that moment. Forncthey'll argue that (a) the globe is not warming, (b) the globe is warming but humans have nothing to do with it, (c) the globe is warming and humans have an insignificant efefct and (d) the globe is warming, humans have an impact, but warm weather and CO2 are good.

Also, it should be noted that global warming has been a field of scientific enquiry for some time--at least since the Victorian era. The idea that these two papers were the genesis of the idea is ridiculous.


CO2 either is or isn't a geenhouse gas. It either radiates in the infrared spectrum or it does not. Evidence collected by scientists, as well as Grade 9 students in science classes the world over, shows that CO2 is indeed a greenhouse gas. It's a ridiculous statement to say that this hasn't been "proved."


$1:
OK, now that's from here, but don't freak out on me without considering it, and tell me that source sucks therefore the info sucks. Notice they give you links to IPCC WG/1, and Woods Hole (that's NOAA, I think). So check them out. Tell me if that source you hate correctly interpreted the info from the sources you adore.

I did go to the junk science page--and junk science it was. The article starts by denying the greenhouse effect is even real. This is so far out in left field, I don't even know where to begin.

$1:
Now as far as that small increase creating an instability goes, what do you mean by unstable? CO2 has been much, much higher than it is today, and life thrived. As a result of the recent CO2 increase Biomass on earth has experienced a similar increase. By unstable to you mean there's more plant life. If so, yeah, I agree, but so what?


So what, indeed. Indeed, I'm sure life will continue to thrive. Look at the pine beetle. It's never been a better time to be a pine beetle. Sucks to be a forestry worker in BC right now though.



$1:
No.

"The arithmetic of absorption of infrared radiation also works to decrease the linearity. Absorption of light follows a logarithmic curve (Figure 1) as the amount of absorbing substance increases. It is generally accepted that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already high enough to absorb almost all the infrared radiation in the main carbon dioxide absorption bands over a distance of only a few km. Thus, even if the atmosphere were heavily laden with carbon dioxide, it would still only cause an incremental increase in the amount of infrared absorption over current levels."

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

The way I've heard that "logarithmic" thing explained is it's kind of like if you have a window, and you paint a thin layer of paint over it. With the first layer light will still pass through, but the more layers you place over the window, the less light will pass through, until finally none passes. Translated into the stone analogy, I see it as the stone cooling and dying. However new, but much smaller stones are being added.


It is "generally accepted." Hmmm, sounds like you're saying there is consensus. I don't think there is. The atmosphere is not a monolithic entity; it consists of several parts. The CO2 saturation argument works with a monolithic atmosphere, but not when accountig for atmospheric stratification (troposphere, stratosphere).


$1:
You mean the writer of this article, right?

Chicken or the egg argument with CO2 and temperature


Not just that one, a number of them. It's a widely held contention among sceptics.


$1:
Secondly you have to stop grouping everybody into a single group based on a remark you heard one time from a single individual. Not all skeptics think the warming trend is necessarily over. Most think it wasn't any big deal, or anything unexpected to begin with. Some think the current cooling correlates with ocean cycles. The PDO for example is 30 years long. It's currently in it's cool phase. It usually lasts about 30 years, so that cycle could run it's course, then the long term warming trend going back to the time we started to pull out of the little ice age could continue. But yeah, some are talking a possible return to the cool period of the LIA based on the current quiet sun. I'm with the ocean guys at present myself.


If it is ocean cycles doing the cooling, the excess CO2 is still not explained. If humans didn't put it there, and if the planet is indeed cooling and not warming, where did it come from? What physical mechanism has resulted in a 30% increase in CO2 concentrations?

   



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