[The most notable part of the documentary is the interview with Freeman Dyson, from 1:09:00 – 1:14:00]
In his new documentary “The Uncertainty has Settled“, Dutch filmmaker Marijn Poels focuses on climate science and politics and found that the issue is in fact as controversial and as UNSETTLED as any issue could possibly get.
The science climate change is far from settled and is in fact unsettled.
The production of the film took Poels to a variety of locations from Manhattan to the Austrian Alps.
The first part of the film depicts the plight of farmers in former East Germany (Saxony Anhalt), who are struggling to practice their livelihoods under the heavy burden of German agricultural regulation and market distortion that result from bureaucrats having decided that 0.01% of our atmosphere (man-emitted CO2) is a monumental problem.
That’s the narrative the media and leading politicians keep ramming. But a number of skeptics doubt it, and so Poels investigates if this doubt is just right wind politics or if there is something really behind it.
In the end he finds that the science is fully in dispute.
Belief we can stop climate change “enormously egocentric”
At the 38:00 Poels says that the [alarmist] Potsdam Institute refused to grant him an interview and so he set out for Hamburg to meet with climate scientist Hans von Storch, who is in the warmist camp.
Von Storch confirms that climate change is real, man-made and is a problem that needs to be dealt with seriously. But he adds that the claim that we can “rescue” the climate is “nonsense” and characterizes the claim the individual can play a role on controlling climate as “enormously egocentric”. Later in the film (1:04:45) von Storch says he doesn’t see climate change as a danger, but as “a challenge” that he is not afraid of.
CO2 as a climate driver “complete, delusional nonsense”
Next astrophysicist Piers Corbyn tells Poels that the amount of man-made Co2 in the atmosphere is like a “tiny blob of birdshit” and calls the claim that this is causing the climate to change “complete, delusional nonsense”. Corbyn also believes the globe will see continued cooling until about 2035. He calls the datasets showing warming “frauds”.
Freeman Dyson:
Climate models “very dangerous game”…”they’re wrong”
Next Poels makes his way to Princeton where he meets with “living legend” Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, one of the leading skeptic voices on man-made climate change.
Dyson has harsh, critical words for climate science and the models they rely on (1:10:30). He calls the science of climate modeling a “very dangerous game”, adding:
When you work with a computer model for years and years and years – always improving the model – in the end you end up believing it. […] It’s very difficult to remain objective.”
Models “wrong”…”disagree with observations”
On why we should not trust the models, Dyson says flat out: “Because they’re wrong. It’s very simple. They’re wrong.” Dyson says they “disagree with observations”. He then commented on modeling scientists:
Those people don’t look at observations. They are in a world of their own.”
“Scaring the public”
The 93-year old Princeton professor also notes that although the models are “very good tools for understanding climate”, they are a “very bad tool for predicting climate” and that these scientists “live by scaring the public”.
Climate theories are “very confused”
Dyson continues:
Unfortunately the thing has become so political it’s no longer science when you have strong political dogmas, as you say, on both sides.”
Overall Dyson advises that we need to believe the observations and pointed out that “the theories of climate are very confused.”
Herd, tribal mentality
He also told Poels a large sociological part of the problem is that climate scientists have in large part gotten caught in herd and tribal mentality.
It’s still more important to belong to the tribe than to it is to speak the truth.”
Carbon dioxide, at 410 PPMV, is around 0.04 percent of the atmosphere. If it were a whole one percent, its effect would still be nil. Look up the science, including QM solar radiation effects yourself.
Best of luck.
There are many weaknesses in the AGW orthodoxy, but this is not one of them. Your argument is far too general and would imply that no substance present in concentrations of the order of 400 ppm could have much effect on anything. Yet there are numerous instances in science and technology ranging from medicine to microelectronics where the exact opposite is true.
Many medicines are prescribed in doses in which the active ingredient is expressed in milligrams, or even micrograms, when the typical bodyweight of an adult is of the order of tens of kilograms, or, if you prefer, when the weight of the bloodstream is of the order of 5kg. I, myself, am largely kept alive by a medicine whose concentration in my bloodstream is around one hundredth of that of CO2 in the atmosphere. If we could only get impurities in silicon down to the order of 400 ppm, then modern microelectronics would become downright impossible. We have to do orders of magnitude better than this in order to make it work at all.
Most amusingly, we already know that CO2 in its current concentrations has a truly vital effect on our environment. If there were no atmospheric CO2, there could be no photosynthesis; without photosynthesis there would be no vegetation and without vegetation there would be no animals.
Given all this, I can see no a priori reason why we should dismiss out of hand any putative effect of trace substances. Each individual candidate has to be treated on its own particular merits.
The idea that climate scientists are ignorant of how much CO2 is in the atmosphere is ludicrous. So, why doesn’t this faze them? The answer is that their theory is quantitative and although, in the absence of feedbacks, it would only account for 30-40% of the warming, they invoke positive feedbacks to make up the difference. To me, this looks like a fiddle factor, but that is a different story.
Finally, the theory says that what matters is where in the atmosphere, the number of GHG molecules per unit volume lies within a fairly narrow critical range. Provided there are enough of them, the number of other molecules present is largely irrelevant. It is therefore misleading to discuss the effect in terms of ppm.
So can we assume you agree that the proponents of dangerous AGW should be far more concerned and focused on eliminating methane emissions from farm animals than CO2 emissions from humams since methane is said to be 86 times more potent than CO2 in causing global warming? Based on your comments, the traceness of a trace gas is “irrelevant” in determining its potency. So the fact that methane makes up 0.00017 of the atmosphere’s gases (1.7 ppm) compared to CO2’s 0.041 (410 ppm) is immaterial, right?
To me, what matters is not how much of any supposed GHG there is in the atmosphere but by how much it CHANGES. This is important when we come to consider any possible effects of oxygen and nitrogen on global warming/climate change. So far as I am aware, the amount of nitrogen in the atmosphere has not changed significantly, so even if it were the most effective GHG known to man, its effect on climate change would be near zero.
When we come to consider the effect of oxygen, we note that the amount of it in the atmosphere has probably declined. Where else does the burning of fossil fuels producing CO2 get its oxygen from? This means that any effect of oxygen on climate change is likely to be a COOLING.
Of course, there could be some outgassing from the oceans resulting from rising temperatures which would affect the amount of N2 and O2 in the atmosphere. However, this would be a feedback and not a primary effect.
The amount of warming/cooling that we would expect from any change in any particular GHG will be the product of some measure of its effectiveness and the amount by which it changes. The effectiveness is largely driven by where, in the overall electromagnetic spectrum, its absorption bands lie. If this is in part of the spectrum where the earth emits very little energy then its effectiveness will be low. On the other hand, if it is in a region where the earth emits a lot of energy, its effectiveness will be high. Water vapour, CO2 and methane all fall nicely into this particular slot, whereas oxygen and nitrogen do not.
This ought to be enough to debunk Blair Macdonald’s “paper” which was the subject of a previous blog.
As for the relative effects of CO2 and methane on global warming, I don’t actually know by how much the amount of methane in the atmosphere has changed. This means that I am unable to answer your question.
It’s claimed to have risen by a factor of 2.5 since industrialization, from 0.000072 to 0.00018 (I forgot it was adjusted up from 0.00017). 86 times more potent than CO2. 2.5 times more prevalent than it was a few hundred years ago. Should we be looking at farm animal regulations more than CO2 mitigation, or is the traceness level of CH4 still small enough that we need to stay focused on CO2?
But I’m curious… Since you’re a skeptic, and the heat energy change from global warming is expressed as a change in ocean heat content/temperature primarily (93%, with a change of 0.02 C since 1994), and as a change in surface/air temperatures negligibly (1%, see this comment for reference), are you aware of any quantified real-world measurements for how much of a change in ocean temperatures is caused by a, say, 10 ppm change in CO2?
I’ve been asking dangerous AGW advocates for real-world physical measurements of the amount of change that atmospheric CO2 changes elicit in ocean water (or any water body, for that matter), and they cannot produce any. Assuming you can’t produce any either, do you think the question as to whether a 0.00001 (10 ppm) change in CO2 causes a heat change of 0.001K or 0.000000000001 K is the fundamental question with GHG-induced global warming? Why is it that we don’t have any real-world measurements of CO2’s effect on water temperatures, but we are nonetheless here debating the merits of trace gases as a climate factor? Do you agree that we need these measurements to determine the extent to which CO2 affects climate?
@Skeptik
Keep in mind that plants ACTIVELY remove CO2 from the atmosphere via photosynthesis, which is an enzymatic process. It wouldn’t occur at all without the proteins that facilitate it. It’s just not a valid comparison at all.
The fundamental difference between atmospheric gases and trace additives in compounds is that the atmospheric gases are a mixture whilst the compounds have undergone chemical change.
Medicines with trace elements are such because much of the mixture is used merely as a carrier to transfer the active ingredient which on it’s own would be too small a pill or too small a fluid to be manageable.
If there were no atmospheric CO2, there could be no photosynthesis;
This turns out not to be the case. Most of the CO2 that plants consume is actually dissolved in the water they absorb through their roots.
@Some Guy
Photosynthesis occurs in the leaves, regardless of how the CO2 gets there.
And (no CO2 in the atmosphere = no CO2 in the soil), so yes it is the case, and the plant would still starve if atmospheric CO2 were reduced below about 150 ppm.
BTW: What’s the source for your claim that “Most of the CO2 that plants consume is actually dissolved in the water they absorb through their roots?” From what I can find, you appear to be way too far out on a limb with that assertion.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/r/summaries/roots.php
I would think that if your claim were true, they would be aware of it. They don’t even mention that in their discussion of the response of roots to higher atmospheric CO2.
Regardless, the fact that plants can benefit from such a tiny amount of CO2, and small increases in it’s concentration, is because of enzymatic activity, not the power of CO2 by itself.
Your comparison of a biological trigger reagent to a bulk process reagent is false. The comparison of your medication to your body weight and functions is similar to this comparison of my car. I have a car which weighs around 2,000 kilograms (2 million grams). It starts with a key that weighs around 20 grams. So the mass of the key is about 10ppm compared to the mass of the car. As long as it activates the switch, the mass of the key whether it weighed 2gm, or 200,000gm it wouldn’t make any difference.
The medications you take are not effecting the bulk chemistry of your blood. The meds are keys which affect the function of proteins within the cells of your body.
Likewise the air we breath is around 20% oxygen and 80% nitrogen. One or two percent variation either way doesn’t matter. However a small amount of cyanide (CN) will kill us within a matter of seconds. Cyanide binds to the oxygen receptors of our blood hemoglobin preventing the binding of oxygen to the hemoglobin.
Professor Dyson is one of the top physicists alive.
If he thinks climate models are rubbish, people need to take notice.
‘Mini Ice Age’ Looms As NASA Scientist Warns Lack Of Sunspots Could Bring Record Cold
This on Zero Hedge a day ago.
It would be poetic Schadenfreude to see a rapid cooling. I would smile to see the alarmists eating crow.
But the rational part of me doesn’t want any cooling. Warm periods have been referred to as ‘Climate Optima’. They are in general conducive to economic and environmental happiness.
There is something I don’t get. I think I remember reading that about 17% of IR is not absorbed and escapes unhindered. Water vapor is able to absorb all of the wavelengths that make up the remaining 83%. CO2 is able to absorb at the wavelengths emitted at a temp of about -80 celsius which is not a lot of energy. But given water vapor’s ability why does CO2 make any difference? If you reduced CO2 to zero water vapor would just absorb the energy instead. If increased CO2 absorbs more energy, isn’t it just stealing from water vapor? So increasing or decreasing CO2 would make no difference as it is not additive to energy absorption. Am I wrong?
Lightfoot and Mamer, 2017
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0958305X17722790
“Back radiation, water vapour concentration and atmospheric temperature follow the sun angle daily and over the seasons, increasing as the sun angle increases and falling as it decreases. Water vapour concentration is measured as parts per million by volume (ppmv) or by the ratio of the number of water vapour molecules for each CO2 molecule (H2O/CO2 ratio). … The purpose of this study is to present robust evidence that the sun is working with water vapour to control the Earth’s climate and to show that the influence of CO2 on atmospheric temperature is so small as to be negligible.”
“The CO2 baseline concentration of approximately 400 ppmv at the time of the calculation is equivalent to 0.0138 mole/kg of dry air. Thus, the H2O/CO2 ratio is 0.601/0.0138 or 43.5 molecules of water vapour for each molecule of CO2. [17,400 ppm water vapour vs. 400 ppmv CO2.] The sun angle determines the H2O/CO2 ratio … The effect of back radiation [water vapour] on Earth’s atmosphere is up to 200 times larger than that of CO2 and works in the opposite direction. The actual CO2 concentration experienced at any specific location is determined by the physical gas laws discovered by Boyle and Charles. For example, the elevation of Boulder, Colorado, is 1655 m, the average July high temperature is 33°C and the average low in January is 2°C. The calculated CO2 concentrations based on 407.9 ppmv in dry air are 298.0 and 336.4 ppmv, respectively. The RF [radiative forcing] of CO2 in July at 298.0 ppmv is 5.22ln(336.4/298.0) ¼ 0.63W m2 lower than in January at 336.4 ppmv. While the RF of CO2 was falling by 0.63W m2 from January to July, the back radiation was increasing by 110 W m2 from 240 to 350 W m2. From July to January the situation reverses. This shows back radiation [water vapour] acts in opposition to the warming effect of the CO2, is larger by (110/0.63) = 174 times at the peak and overrides any effect by CO2 on atmospheric temperature. If there is a warming effect by CO2 on the atmosphere, it is too small to measure and can be considered as being negligible. In fact, it is fair to say there is virtually a complete disconnect between the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and atmospheric temperature.”
—
Curtin, 2012
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2012/761473/
“We show that a comprehensive analysis results in relegating [CO2] to insignificance as a determinant of climate change, and that atmospheric water vapour arising almost exclusively from nonhuman sources is by far the largest source of radiative forcing and temperature change. … The failure of the regression to reveal any contribution of changes in [GHG] to changes in Gistemp’s GMT anomalies is obvious both from Figure 1 and from Table 2, which shows total statistical insignificance because with t < 2.0, and 𝑃>0.05, the critical values are not attained. These results validate the null hypothesis from Hegerl et al. that there is no discernible and statistically significant causation of global temperature change attributable to the radiative forcing from anthropogenic changes in noncondensing GHGs. … [O]nly the [H2O] variable is statistically significant, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the changes in mean maximum temperature over the period 1960–2006. … [H2O] accounts for more than 90 per cent of temperature change near where C. D. Keeling began his measurements of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 back in 1958.”
“[W]ater vapor is the most potent greenhouse gas because it absorbs strongly in the infra-red region of the light spectrum, first demonstrated by Tyndall (1861), despite the conventional view that because the water vapor content of the atmosphere will increase in response to warmer temperatures, water vapor is only a feedback that merely amplifies the climate warming effect due to increased carbon dioxide alone. In reality, the [H2O] variable in the NOAA’s database proves to be a remarkably powerful determinant of climate variability over the period from 1960 to 2006 not only at Barrow but across all USA, as it is always highly statistically significant at better than the 95% level of confidence for both annual mean minimum and maximum annual temperatures. This is hardly surprising, if only because in reality, as Tans has noted, “global annual evaporation equals ~500,000 billion metric tons. Compare that to fossil CO2 emissions of ~8.5 billion ton C/year,” and even the total level of [CO2] is only 827 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent. It would seem to be a case of the tail wagging the dog if the additions to [CO2] from human burning of hydrocarbon fuels have raised global temperatures enough (just 0.0125°C p.a. [per year] since 1950) to generate annual evaporation of 500,000 billion tonnes of [H2O].”
—
Ollila, 2012
http://eae.sagepub.com/content/23/5/781.short
“Scientists are still debating the reasons for “global warming”. The author questions the validity of the calculations for the models published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and especially the future scenarios. Through spectral calculations, the author finds that water vapour accounts for approximately 87% of the greenhouse (GH) effect and only 10% of CO2. A doubling of the present level of CO2 would increase the global temperature by only 0.51 °C without water feedback.”
—
Kauppinen et al., 2014
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305X.25.2.389?journalCode=eaea
“The explanation for climate change is still searching for an experimental proof and the most important question is whether climate change is anthropogenic. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC global warming is mostly man made due to the increasing CO2 concentration. In this work we study the contributions of humidity and clouds to the surface temperature. We will show that changes of relative humidity or low cloud cover explain the major changes in the global mean temperature. We will present the evidence of this argument using the observed relative humidity between years 1970 and 2011 and the observed low cloud cover between years 1983 and 2008. One percent increase in relative humidity or in low cloud cover decreases the temperature by 0.15 °C and 0.11 °C, respectively. In the time periods mentioned before the contribution of the CO2 increase was less than 10% to the total temperature change.”
–> Kenneth Richard
Although I agree with you that it is largely ocean heat content that matters in the VERY LONG TERM, we need to remember that it is the near surface air temperatures that AGW theory and the models based on them attempt to explain/predict. We should therefore use the observations that come nearest to this near surface air temperature to test the theory and the models. In practice this probably means some sort of average between the surface measurements and the satellite measures of TLT.
Of course, some of the heat generated by whatever is causing the surface warming will leak away into the ocean depths. However, I am not aware of any predictions as to how rapidly this will occur. If whatever is causing the warming were to be suddenly switched off, then surface temperatures would eventually return to something nearer the pre-industrial normal. However, this could take a very long time!
The nearest that I can come to assessing the likely relative effects of CO2 and CH4 on such surface temperatures is to use the idea of “CO2 equivalence” to be found in the various rcp scenarios used for the CMIP5 models. On this basis, I note that the CO2 logarithm increases slightly more than the CO2 equivalent logarithm over the period 1800 – 1999. This would suggest that CO2 is a significantly more important factor. I am reluctant to use such data for any more recent changes since at some point between 2000 and 2008 we move from (pseudo?) measurements to guesswork.
Finally, of course I agree with you that we need both more, as well as more accurate, measurements to determine the extent to which CO2 affects climate.
Note: you asked me a question but the reply function to your post appears to be missing.
Those models are essentially the opinions of the gatekeepers dressed up in scientifically-sounding nomenclature. The reason why CH4 is downplayed relative to CO2 despite its alleged 250% increase since industrialization relative to CO2’s <50% increase is likely because they realize that regulating animal flatulence is not something they can oversee like they can fossil fuel energy production and consumption. Water vapor is by far the more potent GHG relative to CO2, and its prevalence in the atmosphere ranges between 1,000 (poles) and 40,000 ppm (tropics). And without even considering its relative abundance (compared to CO2), when water is present at IR absorption bands, it almost completely overwhelms any effect that CO2 may have.
Kondratiev and Niilisk, 1960
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02001111
“As it is known, CO2 has intensive absorption bands in the infrared region of spectra, but only one of them (about 15 µm) is of considerable importance in transferring heat radiation. … When water vapour is present in large quantity (w > 2 cm), absorption of radiaton is almost quite independent from CO2 content.”
—
Newell and Dopplick, 1979
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450%281979%29018%3C0822%3AQCTPIO%3E2.0.CO%3B2
“Twenty of the spectral intervals are dominated by water vapor and the other two contain CO2 (~15 µm) and O3 (~9.6 µm), although overlap with water vapor is also included. Calculations were performed for CO2 concentrations of 330 and 600 ppmv, taking care to include the changed CO2 concentrations also in the near-infrared solar absorption (cf. Newell et al., 1972). Both sets of computations were also repeated with cloud absent. The infrared flux dominated by CO2, as is well known, is only about 10% of that controlled by water vapor.”
And yet the IPCC models insist that water vapor, despite its prevalence and potency that far outweighs CO2, is merely a feedback. Why? Probably because the UN cannot sign treaties to regulate water.
All this to say that your original contention — we should not dismiss trace gases and their potential to influence just as we shouldn’t dismiss the trace levels of ingested chemicals for the human body — is indeed not an especially strong point. The traceness of gas does matter. The potency of a gas to deliver what it’s claimed to does matter. As someone else wrote here, chemicals put into the body are not well-mixed. They can independently have an effect. In the atmosphere, all the molecules are mixed together, meaning that the molecules that affect IR the most can overwhelm and render negligible the molecules that have weak effects or that are trace. So there is indeed something to the statement that CO2 only represents 0.04% of the atmosphere’s gases.
Skeptic, you say ” If whatever is causing the warming were to be suddenly switched off, then surface temperatures would eventually return to something nearer the pre-industrial normal.”
I’m sure you realize that we cannot arbitrarily assume that any point in earth’s temperature-history is the “normal” one; indeed, viewed over the long term, large variations are the norm.
I’m also not sure you can validly claim that the production of CO2 by the burning of “fossil” fuels results in more than a very short-term utilization of atmospheric oxygen. In the longer term, does not the increased plant production of oxygen offset this? (As well as the oceanic outgassing you mention)
I do agree w you that there is entirely too much argumentation that minuteness of quantity or percentage invalidates the CO2/Warming hypothesis. The evaluation must include its mode of action. That, of course, is the point of departure between you & Kenneth. I wd therefore have liked to have seen the exchange more sharply focussed on the mode of action of CO2.
Roger Revelle’s Discovery
“Before scientists would take greenhouse effect warming seriously, they had to get past a counter-argument of long standing. It seemed certain that the immense mass of the oceans would quickly absorb whatever excess carbon dioxide might come from human activities. Roger Revelle discovered that the peculiar chemistry of sea water prevents that from happening. His 1957 paper with Hans Suess is now widely regarded as the opening shot in the global warming debates.”
It is 6 degrees F now, the record is 68 degrees F on this date, happened in 2001, and the record low is minus 10, which happened in 1959.
The total amount of coal burned in one year is now amounting to 7.2 billion tons. In 1895, the amount burned in England was 200 million tons. The carbon dioxide in the air was at 280 ppm then. When CO2 is reduced to 180 ppm using a controlled atmosphere, plants begin to suffer, ambient CO2 is not enough at that concentration.
You can spike the CO2 in a greenhouse using an alcohol burner.
Your home probably has a concentration of 1000 ppm inside.
You exhale one kg of CO2 each day, it sticks around.
The bottom line in this discussion sits on top of a very week assumption ie The A in AGW blames the increase in atmospheric CO2 on humans burning fossil fuels. This assumption will not withstand testing. https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/contradictions-to-ipccs-climate-change-theory/,
https://www.youtube.c/watch?time_continue=5335&v=NtIgMftbUuw, https://hhgpc0.wixsite.com/harde-2017-censored. The increase in atmospheric CO2 is nearly all natural and the efforts to censor this information is the real travesty of climate “science”
Dare I mention the fact that Mr Corbyn quoted above has a socialist brother who is leader of the Looney party in Britain.
The brother, Jeremy, is a fully paid up member of the religious cult of mann made global warming
If his party wins power they have determined to reduce plant food Co2 back down to pre industrial revolution levels, i.e. 280ppm or some such daft levels.
Interesting that.
Politicians lie for a living. Corbyn would very soon change his tack on reducing atmospheric CO2 were he elected as PM. He’s jumping on the climate bandwagon to gain green votes.
Excellent video on why the AGW agenda is just so incredibly stupid. (H/T Greenie Watch)
https://youtu.be/9oNutgSa7U4?t=417
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