The Truth About Greenhouse Gases

[trbixler]

The Truth About Greenhouse Gases

www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/happer-the_truth_about_greenhouse_gases.pdf

William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He is a member of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council.

[steve]

Its a bit rich for the Chair of the Exxon funded Marshall institute to complain about alleged biases in science, particularly when he doesn't cite any evidence (like a proper scientist would do).

On the basis of this document, I don't think the academic standards of the GWPF have a chance with this guy advising.

[steve]

Here's a good example of his poor understanding (or attempt to confuse the deluded):

Let me summarize how the key issues appear to me, a working scientist
with a better background than most in the physics of climate. CO2 really
is a greenhouse gas and, other things being equal, adding CO2 to the
atmosphere by burning coal, oil, and natural gas will modestly increase
the surface temperature of the earth. Other things being equal, doubling
the CO2 concentration, from our current 390 ppm to 780 ppm will directly
cause about one degree Celsius warming. At the current rate of CO2
increase in the atmosphere —about 2 ppm per year— it would take
about 195 years to achieve this doubling.

Well at least he isn't a sky-dragon slayer, but of course it will take just 85 years at current rates of rise to achieve a doubling from preindustrial rates of 280ppm - assuming that the current acceleration in the rise ceases (which we have no good reason for believing will happen).

The combination of a slightly
warmer earth and more CO2 will greatly increase the production of
food, wood, fiber, and other products by green plants, so the increased
CO2 will be good for the planet, and will easily outweigh any negative
effects. Supposed calamities like the accelerated rise of sea level, ocean
acidification, more extreme climate, tropical diseases near the poles, etc.
are greatly exaggerated.

Well that's alright then. Thank you Professor

[icefisher]

Well at least he isn't a sky-dragon slayer, but of course it will take just 85 years at current rates of rise to achieve a doubling from preindustrial rates of 280ppm - assuming that the current acceleration in the rise ceases (which we have no good reason for believing will happen).

What is your definition of "current"? Rates of rise? Are you aware that if you apply a current rate of rise (the past 20 year average) its going to take 216 years for CO2 to double? Fogg was being generous by not applying a "rate of rise". Or are you a victim of Team indoctrination here also? Thats a land of cherry picked numbers that only ever get reported as an up adjustment, never a down adjustment. When it goes down they go to town on any journal that dares to report it.

[steve]

Without doing detailed analysis, roughly, the current rate of acceleration where "current" means the last 50 years, is about 1ppm per 50 years.

So that means that in 50 years time the rate of rise will be 3ppm per year rather than 2ppm per year, and the doubling from preindustrial period will happen quicker than 85 years (by 2073 by my reckoning).

This requires CO2 uptake by the biosphere to continue to rise to keep up with the rise in emissions - which seems to be an unproven and perhaps unlikely assumption.



Do you think Hapless could have done the courtesy of doing such analysis before spouting blather?

[trbixler]

So Mann, Hansen, Trenberth are OK but Happer is not. Funding is the reason? Several orders of magnitude of funding by the government for AGW and Happer who's credentials are squeaky clean gets criticized with another ad hominem, from a 'scientific expert'. Maybe the next assertion will be that he does not understand the physics.

[trbixler]

Aug 18, 2011 15:13:35 GMT steve said:

Without doing detailed analysis, roughly, the current rate of acceleration where "current" means the last 50 years, is about 1ppm per 50 years.

So that means that in 50 years time the rate of rise will be 3ppm per year rather than 2ppm per year, and the doubling from preindustrial period will happen quicker than 85 years (by 2073 by my reckoning).

This requires CO2 uptake by the biosphere to continue to rise to keep up with the rise in emissions - which seems to be an unproven and perhaps unlikely assumption.



Do you think Hapless could have done the courtesy of doing such analysis before spouting blather?

I am sure that you have shown that there is no relation to local physical events.

"HAWAI'I ISLAND, Hawaii — At 2:05 p.m., HST, this afternoon, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) monitoring network detected the onset of rapid deflation of the Pu`u `Ō `ō crater floor. Soon thereafter, at 2:20 p.m., lava broke out at the base of the west flank of the Pu`u `Ō `ō cone. "

hvo.wr.usgs.gov/pressreleases/pr08_03_11.html

[steve]

trbixler

I am sure that you have shown that there is no relation to local physical events.

I think you as well as Happer would perhaps benefit from researching a little into the numbers and locations of CO2 observing stations, the results from different stations, and also the methods used at Mauna Loa to identify and eliminate the effects of contamination. I think then that you would find that there are no grounds for your (somewhat one-sided) scepticism.

[icefisher]

Aug 18, 2011 15:13:35 GMT steve said:

Without doing detailed analysis, roughly, the current rate of acceleration where "current" means the last 50 years, is about 1ppm per 50 years.

So that means that in 50 years time the rate of rise will be 3ppm per year rather than 2ppm per year, and the doubling from preindustrial period will happen quicker than 85 years (by 2073 by my reckoning).

This requires CO2 uptake by the biosphere to continue to rise to keep up with the rise in emissions - which seems to be an unproven and perhaps unlikely assumption.



Do you think Hapless could have done the courtesy of doing such analysis before spouting blather?

Nobody is much interested in doubling since pre-industrial Steve. Thats a perfect example of how the warmist propagandists always only find its "worse than we thought" and when they don't they hang tough with the longest possible record.

Doubling from today will require 111 years at the "linear" rate of the past 50 years.

If you apply an exponential trend line to the data you will find the curve is a negative function. It is not increasing as much as the linear rate. Doubling from preindustrial takes advantage of higher earlier rates than later rates.

Intuitively it seems odd that the greatest rate increases occurred when the least growth in anthropogenic emissions were occurring. But like the speed of light we ignore that as it has poor implications for the predictions.

The human emissions curve bends the opposite way.

One would think that would get the attention of more than a few climate scientists.

[steve]

Nobody is much interested in doubling since pre-industrial Steve.

Rubbish. People who'd like to deny co2 has any effect would certainly like to ignore the 110ppm we've already added, I'm sure.

The human emissions curve bends the opposite way.

A cursory bit of research shows that is not true! Even Steve McIntyre checked and confirmed that!

[icefisher]

Rubbish. People who'd like to deny co2 has any effect would certainly like to ignore the 110ppm we've already added, I'm sure.

Not hardly Steve. I just had some for breakfast!

[trbixler]

Aug 18, 2011 15:32:28 GMT steve said:

trbixler

I am sure that you have shown that there is no relation to local physical events.

I think you as well as Happer would perhaps benefit from researching a little into the numbers and locations of CO2 observing stations, the results from different stations, and also the methods used at Mauna Loa to identify and eliminate the effects of contamination. I think then that you would find that there are no grounds for your (somewhat one-sided) scepticism.

Happer gives you some CO2 warming and looks at the results.

"We conclude that atmospheric CO2 levels should be above about 150
ppm to avoid harming green plants and below about 5000 ppm to avoid
harming people. That is a big range, and our atmosphere is much closer
to the lower end than the upper end. We were not that far from CO2
anorexia when massive burning of fossil fuels began. At the current rate
of burning fossil fuels, we are adding about 2 ppm of CO2 per year to the
atmosphere, so getting from our current level to 1000 ppm would take
about 300 years—and 1000 ppm is still less than what most plants would
prefer, and much less than either the NASA or the Navy limit.
Yet there are strident calls for immediately stopping further increases in
CO2 levels and reducing the current level (with 1990 levels the arbitrary
benchmark). As we have discussed, animals would not even notice
a doubling of CO2 and plants would love it. The supposed reason for
limiting CO2 is to stop global warming—or since the predicted warming
has failed to be nearly as large as computer models forecast—to
stop climate change. Climate change itself has been embarrassingly

uneventful, so another rationale for reducing CO2 is now promoted: to
stop the hypothetical increase of extreme climate events like hurricanes
or tornados. But dispassionate data show that the frequency of extreme
events has hardly changed and in some cases has decreased in the 150
years that it has taken CO2 levels to increase from 270 ppm to 390 ppm."

[steve]

Happer gives you some CO2 warming and looks at the results.

You mean he makes up some results and presents them with no evidence.

I take it you are backing away from your ridiculous implication that volcanic contamination is the cause of the data that shows CO2 rise.

[trbixler]

Aug 19, 2011 14:20:20 GMT steve said:

Happer gives you some CO2 warming and looks at the results.

You mean he makes up some results and presents them with no evidence.

I take it you are backing away from your ridiculous implication that volcanic contamination is the cause of the data that shows CO2 rise.

No. I was looking for the recitations that it was not a problem.

[stranger]

Well, those who believe charts tend to believe almost anything. Except history. Since the graphologists refuse to believe history, let's turn to medicine. Specifically, hiccoughs or hiccups.

Those annoying and sometimes painful fits of hic, hic, hiccing are caused in insufficient carbon dioxide in the bloodstream. Before a "table spoon of table sugar, washed down with a little water" became popular the preferred cure was to stick a sufferers head in a sack and let him breathe his or her CO2 laden breath.

If the amount of CO2 has so drastically increased since the literal year of one, the time the sufferers head remains in the sack should have decreased. Has it? It is a question easily answered, although it requires a sundial gnomon a few yards high. And no, it has not.

But of course the graphologists will have none of it.

Stranger