Last month at the University College London, atmospheric scientist Prof. Murry Salby, formerly of Macquarie University in Australia, gave a damning presentation on man-made CO2 and its (lack of) impact on global climate.
Hat-tip: a reader by e-mail.
He begins by reminding that climate is a subject of “limited understanding” and that it one of “limited observation” He tells the audience that carbon in the atmosphere cannot be regulated and is NOT a pollutant. On why CO2 science got to where it is today, he cites Mark Twain: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
Neither cleaner nor greener
In his introduction he explains how CO2 will be a pollutant to our ecosystem only when the day arrives that water vapour becomes a pollutant – i.e. never in our geological lifetime.
He says that energy sources that circumvent CO2 emissions are neither greener nor cleaner – just different.
IPCC premise impossible
Later he shows that although humans have emitted twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere over the last decade compared to a decade earlier, growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not change at all. He states:
The premise of the IPCC that increased atmospheric CO2 results from fossil fuels emissions is impossible.”
Salby says this is “hardly a surprise”. During the presentation Salby presents the scientific reasoning why CO2 is not the harmful gas it is claimed to be.
Worst agreement in human history
Near the end, the renowned dissident physicist slams the junk-science-based COP21 agreement, which would cost some 359 TRILLION dollars, and that the cost would be borne disproportionately by the disadvantaged in more ways than one.
40,000 people perished last winter alone in Europe due to hypothermia because they could not afford to heat their homes, he reminds us.
At 1:16:00 he concludes that 360 trillion dollars for climate protection will result in literally no benefit at all for citizens of the planet. On this scientific insanity:
My God. What an indictment of this era.”
Pseudoscience comparable to the quackery of bloodletting
In his concluding remarks Salby compares climatology to the medical quackery of bloodletting, which was used to try to treat George Washington’s throat infection. The treatment treated the infection, alright – after it had killed Washington in a mere 72 hours!
An excellent video that’s worth every minute.
Very good indeed
Do you have a good sense of humor .
Salby has not understood transient diffusion.
Did you listen to Salby’s lecture? Do you understand system analysis? Salby’s analysis (system analysis) is independent of the mechanisms by which CO2 is emitted and absorbed by the earth which is the power of system analysis.
Salby’s system analysis uses only two measurements: Post 1960, anthropogenic CO2 emissions and Steady state rise and short term change in atmospheric CO2 to determine absolute bounds on the percentage of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 that is due to anthropogenic CO2 emission vs natural changes in CO2 emission.
Salby starts with steady state analysis to establish a high level maximum.
It is an observational fact that anthropogenic emission has doubled yet there is no change in the average rate of increase in atmospheric CO2. That is a very, very, basic observational fact, not a theory. That observational fact creates a paradox. A paradox occurs when there are one or more observations that contradict a theory or in this case disproves a model, the IPCC’s Bern model.
Salby uses the steady state observational fact (anthropogenic CO2 emissions have doubled yet there is no change in the rise in atmospheric CO2) to set a first order absolute limit on the percentage of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 due to Natural CO2 emission vs Anthropogenic emission to show unequivocally that: No less than 70% of the recent increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to natural sources.
Salby’s transient analysis (three independent transient analyses, all of which support that same conclusion): No less than 97% of the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to natural sources.
As Salby notes the IPCC’s Bern’s model (The Bern model was created to create a CAGW crisis. There is no CAGW crisis if 75% or 97% of the rise recent rise in anthropogenic CO2 is due to natural sources.) assumes 25% of the anthropogenic CO2 emission stays in the atmosphere for ever. I repeat for ever. The 25% forever assumption is absurd, ridiculous, comically incorrect based on the observational evidence.
The IPCC Bern model assumes that the absorption half-life for the remaining 75% of anthropogenic emitted CO2 is 200 years. Salby’s transient analysis of the yearly atmospheric CO2 change, shows the absorption half-life for a step change in atmospheric CO2 is around 8 months which is significantly less than 200 years.
Nice summary.
Thanks.
“40,000 people perished last winter alone in Europe due to hyperthermia because they could not afford to heat their homes, he reminds us.”
I think you meant to type “hyp_o_thermia.
cheers,
gary
Thanks
bah. due diligence be damned, right?
http://www.winterwarmthengland.co.uk/downloads/Q&A_sheets.pdf
salby just porked macgregor’s goat.
Thank you, professor Salby.
Great video, but Salby is an atmospheric physicist, not an astrophysicist. Big difference.
Thanks – corrected!
Interesting lecture, especially the latter part about developments in medical science. By the way, the painting is the famous Anatomical Lesson by Rembrandt, illustrating an early development of medical research. The person on the table is probably an executed criminal. Now, Salby asks the question why Washington got the blood letting treatment by so called surgeons. To understand this better, we should know that surgeons were highly respected in those days. They were appointed at royal courts in Europe and for a long time they were at an equal footing as medical doctors, who got an university training since the seventeenth century. My answer is the absence of an important scientific method, the randomized control group design. Blood letting was not very dangerous and was usually done with patients with minor complaints. Usually, we recover from minor illnesses by our own, and these recoveries were attributed to the blood letting treatments of the patients. This is a powerful illusion still used by medical quacks. These people will never subject their treatments to a merciless test with the control group design. In their rejection of scientific methods climate scientists should be considered quacks and have presently the same prestige as the surgeons around the bed of Washington.
This man just hates the Earth.
No, he understands how it works. In contrary to the ‘greens’..
A short version is here
https://youtu.be/3q-M_uYkpT0
Some might be interested in this overview of Salby’s textbook.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/06/18/fearless-physics-from-dr-salby/
Wait! What? We’ve used up all the ‘carbon’ available!
Humanity will hit Earth Overshoot Day five days earlier than last year.
http://www.ecowatch.com/natures-2016-resource-budget-used-up-at-quickest-rate-ever-1960045248.html
Guess we will have to borrow some from next year, or sell some ‘carbon (sic) credits to stop tomorrow’s extreme weather!
You know it makes sense.
A brilliant scientist who has steadfastly refused to allow his work to be corrupted by the vilification of Australian academia's "keepers of the faith".
Whether you agree or disagree with all his ideas he is well worth listening to.
Yes. Brilliant and cogent. Except Salby has not published his views in quite some time… especially in peer-reviewed journals… Until Salby does publish, these are only musings and don’t commend the status they deserve.
Peer-review is not all it’s claimed to be. Often it is when a work doesn’t pass peer-review does it mean it’s good quality science. Corrupt peer review is as old as science itself. Blood-letting also passed “peer-review” as did eugenics, the lipid hypothesis, etc.
Well publish something… lectures alone are not adequate for the uniquely unorthodox views of Prof. Salby.
“Well publish something…” – posa
He’s written 5 books, and has over 100 publications. He’s well respected by sane scientists. He’s already proven himself. What more do you want?
Looks pretty impressive. No appeals to emotion. Just hard science. I didn’t see anything that I could see that was wrong, or even suspicious.
But I wanted to have a second opinion. And I’ve got it.
Salby gets Lubos Motl seal of approval.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2013/06/murry-salby-co2-is-integral-of.html
Good enough for me!
Amazing that no one but Salby is doing this had core analysis. Looks pretty iron clad. No wonder the warmists hate him so much.
P.S. – Motl doesn’t agree with everything Salby says, but on balance he says Salby has a novel approach that should not only not be dismissed, but should be learned from.
Motl does agree that CO2 follows temperature:
“Of course [CO2] was the consequence [of temperature change, not the cause of it]. Whoever still acts as if he were misunderstanding these basic issues is either a hopelessly brainwashed moron or an amazingly dishonest demagogue or both.” (You know, like sod, for e.g.)
I have studied much of Dr Salby’s recent textbook and am sufficiently impressed that I have also downloaded and studied his public lectures, available on Youtube and easy to download using the EPIC browser.
This lecture is much clearer than the similar lecture he delivered for EIKE a year or so ago.
However, I wish he had provided more references to data sources. Also, he might have explained a little better how he derives “induced” atmospheric CO2.
Just as Dr Salby says, atmospheric CO2 accounts for only a small part of total CO2 in the biosphere. And human emissions of atmospheric gases constitute only a small part of the total flux of all CO2 in the biosphere.
If the increase in total atmospheric CO2 has not been tracking man-made CO2 since 2000 or so, as Dr Salby states, where is the excess man-made CO2 going?
Relative to the oceans, the mass of the atmosphere is small, equivalent to about the top ten meters of ocean water compared to an average depth of 4000 meters.
As for the continents, the mass of the atmosphere is small even when only the thin layer of land and biota exposed to the atmosphere is considered.
So I would expect more discussion of how and where the unaccounted for human emissions are sinking into the land and oceanic parts of the biosphere, even if only to show that the CO2 budget is poorly estimated.
There is evidence that the Earth is greening. Have the oceans also been greening? Have the oceans been dissolving the excess CO2?
Is the lack of answers the reason why Dr Salby began the lecture with the quote from Mark Twain about the lack of data?
What is so disturbing about Dr Salby’s lecture is that it raises many more questions than it answers.
“This lecture is much clearer than the similar lecture he delivered for EIKE a year or so ago.” – Frederick Colbourne
I had the same reaction.
“What is so disturbing about Dr Salby’s lecture is that it raises many more questions than it answers.” – Frederick Colbourne
How long did you want his presentation to be? Besides, if the science were “settled,” those questions would have already been answered. The fact that they aren’t is what I find “disturbing;” that and that warmists,… wait, I’ll let Twain finish that:
“…get such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
And Salby addresses that very point in his first sentence, “Climate is a subject of limited understanding, in significant part because observations are inadequate.”
“where is the excess man-made CO2 going? ”
They call it the ‘missing sink’ and just move on.
Before expressing an adverse opinion about bloodletting as a medical treatment, a reader should refer to modern research on hemochromatosis, a genetic disease that afflicts many people of European descent.
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-topics/liver-disease/hemochromatosis/Pages/facts.aspx
Except that blood letting was used for a myriad of ailments having nothing to do with excess iron in the blood, nor was the condition even tested for before “treatment”. Still seems a perfect example of the warmists approach to me – beginning an unproven treatment without bothering to examine the problem, putting the patient at risk with an unnecessary and ineffective treatment.
The biggest issue I have with carbon budgets is that the error margin in the calculations of natural sources/sinks are larger than the manmade contributions. So you can only make a conclusion about the effect of manmade emissions by assuming a priori that everything is in balance without those emissions and then describing any rise with an ‘overflowing bathtub’ analogy without any data or even a credible theory to support it. It’s not only unscientific, it’s downright innumerate!
As for the pre-industrial level of CO2; it has as much validity as the postulation of 42 as the answer to life, the universe and everything, being abjectly refuted by plant stomata studies from several eminent scientists that were just completely ignored by the IPCC.
This has always been about policy leading science by the nose. That would be fine if it were not rank bad policy in the first place; relying as it does on the belief in fairies and pixie dust that will make renewables ‘just work’ at some unspecified point in the future.
“Last month at the University College London, atmospheric scientist Prof. Murry Salby, formerly of Macquarie University in Australia, gave a damning presentation on man-made CO2 and its (lack of) impact on global climate… he shows that although humans have emitted twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere over the last decade compared to a decade earlier, growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not change at all.
He states:
humans have emitted twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere over the last decade compared to a decade earlier, growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not change at all.”
Here is the cumulative concentration of CO2 from burning Fossil fuels
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/graphics/cumulative_global_1751_2007.jpg
Here is the data in CO2 emmisions:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp030/global.1751_2011.ems
And here is the atmospheric concentration:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CRaaw06eC7c/UZwrw-xJOxI/AAAAAAAABkM/tXR98__lB-Y/s1600/IndRevnCO2.png
Here is the CO2 concentration for the last 20 years
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996
There is no evidence backing Salby’s claim that humans have emitted twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere over the last decade compared to a decade earlier, growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not change at all.
There is no evidence to substantiate Salby’s claim that
“humans have emitted twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere over the last decade compared to a decade earlier, growth in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not change at all.”
YAWN, the ultra left monkey with a ruler returns.
Salby has 100+ times the knowledge of atmospheric physics than you will ever have, Dr Brainless.
“There is no evidence backing Salby’s claim that humans have emitted twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere over the last decade compared to a decade earlier,…” – Philip Shehan
Actually, there is.
And I’d like to see where he got his data, as well. But given his attention to detail, I’ll assume (for now) that it’s a valid claim.
Here’s what I found on it, and it looks like more than twice. It’s from a greenie website (sorry about that). Maybe others can do better with more time to search?
[…] Gosselin provides a summary of the talk [here]. […]
“The premise of the IPCC that increased atmospheric CO2 results from fossil fuels emissions is impossible.”
Salby is a fool. Which is why the scientific community ignores him.
The rotten Appell in an ignorant twerp, a low-end sci-fantasy writer in a backwater rag,
that is why basically everyone ignores him
Salby has several magnitudes more knowledge of atmospheric physics that you do, rotten Appell.
Classic psychiatric projection.
“40,000 people perished last winter alone in Europe due to hypothermia because they could not afford to heat their homes”
Source?
Why aren’t European countries taking care of their people? Shameful.
Why should we heat up the entire world for the next 100,000 years because of their negligence? That’s like cooling down your entire house just so you can keep your butter unmelted on your dining room table.
“Why aren’t European countries taking care of their people? Shameful.”
Well, you’re exactly right: The state-mandated energy price inflation through cross subsidation of loss-making crony boondoggles like wind turbines is indeed shameful.
We will simply wipe out the political class. I recommend you do the same, American Liberal. Or will you be voting for the warmonger Clinton?
“…the warmonger Clinton?” – DirkH
What “warmonger?” She’s a “Liberal,” and liberals are peace loving. Aren’t they?…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtH7iv4ip1Uv
…uh, nevermind.
“Shameful”
Yes, the green ANTI-CO2 agenda is probably one of the most SHAMEFUL episodes in modern history
And YOU are part of it, scumbag.
Empirical support for some of Salby’s positions
1. carbon budget uncertainty
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2654191
2. changes in atmos co2 and fossil fuel emissions
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2642639
3. warming and fossil fuel emissions
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
“40,000 people perished last winter alone in Europe due to hypothermia because they could not afford to heat their homes”
How many more global degrees will it take to prevent these deaths?
5 C? 10 C?
The issue is not lowering or raising temps, because CO2 can’t do that.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2014/08/catastrophe-canceled-per-physics-the-powerful-co2-emissions-prove-to-be-trace-gas-without-power.html
The issue is affordability of electric power. All (un)renewable schemes drive prices up, siphoning off limited resources from the poor, making them more vulnerable to the effects of cold (and heat, if they can’t afford A.C.).
If you want to drive electricity prices up, you necessarily want more people to die. Either that or you are a fool.
“ … higher mortality rates are generally found in less severe, milder winter climates where, all else
equal, there should be less potential for cold strain and cold related mortality. This result indicates that the typical, inverse relation normally found between cold exposure and rates of (all year) mortality does not hold for excess winter mortality. Housing standards have been linked as a potential, causative factor behind this paradox. Countries with comparatively warm all year climates tend to have poor domestic thermal efficiency. Because of this, these countries find it hardest to keep their homes warm when winter arrives. This is especially the case in Portugal, Spain, and Ireland, where winter temperatures are comparatively mild and excess mortality rates in winter are very high”.
“Countries with high levels of income poverty and inequality (Greece, Ireland, Portugal) also demonstrate the highest coefficient of seasonal variation in mortality”.
Read for more details the rest of the article. By the way, it is forbidden in the Netherlands that energy companies cut off their clients during the winter.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1732295/pdf/v057p00784.pdf
@Mindert Eiting
HAH! I thought that article looked familiar.
Here’s the link to it that I used in a post some months ago, on the topic, and to the very same individual, if I recall correctly.
http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/784.full.pdf+html
I emphasized different points than you, but it comes down to the same thing. Deprive people of the ability to warm themselves when they need to, and more of them die.
That individual occasionally visits this site, drops a comment, does not read articles, and next reappears with the same old comments. How should we interpret his behavior?
If I were to hazard a guess, something like this?
Thank you for the reference regarding winter deaths in Europe. You may be interested also in this more recent analysis of both summer and winter mortality. The Authors concluded:
“It’s often assumed that extreme weather causes the majority of deaths, with most previous research focusing on the effects of extreme heat waves,” says lead author Dr Antonio Gasparrini from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in the UK. “Our findings, from an analysis of the largest dataset of temperature-related deaths ever collected, show that the majority of these deaths actually happen on moderately hot and cold days, with most deaths caused by moderately cold temperatures.”
A post on Climate and Health, along with links:
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/07/10/climate-medicine/
Two notes. First, all these studies are correlational. Second, winter death excess is a relative measure (number of winter deaths divided by the number for the rest of the year). So we also could define summer death shortage and may surmise that in Southern Europe the hot summers save many lives!
Testing
My more complete comment does not appear.
Thanks for the reference on winter deaths in Europe. I have a post on Climate and Health, with a more recent study comparing summer and winter mortality.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/07/10/climate-medicine/
Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings, published in The Lancet, also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells.
David Appell: “How many more global degrees will it take to prevent these deaths?”
According to the IPCC, it hasn’t warmed by *any* “global degrees” in the last 165 years. We are still only in the tenths of a degree change since 1850, with a change rate of just hundredths of a degree per decade. And in several regions, it has been cooling in recent years.
Britain, for example, has cooled by -0.5°C since the early 2000s.
Murry and Heggie, 2016
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016EF000352/full
“Britain has experienced a drop in temperature of about 0.5°C since the early years of the millennium at a time when world temperatures have remained virtually stable.”
And in Britain alone, the colder weather killed 40,000 people during the winter of 2015.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/11382808/Winter-death-toll-to-exceed-40000.html
Winter death toll ‘to exceed 40,000’
Your flagrant misrepresentation of the temperature record by implying that it has *already* warmed globally by multiple degrees, and that we shall get a further 5° to 10° C more warming in the future, fully exposes a fundamental dishonesty.
Or how much do *you* believe it has warmed since 1850, David? How many “degrees” C? Do you believe Little Ice Age temperatures and the concomitant 1600-1900 shorter growing seasons, crop failures, intense droughts and hurricanes… are preferable to current temperatures, planet greening, crop abundances, and decreased hurricane and drought frequencies/intensities?
“Either that or you are a fool.”
With DA, both.
[…] Gosselin provides a summary of the talk [here]. […]
Another excellent Salby video from before they fired him, it appears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrI03ts–9I&feature=youtu.be
[…] Physicist Compares CO2 Science to Blood Letting […]