https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNupy65SURo
Comedy clubs aren’t usually thought of as venues for serious debate about controversial topics like climate change.
And yet in a rare debate opportunity, Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon took full advantage of the short time he had available to him. He critiqued “consensus” science, the ocean acidification narrative, the poverty-inducing reliance on wind and solar energies, and climate change alarmism in general.
Dr. Jon Christensen, his opponent, an adjunct assistant professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, emphasized the “consensus” and the “existential threat” of climate change, extolled the expansion of renewable energy sources like wind and solar in California, and insisted that politicians in the Golden State are focused on not burdening poor people with their “green” policies.
A summary highlighting some of the more interesting exchanges and their corresponding timelines follows.
(1) Dr. Soon: CO2 a benefit, minimal sea level rise awaits
Dr. Christensen: CO2 rise an existential, apocalyptic threat
2:25 Dr. Willie Soon “They try to demonize carbon dioxide as if this is something that’s going to kill everybody. Which is really not true. … CO2 has a lot of potential benefit[s]. There are some potential negatives. If it’s [CO2] going to cause sea levels to rise, we’re going to have 4 inches or 8 inches or 12 inches…per century.”
3:30 Dr. Jon Christensen “The way I like to think about all this is…sunny with a chance of apocalypse. … (3:59) There is an existential threat out there. (5:40) Everybody…who is under 40 is going to experience the effects of climate change, global warming, increase in sea level rise, flooding…in their lifetime.”
What the science says…
1. During 1958 to 2014, global sea levels rose at a rate of 1.3 mm per year to 1.5 mm per year, which is a rate of just over 3 inches per century; the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets have combined to add just 0.59 of an inch of melt water to sea level rise since 1958 (Frederiske et al.,2018). There has been “a recent lack of any detectable acceleration in the rate of sea level rise” (Parker and Ollier, 2017).
2. Since the 1980s, coastal land area across the globe has been expanding, meaning that more land are is above sea level today (2015) than in 1985 (Donchyts et al., 2016).
“Coastal areas were also analysed, and to the scientists’ surprise, coastlines had gained more land – 33,700 sq km (13,000 sq miles) – than they had been lost to water (20,100 sq km or 7,800 sq miles). ‘We expected that the coast would start to retreat due to sea level rise, but the most surprising thing is that the coasts are growing all over the world,’ said Dr Baart. ‘We were able to create more land than sea level rise was taking (press release).'”
3. Hurricane frequencies and intensities have been declining (Truchelut and Staeling, 2018, Zhao et al., 2018, Klotzbach et al., 2018).
4. Extreme weather events (floods, droughts) have decreased in frequency and intensity (or showed no detectable change) (Zhang et al., 2017, McCabe et al., 2017, Cheng et al., 2016, Hodgkiins et al., 2017, McAneney et al., 2017).
5. In recent decades 92% of Canadian polar bear subpopulations have remained stable or increased, leading scientists to conclude that “it seems unlikely that polar bears (as a species) are at risk from anthropogenic global warming” (York et al., 2016). Local Inuit populations even report that there are “too many polar bears now” (Wong et al., 2017). There has also been a “marked and steady increase“ in penguin populations between 1982 and 2015 (Che-Castaldo et al. 2017).
(2) Dr. Soon: Ocean acidification is a myth.
Dr. Christensen: Ocean acidification is science.
11:21 Dr. Willie Soon “Can I say something about ocean acidification? It’s a myth. … The ocean has something you can measure. Basically, it’s called ion of the hydrogen. It’s called [the] pH scale. You have 0 to 14. Seven is neutral. Seven to 0 is acidic. Seven to 14 is called basic. The ocean is right about 8.03, 8.04 [non-acidic]. But deep inside the ocean, about 2,000 meters down, it’s actually very acidic. If you wanna talk about ocean acidification – it’s one of the most dangerous myths that there is. A very radical one. It’s not sensible. Who created this myth, actually…?”
12:23 Dr. Jon Christensen “They call it [ocean acidification] science.”
12:25 Dr. Willie Soon “No, it’s not even science, excuse me, because… Do you know what the pH of rainwater is? It’s 5.5. (Wikihow.com: “Ordinary rainwater is naturally acidic with a pH between 5.0 and 5.5.”) … [T]hat means you have to outlaw all the [naturally acidic] rain that’s falling down? You want to outlaw all the slightly acidic water that is sitting on the bottom of the ocean?”
13:05 Dr. Jon Christensen “No….It’s not that hard to actually read the science. It can seem a little bit daunting but anybody who can read can work their way through many of these papers and you can see that there’s a wide variety of findings and results and conclusions… There is in science a fair degree of certainty on a lot of things. … What we know is that there’s a wide spectrum of results here and we need to look at the data and the whole big picture of the science and not just write it off one way or the other.”
15:08 Dr. Willie Soon “Jon, my whole point is that ocean acidification is an extreme. It is one of the most extreme things they could come up with because they are not able to find the fingerprint of the carbon dioxide warming of the atmosphere so then they started to come up with this new scheme [ocean acidification]. Next thing…they’re going [to claim] carbon dioxide is killing all of the polar bears. It’s going to melt all the ice sheets. It’s completely not even true.”
What the science says…
“Documenting an effect of OA [ocean acidification] involves showing a change in a species (e.g. population abundance or distribution) as a consequence of anthropogenic changes in marine carbonate chemistry. To date, there have been no unambiguous demonstrations of a population level effect of anthropogenic OA [ocean acidification], as that term is defined by the IPCC. … [I]t is important to acknowledge that there are no studies that directly demonstrate modern day effects of OA [ocean acidification] on marine species.”
“[T]here have been a few claims for already realized impacts of ocean acidification on calcifiers, such as a decline in the number of oysters on the West Coast of North America (Barton et al. 2012) and in Chesapeake Bay (Waldbusser et al. 2011). However, the link between these declines and ocean acidification through anthropogenic CO2 is unclear. Corrosive waters affecting oysters in hatcheries along the Oregon coast were associated with upwelling (Barton et al. 2012), not anthropogenic CO2. The decline in pH affecting oysters in Chesapeake Bay (Waldbusser et al. 2011) was not attributable to anthropogenic CO2 but was likely attributable to excess respiration associated with eutrophication. Therefore, there is, as yet, no robust evidence for realized severe disruptions of marine socioecological links from ocean acidification to anthropogenic CO2, and there are significant uncertainties regarding the level of pH change that would prompt such impacts. [D]espite the strong mechanistic or physiological basis for a role of warming in coral bleaching and coral growth, a robust demonstration of a direct causal link between global warming and global coral bleaching over decadal time scales has not yet been produced.”
“It is worth noting that the errors of these estimates are fairly large with RSD of 65% for that these two time-series do not show significant decreasing trend for pH. Despite of such large errors, estimated from these rates, the seawater pH has decreased by about 0.07–0.08 U over the past 200 years in these regions. … The average calculated seawater pH over the past 159 years was 8.04 [with a] a seawater pH variation range of 7.66–8.40.”
(3) Dr. Soon: Thank God for fossil fuels.
Dr. Christensen: We may fly planes with bio-gas.
8:27 Dr. Willie Soon “You gotta stick to the facts. Wind and solar – oh boy, so useful. Every time I look at this sad situation of all these landfalling hurricanes (Irma, Harvey)…the only thing I have to say about that is ‘Thank God for fossil fuels’. … Fossil fuels offer the most energy density. There is no viable energy replacement. Wind and solar could never do anything…”
9:25 Bryan Dey “You’re never gonna get a plane off the ground with wind and solar.”
9:30 Dr. Jon Christensen “You may [get a plane off the ground] with bio-gas, though.”
What the science says…
“Biofuels increase, rather than decrease, heat-trapping carbon dioxide … The researchers conclude that rising biofuel use has been associated with a net increase—rather than a net decrease, as many have claimed—in the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.”
(4) Dr. Christensen: In CA, we believe, we’re
doing something, and we’re helping the poor
17:03 Dr. Jon Christensen “The majority of people in every congressional district in the United States believes that climate change is real, it’s caused by people, it will harm people in the future, and we should do something about it. […] Great vast majorities of people in California [are believers], where we have decided we’re going to do something about it…we’re on that path which I call the California way or the Paris way where we continue to make commitments, continue to raise our commitments, continue to ratchet down…”
17: 49 Bryan Dey “But all the [green] solutions that come from the Left are really going to be punishing poor people the most…”
17:54 Dr. Jon Christensen “No, they’re not, actually…”
17: 56 Bryan Dey (adamant) “Yes, they will! It’s poor people that are going to suffer the most!”
Californians in the audience clap and cheer
18:00 Panelist “We’ve got people [in the audience] who love poor people.”
18:03 Dr. Willie Soon “Oh, poor people are clapping. Can I say something?”
18:12 Dr. Jon Christensen “Look at the laws in California. Every single law that is being passed about climate change, cap-and-trade, environmental… has explicit language that is to make those benefits go to poor, disadvantaged communities…”
Californians in the audience shout “No, not true!”
18:30 Bryan Dey “If your electric bill goes up by 20 percent…”
18:34 Dr. Jon Christensen (to audience) “I don’t know who’s saying that [green policies don’t help poor people] but I can show it to you — this is what I do my research on.”
28:20 Question from audience “Do you think it’s appropriate for the government to use force and tax penalties which really affect middle income and lower income people based on climate science that is obviously hotly contested?”
28:50 Dr. Jon Christensen “In California, anyway, … [politicians] make sure that those burdens do not fall on lower income people.”
What the science says…
Environmental Progress (February, 2018)
“The burden of higher cost electricity and benefits of renewable energy subsidies fall unevenly on Californians. Between 2007 and 2014, the highest-income 40 percent of California households received three times more in solar subsidies — valued between $10,000 and $20,000 per household — as the lowest-income 40 percent. California households with over $100,000 in annual income benefited from energy efficiency subsidies at twice the rate of households whose income was under $50,000.”
Poorest households hit hardest by UK climate change levy despite using least energy (March, 2018)
“We found that, in a year, the richest households each consumed on average the same amount of energy that would be produced by 12.7 tonnes of oil, compared to 3.3 tonnes for the poorest households. But the poorest spent a much greater proportion of their income (10%) on energy than the richest (3%). And the energy used for heating and powering their homes – the part that their climate change levy bill is measured on – represented a much greater proportion of their overall energy use.”
“This means that adding the climate change levy to household energy bills hits the poorest households hardest. Energy bills account for a much greater share of their household income and more of their energy use is charged. In fact, the levy only affects a quarter of the total energy consumption of the richest households, compared to 53% for the poorest households. As a result, the richest homes use nearly four times more total energy than the poorest but only pay 1.8 times more towards energy policy costs.”
(5) Dr. Christensen: CA economy is growing
25:55 Dr. Jon Christensen “California’s economy has been growing while emissions have been decreasing.”
What the science says…
Los Angeles Times (January, 2018)
“Guess which state has the highest poverty rate in the country? Not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia, but California, where nearly one out of five residents is poor.”
(6) Dr. Soon: Science does not work by consensus
19:13 Dr. Willie Soon “I’m very, very sorry. Science does not work by consensus. … This nonsense about consensus…”
19:50 Dr. Willie Soon “This 97 percent consensus… We have published a peer-reviewed paper (Legates et al., 2013) that shows that it’s only 41 papers out of 12,000. So it’s only 0.3 percent.”
What the science says…
“Cook et al. (2013), after a subjective review of only the abstracts of 11,944 papers on climate change which ‘‘matched the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’’’ (p. 1), conclude that 97.1 % of those that expressed an opinion endorsed the hypothesis as defined in their introduction (i.e., the standard definition). However, 66.4 % percent of the abstracts had expressed no position. Thus, 32.6 % of the entire sample, or 97.1 % of the 33.6 % who had expressed an opinion, were said to be in agreement with the standard definition. However, inspection of the authors’ own data file showed that they had themselves categorized only 64 abstracts, just 0.5 % of the sample, as endorsing the standard definition [a majority of the warming since 1950 was human-caused]. Inspection shows only 41 of the 64 papers, or 0.3 % of the sample of 11,944 papers, actually endorsed that definition.”
(7) Dr. Soon: CO2 increase is greening the planet
21:20 Dr. Willie Soon “One of the most powerful effects of carbon dioxide is not on temperature because if you talk about greenhouse gases it’s water vapor that’s more important [than] CO2. […] The only proof we have so far is that it [CO2] is greening the planet. Twenty to fifty percent of the [Earth’s] vegetated area has been greening, only 4% has been showing a little browning. That tell[s] you that the overwhelming effect of this [increase in CO2] is fertilization of the atmosphere. […] We’re [currently] in a CO2 starvation state. Today our air has only 400 parts per million. If you don’t know what that means, it’s 4 cents for every hundred dollars.”
What the science says…
“Global environmental change is rapidly altering the dynamics of terrestrial vegetation, with consequences for the functioning of the Earth system and provision of ecosystem services. Yet how global vegetation is responding to the changing environment is not well established. Here we use three long-term satellite leaf area index (LAI) records and ten global ecosystem models to investigate four key drivers of LAI trends during 1982–2009. We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area, whereas less than 4% of the globe shows decreasing LAI (browning). Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend, followed by nitrogen deposition (9%), climate change (8%) and land cover change (LCC) (4%). CO2 fertilization effects explain most of the greening trends in the tropics, whereas climate change resulted in greening of the high latitudes and the Tibetan Plateau.”
(8) Dr. Christensen: The goal is to increase the cost of carbon
29:30 Dr. Jon Christensen “A lot of what’s happening is figuring out ways to use the market to increase the cost of carbon… (Audience: No! No!) …to take into account the cost that we’re paying in health and environmental effects…which are externalities that have not been factored in. … Those revenues [from increasing the cost of carbon] are used to benefit the whole state of California with particular attention to people who are lower income.”
What the science says…
Environmental Progress (February, 2018)
“Between 2011 and 2017, California’s electricity prices rose five times faster than they did nationally. Today, Californians pay 60 percent more, on average, than the rest of the nation, for residential, commercial and industrial electricity.”
“California’s high penetration of intermittent renewables such as solar and wind are likely a key factor in higher prices.”
“Economists agree that “the dominant policy driver in the electricity sector [in California] has unquestionably been a focus on developing renewable sources of electricity generation.”
“High levels of renewable energy penetration make electricity expensive around the world, not just in California. As Germany deployed high levels of renewables over the last 10 years it saw its electricity prices rise 34 percent. Today, German electricity costs twice as much as that in neighboring France.”
“As wind and solar capacity climbs, the returns of usable power diminish because of increasing curtailment during surges that the grid cannot absorb. More and more intermittent capacity has to be pushed onto the grid to get less and less additional renewable electricity. The dynamic of soaring overcapacity and falling prices is the inevitable result of the fundamental inability of intermittent wind and solar generators to efficiently match supply to demand.”
One person (and most of the audience) living in the real world and one living in an Ivory Tower.
The real world isn’t the deniosphere though …
Also:
it’s kind of funny that Kenneth thinks citing single papers with cherry picked quotes is “what science says”. That’s even more illusional than if it were true that only 41 papers support the consensus 😉
Anyway, I will watch the video later and tell you if enduring listening to someone like Willie Soon is as hard for normal thinking people as listening to Prof. Sinn for an extended time.
Does that mean you think Christensen science empty remarks were better than Soon’s scientific assertions?
Kenneth showed WHY using actual science papers, that Soon was much more into the science than the obvious environmentalist babblist Christensen was.
Soon makes “scientific assertions”? Haha, good one sunsettommy.
And hearing Soon talk is even more annoying than Prof. Sinn or that real climate science guy. How can anyone be persuaded by “arguments” like that?
Of course it would annoy you to hear TRUTHS and FACTS, seb
Contrary to your whole slimy anti-life, anti-society AGW Agenda.
Soon’s arguments have substance…
…. something your mindless yappings will NEVER HAVE.
Kenneth, showed examples of Dr. Soon’s assertions as being correct.
Meanwhile no support for Christensen is revealing.
Carry on with your trolling.
Be a bit more skeptic! Or do you believe anything someone from your bubble “shows” you without doubt? Why?
ZERO EVIDENCE seb.
yaps mindlessly .. AS ALWAYS.
Your comment beat me to it. It’s the first thing I noticed, Soon’s use of rational argument – arguments which are at least amenable to dispute or falsifiability – against Christenson’s hand-waving, airy-fairy, ‘trust me, I’m right, you don’t know anything’ method.
Facts versus feels.
Christensen, employs the doom and gloom hyperbole argument that was refuted years ago. It is not good science to speak the way he does since it is vague and unsupportable.
Soon, tries to base his remarks on actual science research, refreshingly free of rhetorical, hyperbolic crap that Eco nuts like Christensen used in the one sided debate.
Christensen behaved quite well, but he doesn’t offer anything credible to the debate, just the usual old doom and gloom drivel.
“The real world isn’t the deniosphere though …”
You wouldn’t have the slightest clue what the REAL WORLD is, seb.
You live in a fantasy la-la land where real physics, real science are ignored in favour of ASS-umptions and myths.
You can’t even support the very basis of the your “imaginary” little world, one is which the carbon dioxide that EVERY LIVING THING DEPENDS ON is somehow going to fry the world.
You actual bother listening to wackos that use the word “apocalypse”, with absolutely NOTHING to back up their idiotic claims.
You then REFUSE to listen to the VERIFIED FACTS from real scientists just because they destroy your baseless brain-hosed religion.
No wonder you are DESTINED to remain NOTHING but an EMPTY VASSAL.
“Anyway, I will watch the video later and tell you if enduring listening to someone like Willie Soon is as hard for normal thinking people “
Seb, you are NOT a “normal thinking person”
Not by any shape of imagination.
You are in rampant DENIAL of facts, living in an anti-science hallucination, based on wild speculation and zero science.
You wouldn’t have the VAGUEST CLUE how a normal person thinks, because you ARE NOT CAPABLE of it.
DR, Christensen used the language of an environmentalist, who is a long time JOURNALIST, finally getting a PHD in….. no science at all.
From his link:
“Jon was executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, an interdisciplinary center for research, teaching, new media, and journalism at Stanford University before coming to UCLA. He has been an environmental journalist and science writer for more than 30 years. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Nature, High Country News, and many other newspapers, magazines, journals, and radio and television shows.
He was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford in 2002-2003 and a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University in 2003-2004, before returning to Stanford to work on a Ph.D. in environmental history and the history of science.”
No wonder he was so bad in the debate….
He seems like a kind person, though. He wasn’t as rude and off-putting and prone to name-calling and insults that so many in his position are.
Interesting, how different perceptions can be…
For me, Mr. Soon was the much too excited “everything is a myth and fake anyway” guy who needs to get loud to bring attention to his point. He wasn’t bad per se, just parroting the “skeptic” viewpoints and ending the debate with “fossil fuels are the only way”. He (and you guys if you are not too old) will probably notice that this is not true at all. Coal is already peaking, oil is expected to peak in the next decades, only gas will be increasing further according to the current BP energy outlook. A publication that needed to correct its renewables outlook every year and will likely have to correct their estimates in future releases too.
Well, anyway. “What the science says” in this blog post, is not what the science says. That’s at most what some papers say that Kenneth hand-picked. Or as Mr. Soon put it: “look at the data, look at the quality of the data” 😉
Have fun in fantasy land, sunsettommy.
“Have fun in fantasy land,”
A place you know very well, seb.
That is where you live, seb, in a mind-numbed la-la fantasy land DEVOID OF ANY EVIDENCE for your baseless religious AGW beliefs.
And I’d be pretty sure that NO-ONE would bother visiting you there.
Sebastian Trollman ,again doesn’t support anything Christensen said in the Video.
Snicker……………
Meanwhile Kenneth showed that published science research supports Soon’s statements in the video, which you never countered.
You have nothing to sell here Sebastian.
This thinking of the skeptic community that as long as you don’t counter what they say, what they say is correct … it’s weird.
Bounty ……
Almost nothing Soon said is supported by science. “Acidification is a myth”, “fossil fuels are the only way”, “CO2 is mainly a good thing”, etc … this guy is one of you skeptics, that’s why you aren’t skeptic about what he writes/says. True or not?
And ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you produce supports any of your baseless contentions.
Because YOU PRODUCE NOTHING
You have NEVER produced a viable counter to ANYTHING.
Soon is TOTALLY CORRECT
Acidification IS a myth, an unproven load of bollocks, actually. The oceans are NOT and never will be “ACIDIC”
Fossil fuels (and nuclear) ARE the only way of providing RELIABLE electricity and power ON DEMAND
CO2 is not “mainly” a good thing, IT IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO ALL LIFE ON EARTH. At any remotely reachable atmospheric concentration, it is TOTALLY BENEFICIAL.
These the FACTS that you can NEVER provide the slightest real evidence against.
You are EMPTY of all science, logic and common human decency, seb, and you are doing everything in your mindless ignorance to REMAIN that way.
Yes, I suppose it’s time to remind us that you’ve claimed that the Earth has been browning (deserts are expanding), not greening, according to the science. What science is that again, SebastianH? You’ve never actually produced it.
You’ve also claimed that ocean acidification is happening so fast that marine species just cannot adapt. What science is that again, SebastianH? You’ve never actually produced it.
You’ve also claimed this about 30,000 species going extinct every year:
Can you point us to this science of yours, SebastianH? What’s your source?
You’ve also claimed that the West Antarctic Peninsula is warming 10 times faster than the rest of the planet. Of course, as has been shown by many scientists, it’s been rapidly cooling (-0.45 C per decade) since 1999. So what is the source of this science of yours, SebastianH? Where are you getting your science from?
Do you deny that Californians pay 60% more for their electricity than residents of the other states? Do you deny that the main reason for these higher costs is the heavy dependence on wind and solar? Do you deny that California has just recently become the poverty capital of America? Do you deny that the poor are hurt far more by green policies as the wealthy? That the wealthy are benefited more by subsidies?
Let’s see your science, SebastianH. We’ll compare and contrast on their merits.
“is not what the science says. “
Well, little seb-troll.
What DOES the science say?
And PRODUCE the science that says what you say it says.
So far,
NADA, ZILTCH..
A totally EMPTY sack of NOTHING.
I’ve seen your idea of science, little brain-numbed trollette…
.. and I’m 110% sure that your don’t have the VAGUEST CLUE what real science says.
Past predictions of an end to oil production date as far back as 1880. Hubbert’s Peak was in the 1970’s.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/05/13/the-illogic-and-folly-of-peak-oil-or-is-it-peak-gas-alarmism/#7089037e1eb4
https://editors.eol.org/eoearth/wiki/The_Coal_Question_(e-book)
“ONE of the earliest writers who conceived it was possible to exhaust our coal mines was John Williams, a mineral surveyor. In his “Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom,” first published in 1789, he gave a chapter to the consideration of “The Limited Quantity of Coal of Britain.”
Do you believe there is an endless supply of fossil fuels? Never running out or becoming too expensive to be usuable? If you think shale oil is the answer … well, the skeptics here believe an EROI smaller than a certain value means it’s not a viable energy source. Shale oil has an EROI of 1.5 to 2 last time I checked. Viable?
Here is the link to the BP energy outlook 2018:
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp-country/de_ch/PDF/Energy-Outlook-2018-edition-Booklet.pdf
The BP energy outlook predicts that fossil fuel use will continue to grow by almost 20% by 2040. How is this helping your case, SebastianH?
What case Kenneth? The case made in this thread is that coal is already peaking and oil will reach peak in the next decades.
I have no problem with statistics that tell us that fossil fuel consumption might grow 20% until 2040. That is to be expected, we won’t stop consuming any time soon. What is also expected is a massive growth in renewables …
And it is you who has a problem with realizing that wind+solar are growing exponentially at a higher percentage than fossil fuel is (also growing exponentially). It is you who seems to have a problem with accepting that wind+solar will not be at 1% of primary poweer consumption in the 2040s.
So this helps my “other case”, showing that “your science” is wrong.
So what good will come from the expansion of wind and solar if they can’t even stanch the increase in fossil fuel consumption rates and they also continue to grow exponentially? Isn’t the absolute emission of CO2 the issue here? If emissions keep rising, what’s the net gain…other than much higher energy prices, ruined landscapes, unreliable and unstable grids? What’s the benefit of more wind and solar…especially since they can’t offset CO2 emissions nearly as effectively as, say, switching from coal to natural gas or nuclear?
What good will it be? 14% renewables in 2040 instead of 4% renewables in 2016 mean that much less CO2 will be emitted instead of when renewables would stay at 4%. Over half of the growth towards 2040 levels will come from growth in renewables. Yes, it doesn’t cover all of the growth (according to BP), but so what? They had to correct their predictions upwards every year in the past. Same as the EIA had do increase their forecast for solar/wind every year. So I am optimistic that 14% in 2040 is still too low a share and underestimating renewable growth.
Also, Germany is already at around 14% and will be at a much larger percentage in 2040. Same in other countries with an already higher share of renewables. So it stand to reason that if some countries make it to the “all renewables” scenario way before 2040 and make it work, that this will have an effect on other countries (setting an example). Falling prices will also likely accelerate the transition.
And there it is again, your flawed math. Nuclear, ok. 1 TWh of nuclear power replacing 1 TWh of coal power reduces the CO2 output (at least from fuel consumption) by nearly 100%. Switching from coal to gas however only reduced the output by around 50%. 1 TWh of renewables replacing 1 TWh of coal power also reduces the output by nearly 100%.
So why do you think switching from coal to gas is more effective than switching to renewables?
P.S.: That doesn’t mean that I don’t support switching to natural gas. Ultimately we (in Germany) will need an almost 100% backup from power plants that can generate electricity and heat from stored gas that has been produced in power2gas plants. So having enough gas power plants is a good thing. And if it reduces the CO2 output from coal in the short term, all the better …
It’s 14% renewables now (wood-burning, hydropower predominantly), with 0.8% of consumption share from wind and solar combined (2016). So what are you even talking about?
https://www.aei.org/publication/inconvenient-energy-fact-of-the-day/
“In 2016, solar and wind provided just 0.8% of the total world’s energy (Total Primary Energy Demand (TPED)), even after trillions of dollars in taxpayer-extracted subsidies, and will reach only a 3.6% share of energy in 2040, according to the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2017 forecast.”
And you didn’t answer the question. What ultimate good is it if CO2 emissions are curtailed somewhat? What’s the real-world advantage for humans? What do we get out of that…considering elevated CO2 greens the planet, enhances crop yields, and warmth is better for the world’s biosphere than cold?
Please don’t conflate numbers from different sources and think they are directly comparable. The BP report doesn’t count hydro in the renewable category and has the total at 13276 Mtoe while your link has it at a different value.
Wind+solar added 0.27 percentage points from 2015 to 2016 to their share. According to BP it should be close to 2% by now.
Don’t trust IEA outlooks: https://www.quora.com/profile/Paul-Mainwood/Flotsam/A-modest-proposal-to-the-International-Energy-Authority
Have you answered mine? Why do you think switching from coal to gas is more effective than switching to renewables? Especially since replacing 1 TWh of coal power with 1 TWh of natural gas power reduces the output by only 50% and replacing it with wind/solar reduces the CO2 output by close to 100%.
In your fantasy world? None. I guess you would even thrive in a closed room with no CO2 scrubbers, since CO2 is the best! Hurray CO2 😉
Do you suddenly agree that CO2 causes warming of the climate? Why the change of mind? I thought the GHE theory has many holes according to you? Doesn’t work on Venus or Saturn … or something like that. Didn’t you claim that? Well, whatever. These “more CO2 is good claims” get files under trolling … another part of your fantasy world 😉
Still the ZERO evidence that CO2 causes any warming
Just the MANIC distractions and intentional misinterpretation of other people’s comments
You DESPERATION is showing, little brain-hosed trollette.
The GHE is one MASSIVE big anti-science hole.
It has ZERO substance, just like your posts.
“The BP report doesn’t count hydro in the renewable category “
Hydro is the only way the “renewable ” scammers can get decent numbers. Biomass next.
These two are actually RELIABLE and ON DEMAND
UNRELIABLE wind and solar running pretty much dead last.
Unreliable electricity or electricity that takes a holiday when most needed…
….is USELESS. !!
” I guess you would even thrive in a closed room with no CO2 scrubbers, since CO2 is the best!”
You really are pulling out the IGNORANCE this time, seb
I know you are probably used to small padded rooms for several days in a row….probably pushing the CO2 level up to 2000+ ppm. (totally harmless)
…but we are talking about atmospheric CO2.
No amount of fossil fuel burning will EVER push the atmospheric CO2 level up to any level that is dangerous to anything
Enhanced atmospheric CO2 levels are TOTALLY BENEFICIAL to all life on Earth. !
So stop your childish anti-science, anti-LIFE, CO2 DENIAL, seb.
I see. So we’re not allowed to use numbers that show today’s consumption share for wind and solar is 0.8% for 2016 – which happens to be about the same percentage as it was for 2014, and not much different than it was in 2010…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Total_World_Energy_Consumption_by_Source_2010.png
In other words, in 7 years of exponential wind and solar growth explosion, the consumption share for wind and solar combined has barely moved. That’s because fossil fuel consumption share continues to rise, stubbornly refusing to be offset.
Why should I take suggestions of whom to trust from someone who vehemently defends “hide the decline” data manipulation and “completely artificial” adjustments? I will continue to cite IEA. These are projections, anyway. It’s not like real science or anything.
https://www.westernenergyalliance.org/knowledge-center/air/methane
“In fact, combined-cycle natural gas turbines cut 2.6 times more CO2 emissions than wind and four times more than solar. That’s because even though renewables avoid emissions when they produce electricity, they only do so when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. By comparison, natural gas reduces CO2 emissions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”
Electric utilities have taken advantage of clean and affordable natural gas, allowing U.S. GHG emissions to fall more than any other country since 2006.
The positive impacts of the natural gas revolution haven’t gone unnoticed. According to The Breakthrough Institute: “…since 1950, natural gas and nuclear prevented 36 times more carbon emissions than wind, solar, and geothermal.”
So warmth-is-better-than-cold = CO2 is the cause of the ocean heat content increase (0.09 C) since 1955? Can warming be better than cooling regardless of the atmospheric CO2 concentration?
I’ve taken note that you are either incapable or unwilling to identify the positive consequence of reducing CO2 emissions and/or a cooling planet. More CO2 is not good…why? Can you identify the specific reasons more CO2 emissions are bad? And why is asking this question “trolling”?
You are not allowed to compare these numbers thinking that they are based on the same source material. The graphic from Wikipedia is based on yet another statistic (REN21).
Take the data of one statistic and graph the values over time. If they didn’t change their methods during that time, then the values are comparable.
It should be common sense that “In other words, in 7 years of exponential wind and solar growth explosion, the consumption share for wind and solar combined has barely moved.” can’t be true if wind+solar the consumption share increased by 0.27 percentage point just from 2015 to 2016.
You still don’t understand growth math, do you? If two variables A and B increase and the percentage of growth for one is bigger than the other, then the share of that variable increases. The other variable can still grow by a larger amount in absolute terms, but it can not possibly keep its share.
You are really serious with this … yes of course natural gas is reducing CO2 emissions more if you replace 1000 TWh of coal power with 900 TWh of natural gas power and only 100 TWh of wind+solar. But we are talking about the effectiveness, aren’t we? So why do you think replacing with gas is more effective? Replacing those 1000 TWh of coal with 1000 TWh of wind+solar would have saved more CO2 … obviously.
When you list positive effects of more CO2 and include “warmth-is-better-than-cold”, I assume you acknowledge now that more CO2 causes a warmer climate. If you didn’t want to express that, then leave it out of what you think what more CO2 is causing.
There will be now cooling of the planet. Why would there be a cooling of the planet?
They are rather obvious and you probably know them. But since you are a skeptic you conveniently ignore them by repeating “more CO2 is good” as long as neccessary to actually believe it.
This playing dumb and letting other invest time to explain things to you is an interesting strategy though … I’ll try that next time in a conversation with you 😉
Can you identify the specific reasons more CO2 emissions are bad?
I don’t think this response qualifies as an identification of specific reasons. I would really like to know what bad things are occurring due to humans emitting more CO2 now than they did in the 1990s. Or, for that matter, CO2 concentrations have risen by 1/100th of a percentage point since 1900. What’s the bad thing about that? Is it causing 30,000 species to go extinct every year? Reducing crop yields? Browning the planet? Killing people? What?
“This playing dumb and letting other invest time to explain things to you is an interesting strategy though”
Ask yourself that, seb.
Its the only one you ever seem to adopt…
apart from rabid yapping of the AGW mantra.
“They are rather obvious and you probably know them. “
SO.. EMPTY, MINDLESS EVASION, as usual…
You are UNABLE to produce one PROVABLE way in which atmospheric CO2 at any possible future level is anything but ENTIRELY BENEFICIAL.
You still seem to be under the impression that the effects of that CO2 concentration change have already happened, are you? That would at least be consistent with your other claims (for example: humans don’t cause the CO2 concentration to go up, since it went up while CO2 emissions were flat in the last few years).
Please, finally learn how the mechanisms work. Then try to argue against them … otherwise you are just fighting straw mans or rather “no mans”, since what you argue against is not what is happening.
More CO2 is bad, since it accelerates global warming.
Apparently, the maximum height of the effect of our CO2 emissions through 2008 have already been realized. That’s what your side claims, anyway.
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/9/12/124002
Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission
I haven’t written that. Humans contribute. The degree to which our contribution changes the overall atmospheric CO2 concentration is disputable, especially since our estimates of past CO2 changes (pre-Mauna Loa) are likely flawed and erroneous.
And why is warming bad?
If we had stopped all emissions at the end of 2008, yes.
Thank you for displaying your tendency to cherry pick quotes again. Full quote: “Our analysis implies warming from an individual carbon dioxide emission can be expected to reach its peak value within about a decade and, for the most part, persist for longer than a century.“
If you don’t know what that means and what continued emissions result in, I’ll gladly explain it to you. Or in the words of the authors: “As such, even if maximum warming occurs within a decade, maximum impact may not be reached until much later. From this perspective, Steven Chu’s statement that today’s damage ‘will not be seen for at least 50 years’ may well be accurate.”
Of course you did. Or didn’t you claim that the CO2 concentration increase of the past few years is all natural since human emissions didn’t increase for some years? I remember lengthy discussions going in circles about your lack of understanding of the difference between a value and its derivative.
The ok-ish temperature band for this planet is very small. 288K seems to be good, 5K or 1.7% colder and the northern hemisphere is covered with ice, 5K or 1.7% warmer and the coastal cities northern hemisphere are under water. Crops are equally sensitive to temperature and resulting season lengths.
Stable is good, too big of a change in either direction is bad.
Apparently, the maximum height of the effect of our CO2 emissions through 2008 have already been realized. That’s what your side claims, anyway.
Uh, no. According to that paper, the maximum warmth from all the emissions through 10 years ago has already been realized. What that means is that, 10 years from now, we’ll get the maximum warmth effect from today’s emissions, and so on. There’s a 10-year lag. The “persist for longer than a century” claim is based on hypotheticals and models, not real-world empirical data (since no physical measurements exist that shows how much, if at all, CO2 heats or cools the oceans). For that matter, the maximum warmth reached within 10 years claim is also rooted in models and hypotheticals, not real world observation. But your claim was this:
The effects of the CO2 concentration change through 2008 (390 ppm) have already reached their maximum warming effect today…according to that paper.
What “damage” has the CO2 concentration change done to the planet through 2008, SebastianH? The Earth is greening. More land mass is above sea level today than in the 1980s. Crop growth and yield are higher now than a few decades ago. Polar bear numbers are growing. Penguin numbers are growing. Extinctions occur at a rate of <1 species per decade since 2000 vs. 16 species extinctions per decade during 1500-2000. Greenland and Antarctica have effectively gone unchanged, as combined they have only contributed a total of about 1.5 centimeters to sea levels since 1958. Sea level rise has decelerated relative to 1920-1950. So what “damage” are you talking about?
No, I didn’t write those words, nor did I write that CO2 changes are “all natural”. I pointed out that, from 2013 to 2017, yearly CO2 emissions rates didn’t rise, but the atmospheric CO2 concentration did rise — by 9 ppm. Scientists have pointed out that non-correlations like this suggest that the atmospheric CO2 concentration change is not entirely — or even mostly — anthropogenic. Instead, much of the yearly differences in CO2 concentration change can be explained by temperature: during cool years (i.e., 1992, 1999, 2008), the CO2 change (Mauna Loa) can be up to 7 times lower than the CO2 change during warm years (1998, 2016). This suggests that temperature change is a significant factor contributing to the year-to-year CO2 change. For example:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL023027/full
“There is clear similarity between Figures 1b and 1c, with the positive CO2 growth rate anomalies corresponding to El Niño events, and the negative growth rate anomalies corresponding to La Niña events. The largest positive CO2 growth rate anomalies are coincident with large Niño3 values in 1973, 1988 and 1998. … It is unlikely that these anomalies can be explained by an abrupt increase in anthropogenic emissions, as the anomalies are much larger than annual increases in fossil fuel emissions. Most interannual variability in the CO2 growth rate is attributable to variations in land-atmosphere CO2 exchange with climate (e.g., associated with ENSO or volcanic perturbations)“
—
https://www2.meteo.uni-bonn.de/bibliothek/Flohn_Publikationen/K287-K320_1981-1985/K299.pdf
“[D]uring the period 1958-1974, the average CO2-increase within five selective years with prevailing cool water only 0.57 ppm/a [per year], while during five years with prevailing warm water it was 1.11 ppm/a. Thus in a a warm water year, more than one Gt (1015 g) carbon is additionally injected into the atmosphere, in comparison to a cold water year.”
—
Goldberg, 2008
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/095830508786238369
“[T]he warming and cooling of the ocean waters control how much CO2 is exchanged with atmosphere and thereby controlling the concentration of atmospheric CO2. It is obvious that when the oceans are cooled, in this case due to volcanic eruptions or La Niña events, they release less CO2 and when it was an extremely warm year, due to an El Niño, the oceans release more CO2.”
—
Ahlbeck, 2009
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1260/095830509789876772
“The increase rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide for the period from 1980 to 2007 can be statistically explained as being a function solely of the global mean temperature. Throughout the period, the temperature differences seem to have caused differences around a base trend of 1.5 ppmv/year. The atmospheric CO2 increase rate was higher when the globe was warmer, and the increase rate was lower when the globe was cooler. This can be explained by wind patterns, biological processes, or most likely by the fact that a warmer ocean can hold less carbon dioxide. This finding indicates that knowledge of the rate of anthropogenic emission is not needed for estimation of the increase rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
And why is warming bad?
Considering the stabilization of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets (contributing just 1.5 cm to sea levels during the period of time that CO2 levels rose from 315 ppm to 400 ppm), that more land area is above sea level today than during the 1980s, or that Arctic sea ice extent was much lower than now during the Medieval Warm Period and earlier (CO2 levels in the 270s ppm), what Earth temperature is not “ok-ish”?
So can we assume that you believe we’ve had “too big of a change” in temperature in recent decades? What “damage” has that caused?
Thankfully it is known that there is at least minimum of 400 years of coal left in the USA at the 2016 rate of consumption.
How much longer will fossil fuels last — pick a figure between 400 years to a 1000 year hence.
Of course cAGW advocates will act like it will run out tomorrow. They do that because they are irrational — no sense of perspective.
Then they’ll hyperventilate BS about future generations. IMO if people really had any worry about ‘future generation’ they would not elect governments that rack-up stupid levels of debt for those same ‘future generations’ to pay-off when today’s debts come due.
Australia has PLENTY of coal, Indonesia is really just starting to get into the export business, and is up there with Australia as a coal export country.
African And South American countries have barely touched the surface of what coal and gas they may have reserves of.
It will never run out. That is not the problem. The problem is increasing demand and no way to satisfy the demand, because we can’t increase the supply side. We all know where this leads to …
It will only become incredible expensive to get it out in usable form. Any idea how bad the EROI for shale oil is? Shale gas? Has any shale company broken even yet with the prices falling?
Billion of years, because we will never be able to get to all that fuel economically.
“because we can’t increase the supply side. “
Of course we can increase the supply side.
Why are you MAKING CRAP UP again, seb.
Many places have barely touched the surface of their fossil fuel reserves.
Once this IDIOTIC anti-CO2 farce is over, people will realise that the atmosphere NEEDS MORE CO2, and that littering the whole countryside with bird munching crucifixes is pretty much tantamount to a criminal act.
I agree seb, but with a small amendment
“It will never run out. That is not the problem,” and at the 2016 rate of consumption 1000 years worth is more than enough time to find alternative sourcesof energy. Given that there is up to and probably more that 1000 years available at that rate, the small uplift in projected demand by 2040 only shorten this to about 500-600 years… And that only covers current known reserves, when any or all possible new find are added in there is not a credible problem for the better part of 1000 years.
So why the push to change so fast? The stupidity of left-wing politics, and their inherent cony capitalism methods, that is the ONLY reason.
No, it’s not. You don’t seem to realize what “peak anything” means. Let’s try an analogy here. Say you have a massive battery with 1000 TWh of stored electricity, but it can only output 1000 kW. It’s the only source of energy around, but hey it will last 114155 years … right? No it won’t. Your demand is ever increasing and soon you will hit that 1000 kW limit reaching “peak battery”. What happens to the next one who wants to consume energy, but can’t? Prices will increase? Expensive ways to get more power out of the battery will be found, but eventually nobody will be able to afford power from that source anymore.
That is the problem of “peak anything”, it’s not about how long the resource will be available at current usage levels.
Is that so? Why haven’t they? I thought fossil fuels are a cheap, easy and reliable way to lift yourself out of poverty?
Most industrialized countries have their “peak fossil fuels” behind them. This is how it will probably play out: http://www.10xe.orwww.10xe.org/RFGraph-Fossil_fuels_global_production
Many places have barely touched the surface of their fossil fuel reserves.
Too often, it’s because they’ve been blocked by governments and anti-fossil fuel activists.
It is so. We’ve been seeing “peak fossil fuels” for over 50 years.
“You don’t seem to realize what “peak anything” means. “ And your assertions are no more credible than Ehrlich “Population Bomb” science.
“I thought fossil fuels are a cheap…” Why have to dig up more, making prices drop more when it is very cheap to buy, say Australian coal right now. You know it’s economics that determines what resource gets exploited, a subject that is terminally lost on the left-wing idiots.
“Say you have a massive battery with 1000 TWh of stored electricity, but it can only output 1000 kW. blah, blahhhh
“
Yet another anti-science fantasy analogy from the la-la-land brain-numbed CO2 hater.
Great fact-checking, Pierre.
And let’s no-one FTT.
Can’t blame you for trying, Sisyphus.
“…the genius of governor Jerry Brown.”
hahahahaha
No bad idea that brilliant idiot doesn’t endorse, and CA is paying the price.
https://www.ocregister.com/2017/02/26/the-true-legacy-of-gov-jerry-brown/
[…] https://notrickszone.com/2018/03/08/in-a-rare-public-debate-dr-willie-soon-uses-real-science-to-take-… […]
Funny how the coldest hot spell in the last 350,000 years is the fault of man.
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/03/understanding-the-human-contribution-to-global-warming/
Warmism isn’t science, it is an abuse of science!
Unfortunately Dr. Willie Soon never got around to talking about the UN-IPCC’s methodology in depth. For if he had he may well have buried them in too many inconvenient realities.
UN-IPCC have failed to show that the climate is influenced in any way by changes in emissions of trace gases. This notion is grossly defective, as the only ‘evidence’ put foreward is that of computerize model simulations.
These models are never subjected to the necessary discipline of validation which normally would be required for a model to be deemed worthy of it’s task. The mere (specially tuned parameterisations) simulation of past climate does not constitute evidence that the models work as predictors of the future climate. The fact that arrays of different models all generating ensembles of results which are mulled over by model specialist to find the resulting predictions that are ‘required’, is testament to the defective nature of this method.
As real Evaluation, Detection and Attribution is such an excessively complex task when describing the climate as a system, the UN-IPCC reports are nothing more than complex of organised guessestimations where numerous series of likelihoods and confidence levels are made by very people who are paid to produce them. And that is surely a direct conflict of interest.
What ever happens the UN-IPCC, and it’s advocates, know that the models MUST be defended at all costs, as it is the only ‘evidence’ they have. The rest of us have to pay for this travesty of science!
Yet another comment straight to the spam-bin?
Hello,
I hosted and moderated the show in question. Glad that people liked it.
I’d just like to clarify a few things:
1. It wasn’t a public debate. Unsafe Space is a discussion show, and is referred to as such in our online materials and in the invitations we send to participants. There are also six people onstage (4 guests and two hosts); it isn’t intended to be a debate between two of them, though we do seek to have a diverse array of viewpoints and people at times argue or have different points of view. We strive to help bridge differences, further the discussion, and break information bubbles – not to simply create arguments.
2. It may be a little misleading to say “Californians in the audience shout ‘No, not true'” as if they are representing all of the Californians in the crowd, let alone all Californians overall, who in polling tend to be concerned about climate change (e.g. http://www.ppic.org/publication/californians-views-on-climate-change/). A number of fans of Dr. Soon turned out, as well as other people opposed to liberal climate policy; of course, everyone is totally welcome (though we discourage yelling, since we’d prefer people raise their hands so we can bring them a microphone). One way or another, though, their reaction is probably not what scientists would call a “representative sample.” :).
If you would like to listen to the podcast of the full show, it’s available at http://www.unsafespaceshow.com/2018/01/22/climate-change-feat-jon-christensen-willie-soon-bryan-dey-and-lori-weiss/ .
All the best,
Toby
Very glad you hosted and moderated the show, Mr. Muresianu.
It’s very uncommon for those who are skeptical about climate change alarm to be allowed to have a say in a format like this. Free speech usually doesn’t apply when it comes to this particular topic. Skeptics of climate change alarm are shouted down, interrupted, not allowed to speech…or simply not invited at all, precluding debate (and education). This one was run fairly…and it was entertaining to boot. I didn’t see a lack of tolerance for opposing viewpoints, and I thought Dr. Christensen conducted himself well. Many on his side of the aisle behave smugly and condescendingly (and hurl personal attacks) in environs like this.
I don’t think you have to worry that others will interpret the seemingly few dozen “Californians in the audience” as a representation of all of the 10s of millions of citizens of California. Yes, it’s likely quite true that Californians are more tolerant of paying significantly more for their electricity due to “green” energy than the citizens of other U.S. states.
Considering “everyone is welcome” to attend these discussion shows (at a comedy club), I think the “public debate” characterization is apt.
Again, thank you for providing the opportunity for a free speech venue and “unsafe” spaces.
Congrats for at least allowing a small amount of discussion.
Maybe it could be the start of a wider proper debate…
….so long as the AGW charlatans don’t run away from it as soon as actual empirical science and scientific evidence is required.
Yes, I picked on your points that it wasn’t a debate (they have a set format) and that reactions of the audience are no more than expressions of the points of view of those individuals. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in that here.
Interesting concept for a show. I hope the loonies who can’t tolerate opinions other than their own don’t cause you any trouble. Of course, if they didn’t exist, your show might not have the same ‘edge’.
Thanks for the link to the complete podcast.
Dr Soon on OA: Who created this myth, actually…?
The background to the “30% increase in acidification” claim, the basis of the myth, is here:
“Acid Seas – Back To Basic”
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/science-papers/originals/acid-seas
The NW oyster beds were affected by Vibrio bacteria from sewage run off:
Acidified Shell Fish – A Distorted View (originally, Lies, Damned Lies and Dying Shellfish)
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/lies_shellfish_scam.pdf
The science behind acidification is pretty clear. A higher atmospheric partial pressure of CO2 than in the oceans causes absorption. Absorption of CO2 causes acidification.
But if you are all here agreeing with Dr. Soon, are you also agreeing to his assertion that human emissions cause the CO2 concentration to increase? An often disputed fact in skeptic circles, especially on this blog.
Please provide observational evidence that it is human beings who are responsible for changing the pH of the oceans…especially since pH naturally varies by two orders of magnitude more than the entire alleged change attributed to humans since the industrial revolution (0.007 pH change in 200+ years), and this value is less than the margin of error/uncertainty. How was the pH of the oceans measured in 1800 anyway…since we can’t even agree on the value for today’s levels (pH varies from region to region and from one depth to another). We can’t even measure pH for the entire ocean now…so how are we going to detect an anthropogenic signal dating back hundreds of years?
Then, provide the scientific evidence that would refute the conclusion made by scientists that “there are no studies that directly demonstrate modern day effects of OA [ocean acidification] on marine species” (McElhany, 2017). Let’s see what you can come up with.
Finally, now were marine species able to survive past epochs when CO2 concentrations were 4,000 ppm, 8,000 ppm, etc.? How acidic were the oceans back then?
You’re wasting your time, Kenneth.
Trolls cannot be argued with on a rational basis.
Our resident troll demonstrates that repeatedly.
The best response is DNFTT.
It’s like trying to explain to the punk putting sugar into someone’s gas tank that it will make the engine shut down, when that’s precisely why he’s doing it.
Oops, @B&T, not DA.
Sebastian Trollman fails to realize that Ocean waters already have 99% of free CO2 of the system in it, the very waters that has been outgassing CO2 more than taking in.
I dare you to find a source for that claim 😉
Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate (textbook)
“The results for the two periods are in broad agreement. Together with the strong dependence of CO2 emission on temperature (Fig. 1.43), they imply that a significant portion of the observed increase in r˙CO2 derives from a gradual increase in surface temperature.” pg. 253
—–
“Warming of SST (by any mechanism) will increase the outgassing of CO2 while reducing its absorption. Owing to the magnitude of transfers with the ocean, even a minor increase of SST can lead to increased emission of CO2 that rivals other sources.” pg. 546
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1024856014060104#page-1
“Causes of the heating and qualitative estimates of contributions of different factors in the global climate change remain unclear in many aspects. In still more degree, this refers to climate forecasts with accounting for anthropogenic impacts. There are many ambiguities in recent ideas about the global climate and causes of its variations. Observable correlations between long-term variations in the global temperature (GT) and CO2 content do not mean that the CO2 increase causes an increase in the global temperature. Actually observable temperature rise in the ocean also results in the increased content of CO2 in the atmosphere; therefore, such changes can be a consequence, but not a cause of global heating.”
You didn’t know that IPCC made that claim many years ago, or that over all the ocean surface is warming slightly which make it easier for CO2 to exit the water?
“Feedbacks in the carbon cycle due to climate change Warming reduces the solubility of CO2 and therefore reduces uptake of CO2 by the ocean.”
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-03.PDF
Poor little seb,
You have the same ZERO EVIDENCE for ocean pH catastrophe via CO2, as you do for atmospheric CO2 warming.
NONE, NADA.
EMPTY
@sunsettommy
Here’s one link which appears to have a warmist bias.
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html
“Of the three places where carbon is stored—atmosphere, oceans, and land biosphere—approximately 93 percent of the CO 2 is found in the oceans.”
Human beings emit CO2, causing increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, causing increased absorption of CO2 of the ocean, causing a chemical reaction. It’s not that difficult of a concept. Or are you trying to argue again that oceans aren’t absorbing and/or humans aren’t causing the CO2 concentration increase?
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/files/co2_time_series_03-08-2017_med.jpg
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Quality+of+pH+Measurements+in+the+NODC+Data+Archives
https://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=ocean+acidification+affecting+marine+life
Pick one of those 36700 results …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event (up to 96% of marine life vanished)
Very
Sorry Kenneth, but the science couldn’t be any clearer. Calling it a myth just because it doesn’t fit into the skeptic view of the world is similar to all those “the data is fake” conspiracy nonsense claims.
@Bitter&twisted:
That is a fitting description of you guys. Do you see yourselfs as trolls?
That’s not observational evidence, SebastianH. Rainwater is naturally acidic (pH 5.5). In the 1970s and 1980s, “acid rain” was all the rage. It was common to claim that humans were causing or were going to cause the destruction of trees (great die-offs) and kill off fish and other water-dwellers due to…human CO2 emissions (among other baddies). Turns out, the Earth has more trees now than it did then…and the Earth’s vegetation as well as dry areas have been rapidly greening…and no species has gone extinct in the 21st century. What happened to the “acid rain” scare, SebastianH? It’s not unlike today’s ocean acidification narrative.
http://gen2.ca/DBHS/ScholarlyArticles/Katherine%20Leiva.pdf
“Acid rain is widely considered one of our most serious environmental problems. … In landscapes where hydrology and geochemistry do not allow complete neutralization of acid runoff, acid rain is thought to be acidifying lakes and streams, as well as mobilizing aluminum and other metals toxic to fish and plants. Nutrients are also thought to be depleted by acid rain, raising concern about large areas of productive forests located on soils that are strongly acid and low in nutrients. A gradual acidification and sterilization of our soil and water, particularly in parts of the Adirondacks, northern New England, southeastern Canada, and southern Scandinavia, is predicted.”
So you’re suggesting that the Permian Extinction — which occurred over the course of a 15 million year time span — was caused by airborne CO2 concentrations? What’s the evidence for that?
Uh, do you understand what scientific evidence actually is? It involves observational evidence from real-world experiments. Not modeled narratives and projections of doom. Here are just a tiny portion of hundreds of examples of scientific evidence regarding OA…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13223/abstract
“Near the vent site, the urchins experienced large daily variations in pH (> 1 unit) and pCO2 (> 2000 ppm) and average pH values (pHT 7.73) much below those expected under the most pessimistic future emission scenarios. Growth was measured over a 17-month period using tetracycline tagging of the calcareous feeding lanterns. Average-sized urchins grew more than twice as fast at the vent compared with those at an adjacent control site, and assumed larger sizes at the vent compared to the control site and two other sites at another reef near-by. … Thus, urchins did not only persist but actually ‘thrived’ under extreme CO2 conditions.”
—
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28468-growing-corals-bathe-themselves-in-acid-without-suffering-damage/?utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=SOC&utm_campaign=hoot
“More acidic water may be a sign of healthy corals, says a new study, muddying the waters still further on our understanding of how coral reefs might react to climate change.”
—
Barkley et al., 2017
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022098117300047
“[C]alcification rates of two reef-building coral genera (Porites and Favia) do not change across Palau’s steep Ωar gradient (Ωar = 3.7 to 2.3) [a pH range of 7.84 to 8.04]. … [R]egardless of reef of origin, corals in the CO2 manipulation experiment showed no calcification sensitivity to Ωar after eight weeks in experimental conditions. … [C]orals in Palau are not living close to their Ωar threshold and are tolerant to acidification levels far below those to which they are currently exposed.”
—
https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article/74/4/1005/2907916/Effects-of-elevated-pCO2-on-the-survival-growth
“We determined tolerances of E. pacifica to prolonged exposure to pH levels predicted for 2100 by maintaining adults at two pCO2 levels (380 and 1200 µatm) for 2 months. Rates of survival and moulting were the same at both pCO2 levels.”
—
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00338-014-1241-3
“This study investigated the response of the gorgonian coral Eunicea fusca to a range of CO2 concentrations from 285 to 4,568 ppm (pH range 8.1–7.1) over a 4-week period. Gorgonian growth and calcification were measured at each level of CO2 as linear extension rate and percent change in buoyant weight and calcein incorporation in individual sclerites, respectively. In general, growth and calcification did not stop in any of the concentrations of pCO2.”
—
http://www.biogeosciences.net/11/1581/2014/bg-11-1581-2014.html
“Calcifying foraminifera are expected to be endangered by ocean acidification; however, the response of a complete community kept in natural sediment and over multiple generations under controlled laboratory conditions has not been constrained to date. During 6 months of incubation, foraminiferal assemblages were kept and treated in natural sediment with pCO2-enriched seawater of 430, 907, 1865 and 3247 pCO2. … [T]he life cycle (population density, growth and reproduction) of living assemblages varied markedly during the experimental period, but was largely unaffected by the pCO2 treatments applied.”
—
https://academic.oup.com/icesjms/article-abstract/74/4/1013/2669546/Effects-of-potential-future-CO2-levels-in-seawater
“High atmospheric CO2 dissolves into the surface of the ocean and lowers the pH of seawater and is thus expected to pose a potential threat to various marine organisms. We investigated the physiological and behavioural responses of adult Manila clams, Venerupis philippinarum (n = 96, shell length 25.32 ± 1.66mm and total wet weight 3.10 ± 0.54 g), to three levels (400, 700, and 900 μatm) of CO2 partial pressure (pCO2) for 48 days. There were no significant differences in mortality, growth, respiration rate, or emergence from the sediment between the three levels, indicating that near future atmospheric levels of CO2 do not seem to have a serious effect on the physiology and behaviour of adult Manila clams.”
So why is it true that “there are no studies that directly demonstrate modern day effects of OA [ocean acidification] on marine species” (McElhany, 2017)? How does this support the claim that the science couldn’t be any clearer about the effects of OA on marine species?
” but the science couldn’t be any clearer. “
Yep, the science of the MASSIVE BUFFERING of any minor change in ocean CO2 is very well know science.
WAYYYY Beyond you, though seb.
“How was the pH of the oceans measured in 1800 anyway “
As usual, you presented links that don’t show what you think you were trying to show.
Measurements back to 1800, seb
WHERE ARE THEY.?
EMPTY .. as always.
And lets not IGNORE the very rich and thriving sea-life during the Jurassic and Cretaceous eras when there was about 4 – 5 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere than today.
And lets put that tiny period Station Aloha data in it proper perspective shall we….
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/pHandCO22.png
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/pHandPDO2.png
Oops, looks like they picked up a small part of one of the ocean oscillations.
The oceans are alkaline and have been alkaline for at least 540 million years, irrespective of CO2 levels.
Face FACTS, seb… (as if you ever could))
The claim that average oceanic pH has declined since the 1800s is based on a modelled pre-industrial pH level.
The modelled pH is based on an assumed pre-industrial CO2 level.
The assumed baseline and the proposed effect of CO2 are both calculated *from* CO2.
It is circular reasoning.
This is invalid science.
(a seb specialty)
Nearly every river in the world is acidic, often down to pH5.5
All those ACIDIC rivers flowing HUGE amounts of ACID water into the oceans over millions/billions of years, yet the oceans remained stubbornly around pH 8 ± a bit
Now some IDIOT comes along and thinks a tiny change in atmospheric CO2 is going to cause ocean catastrophe.
It really is quite FARCICAL !!
An interesting thread on WUWT,
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/30/ph-sampling-density/
Conclusion.. ZERO MEASURABLE ocean pH change, since.. measurement was possible.
“But if you are all here agreeing with Dr. Soon, are you also agreeing to his assertion that human emissions cause the CO2 concentration to increase? An often disputed fact in skeptic circles, especially on this blog.”
As usual seb you misinterpret AGAIN (and again I suspect quite deliberately). At no point does Willie Soon say human generated CO2 is a significant cause the atmospheric CO2 concentrations rising. He does say that he has concerns that CO2 is rising, he does acknowledge that human generated CO2 has risen, he DOES NOT voice an “assertion that human emissions cause the CO2 concentration to increase”. Also he points out that to date CO2 does not have a detrimental effect on the environment, in fact it has been good for the environment.
From all the videos and writings from Dr. Soon I’ve watched and read he does not see human generated CO2 as a major contributor to atmospheric CO2.
Watch his video called “Beethoven’s Ice Cream, Tolstoy’s Fire, Happer’s Picosecond Pedestal—and Climate Willie Soon, PhD”
and get educated about what this excellent academic, Dr. Willie Soon really thinks. Specifically look at what he says from 13minutes 35 seconds onward! He correctly identifies your version of cAGW as a religion.
Enjoy.
Dr. Soon’s estimate of climate sensitivity to CO2: if it increases by 400 ppm, the temperature change will at most be +0.44°C. This assumes the CO2 relationship with temperature “is valid”, of course.
————————————————————-
Soon et al., 2015
“Nonetheless, let us ignore the negative relationship with greenhouse gas (GHG) radiative forcing, and assume the carbon dioxide (CO2) relationship is valid. If atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have risen by ~110 ppmv since 1881 (i.e., 290→400 ppmv), this would imply that carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for a warming of at most 0.0011 × 110 = 0.12°C over the 1881-2014 period, where 0.0011 is the slope of the line in Figure 29(a). We can use this relationship to calculate the so-called “climate sensitivity” to carbon dioxide, i.e., the temperature response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. According to this model, if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were to increase by ~400 ppmv, this would contribute to at most 0.0011 × 400 = 0.44°C warming. That is, the climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxide is at most 0.44°C.”
Indeed,
I particularly note his use of the word “if” in the line —
“If atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have risen by ~110 ppmv since 1881 (i.e., 290→400 ppmv)…”
@DA
Calyptogena magnifica is a giant clam that thrives in close proximity to hydrothermal vents, where the pH can be as low as 3. It’s shell doesn’t dissolve. Perhaps it, and the other species of shellfish that also thrive there, didn’t get the memo.
By the same logic, lifeforms on this planet should have no problem with being exposed to a vacuum, since a few organisms can actually survive vacuum. Can you survive a vacuum? Can a surface water coral survive living at those vents? Can a salt water fish survive in a freshwater lake and vice versa?
Evolution makes life in very different conditions possible. But evolution is a slow process with lots of casualties when the environment changes fast enough:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event
Can you explain what this has to do with a 0.007 change in pH over a 200-year period…which occurs in the context of natural 0.3 to 0.5 changes within a span of a decade? Salt water vs. fresh water is not a valid comparison. In a span of 4 weeks, coral species were exposed to a CO2 ppm change from 285 to 4,568 ppm. Growth and calcification were unaffected by the change in CO2 concentration. Species even thrive in high CO2 conditions…as “acidified” water is a sign of healthy corals. Is this new information to you?
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00338-014-1241-3
“This study investigated the response of the gorgonian coral Eunicea fusca to a range of CO2 concentrations from 285 to 4,568 ppm (pH range 8.1–7.1) over a 4-week period. Gorgonian growth and calcification were measured at each level of CO2 as linear extension rate and percent change in buoyant weight and calcein incorporation in individual sclerites, respectively. In general, growth and calcification did not stop in any of the concentrations of pCO2.”
The Permian Extinction took place over a span of 15 million years. Do you consider that fast?
“The Permian Extinction took place over a span of 15 million years. Do you consider that fast?”
But to appreciate the rate of change takes cAGW advocates a radical change in their sense of perspective.
After all how could anyone with a proper sense of perspective hyperventilate so much unmitigated garbage about the nature of the gas CO2. 3 molecules of CO2 per 10000 particles of air is OK but 4 molecules of CO2 destroys all life on the planet? Barking mad, just like the elites of the UN-IPCC.
Thanks a lot, tomOmason. Now he’s going to tell us about the 30,000 species a year going extinct (actually, he says we’re already at or over that rate*) and then toss in another cyanide analogy. Or maybe it’s arsenic. I forget which poison he prefers comparing the lethality of CO2 concentrations to. And then he insists he’s not an alarmist, but he calls us deniers for not agreeing with him.
*SebastianH: “Regarding extinction of species, why do you think 30,000 species lost per year is a big number? We are already at or over that rate.”
@Kenneth
I am getting tired of the chatbot not learning this.
http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg
All or nearly all phyla alive today appeared suddenly and for the first time in the Cambrian, when temps and CO2 were much higher than today (see linked graphic), and nearly the highest they have ever been.
Note also that CO2 levels in the Permian were the lowest they have ever been, except for from the Pliocene through to today. Note also that despite the LOW CO2, temps were maxed out. One might say on the basis of that:
(low CO2 + high T) = extinction
Only the uneducated would think that CO2 was equatable to a poison, there is not any realistically possible atmospheric level of CO2 that would poison people. CO2 is not toxic to humans or animals.
Certainly plants do not mind elevated levels.
The following is courtesy of commenter Pyrran over at Moonbattery.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/79d050dd1a9b3da3609dfb0d054b983720db4442c6708ed9a81ca24c1510da9d.jpg
DNFTT
http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/files/2017/02/cncartoons_1300.jpg
Acidifying the oceans
Can you please tell me about pH?
If I add an acid to an alkaline solution will it not just make it less alkaline?
Is pure water a stage in changing from alkaline to acid ?
If it is, will the ocean become plain drinkable water before it becomes acidified and not salt at all if enough CO2 is added under pressure ?
Or does Mr Sebastian mean it leaps from alkaline to weakly acid without going through that stage.
Perhaps acidification really means less alkalinity in all this argument.
Perhaps Mr Sebastian can kindly tell us? I’m not joking..
I hope this comment is in the right place. It seems to jump around replies a bit. Anyway, cheer up everyone http://babylonbee.com/news/state-of-california-votes-to-officially-secede-from-reality/
I note that seb’s arguments are like a FAILed drive-by shooting:
He pulls up, fires a few shots that hit Nothing, then floors the accelerator hoping to escape the barrage that peppers his @$$ on the way out.
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HA HA…this Sebastian character is about as sharp as thawed pound of liver.
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