“We are living in a period of volcanic quiescence, as we haven’t had a dirty big eruption since 1912; and this is a small eruption but it is giving us the window into what a very big eruption would be like.”

http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/04/volcano-climate-change.html

“You appear to be under the misapprehension that instruments don’t have to be calibrated against each other” That was the point I made in the comment nzfp: 21 April 2010 at 12:23 pm. However I’ve added to this in comments below.

“I see that you’re still quoting that old fool Singer” everything in this sentence represents Circumstantial ad Hominem (against singer) and Guilt By Association and is all irrelevant. The validity of a persons argument is not weighted by the company they keep – you may as well say his arguments are invalid because he’s white. But more importantly are you asserting that Singer is wrong to state “Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%)”. Would you instead quote Wikipedia like Draco and NickS? I would hope you would quote Kiehl and Trenberth of the The National Center for Atmospheric Research which is sponsored by the National Science Foundation which has a great article about instruments which you should read that states “Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed [my emphasis because believe IS NOT a scientific term] to have built up on Earth in recent years”. Unfortunately debaters who link to wikipedia rarely – if ever – read the underlying documents or their supporting and contributing sources. In the article Trenberth himself states “[e]ither the satellite observations are incorrect, [...] or, more likely, large amounts of heat are penetrating to regions that are not adequately measured”. Regardless of which of Trenberth’s propositions is true the fact is the science is not yet settled and so solutions proposed by AGW proponents such as Al Gore and his Blood and Gore CO2 derivatives trading scheme are not solutions to environmental responsibility that we should consider.

Further reading of Trenberth and we note that the “Earth’s surface temperatures have largely leveled off in recent years” yet we still have “melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice, along with rising sea levels”. However all of these comments are in direct contradiction to the evidence of that Glaciers are growing and in most cases occilate for example the Himalayas, Alaska, Norway and so on. With regard to artic sea ice, we find that for the Greenland ice cap “[t]he overall ice thickness changes are … approximately plus 5 centimetres a year or 54 centimetres over 11 years”. To be fair the ABC article does attribute the thickening of the ice to global warming. In February 2009 we find that the artic sea ice itself “is often twice as thick as expected”. We also know that Arctic ice extent was 13% greater on August 11, 2008 than it was on the August 12, 2007 – and we also know that the extent of sea ice occilates – like Glaciers – as well and depending on the dates you quote you could appear alarmist (AGW proponent) or conservative. To be fair, we know that 6000-7000 years ago “there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today”

As for the sea levels are they really rising? Perhaps we can attribute Trenberths comments about Artic sea ice to a faulty sensor. Trenberths language could be described as alarmist at best, fallacious at worst which in turn brings into question everything else he and his co-author – Kiehl – who are referenced in wikipedia when they claim that Water Vapour “contributes 3672%” to the greenhouse effect (reference eight). So that begs the question – who is right, Trenberth and Kiehl or Singer (bear in mind Singer is white)?

However, this discussion is over – I can see you would rather pay “taxes” to financial CO2 derivative speculators (Blood and Gore, Enron and Ken Lay, the NZX) then dicuss true solutions that benefit all members of our society, our economy and our environment.

[automaton voice] The science is settled – humans cause global warming therefore must pay taxes for the anthropogenic 0.117% green house effect.

peace

[lprent: You're repeating the same quotes. Most of your quotes are out of context amongst the ones I've read. Your quotes overwhelm any of your own statements. I suspect the same is the case in your comments in other areas of interest. It makes it a pain for other people to read.

Think of it as good training in how to argue coherently. ]

And I see that you’re still quoting that old fool Singer again. He has managed to get himself a nice little extra pension as a mouthpiece for the industry funded climate change deniers group the Heartland Institute. But it hardly makes ANY thing he says credible.

I read the report – I admit I didn’t go into the details of the report (time withstanding) – have you? However a few things did grab my attention. You said “oh, look at that, satellite readings show atmospheric warming. Yeah, the science was questioned, looked at and corrected.”. So the data didn’t fit the model, so the data was “fixed” and it now fits the model

In the first Science Express paper, Mears et al produce a new assessment of the MSU 2LT record and show that one of the corrections applied to the UAH MSU 2LT record had been applied incorrectly, significantly underplaying the trend in the data. This mistake has been acknowledged by the UAH team who have already updated their data (version 5.2) so that it includes the fix.

You should read the comments at the bottom of your article too – it appears that not everyone is in agreement with the “settled Science”.

Draco,
Further to my comments above – your links have highlighted the important fact that the satellite debate is far from over. Your references are to studies published in 2005, consequent to those studies are other analysis on the datasets (2009). You can find the analysis here (09/10/16) a brief summary below:

[...] The differences are like night and day. Before 1992, the trends were similar as what I found previously. But after 1992, there is strong differential warming over South America, Africa (with some cold spots) and Australia. I’ll leave it to you discuss the specifics [...]

and here (09/10/26) a brief summary below:

[...] The red’s seem to follow continental shape, the trend difference between UAH and RSS is related to land area! This is amazing evidence that the difference between RSS and UAH is related post 1992 to land/sea daily temperature corrections rather than other potential problems [...] No visible land/sea difference at all prior to AQUA. This means that the two satellite metrics were in reasonable agreement on how to correct for land/sea differential yet there is some slight difference by latitude. The AQUA station keeping difference demonstrates vividly above that both datasets were incorrect to the same degree for land/sea prior to the launch of AQUA. Now I’m not enough of an expert yet to correct the old pre-AQUA records for this problem yet, but this appears to be a clear problem in the entire satellite temperature record. There are many implications! [...]

And “MSU/AMSU atmospheric temperature products. Changes from RSS Version 2.1 to RSS Version 3.0″ with the following unresolved issue:

There also appears to be a drift between NOAA-14 (MSU) and NOAA-15(AMSU) for MSU2/AMSU5. The cause of this drift has not yet been determined. Global maps of the trend difference during the NOAA-14/NOAA-15 overlap period (1999-2005) show that the problem is greatest over wet tropical land regions, suggesting that the problem may be related to the diurnal cycle in precipitation or surface emission. Due to its smaller footprint size, AMSU may be more sensitive to the presence of precipitation than MSU. We are currently working to resolve this issue. Since we do not know whether the NOAA-14 or the NOAA-15 is closer to the truth, the data that we report includes the combined results of both satellites, and the difference between the two satellites is used to help estimate the uncertainty in the results.

Also Draco – is this your evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming and more importantly that a tax on human CO2 emmisions will resolve the issue?

Bear in mind that in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal, Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service had the following to say:

[...] When greenhouse contributions are listed by source, the relative overwhelming component of the natural greenhouse effect, is readily apparent.

From Table 4a [You will need to read the article to see the figures], both natural and man-made greenhouse contributions are illustrated in this chart, in gray and green, respectively. For clarity only the man-made (anthropogenic) contributions are labeled on the chart.

Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!

Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor). [...]

[lprent: You're starting to look like a rather tedious troll who doesn't bother to debate or argue, but just dumps quotes on the site. Adding you to auto-moderation, and I'll clean out ALL of your quotes (but leave links). Then we can see if you can actually argue coherently. ]

The IPCC admits in their 600 page report “the weather satellite observations of the last twenty years show no global warming’.

Interesting, as that was what Dr. S. Fred Singer said and not the IPCC. It’s also interesting to note that all the references to that particular piece of crap only appears on CCD websites. It doesn’t appear on the IPCC website which it would do if they admitted it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/08/et-tu-lt/

Since the satellites now clearly show that the atmosphere is warming at around the rate predicted by the models, we will report on his no-doubt imminent proclamation of a new found faith in models as soon as we hear of it

oh, look at that, satellite readings show atmospheric warming. Yeah, the science was questioned, looked at and corrected.

It is the difference to how our biosphere operates and specifically how human civilization survives that is of interest. That only requires small changes to cause problems because of the current balanced nature of the climate systems and also of our agricultural systems feeding our population.

Fred Singer is an old fool who has acquired a niche for himself speaking for corporations. He hasn’t done any science in a long long time. Quoting him just means that you really haven’t done any research on the topic.

Go and learn some science… You really aren’t worth debating with, even if I wasn’t sick today. You simply don’t understand enough of the basics. Instead you just sprout meaningless quotes that you don’t even understand.

Basically you look like a fool.

The current cap and trade schemes only relate to human caused CO2 (and equivalents) emissions, not natural CO2 emissions

You may be interested to know that in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal, Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service had the following to say:

[...] When greenhouse contributions are listed by source, the relative overwhelming component of the natural greenhouse effect, is readily apparent.

From Table 4a [You will need to read the article to see the figures], both natural and man-made greenhouse contributions are illustrated in this chart, in gray and green, respectively. For clarity only the man-made (anthropogenic) contributions are labeled on the chart.

Water vapor, responsible for 95% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, is 99.999% natural (some argue, 100%). Even if we wanted to we can do nothing to change this.

Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth’s greenhouse effect, (factoring in water vapor). This is insignificant!

Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor). [...]

Lets highlight what’s important Anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 contributions cause only about 0.117% of Earth’s greenhouse effect but yet you said:

The current cap and trade schemes only relate to human caused CO2 (and equivalents) emissions, not natural CO2 emissions

Seems kinda irrelevant really.

NickS there are other ways to tackle environmental responsibility.

Consider this (it’s worth you reading this link). In an article written in November 5th, 2007 titled “Sustainable Energy Development: How Costs Can Be Cut In Half” author Ellen Brown states:

Governments have the sovereign right to create money and to lend it. The United Nations could assume that right as well, [...] government-issued or U.N.-issued money could be used for sustainable energy projects without causing inflation, and this could be profitably done even by impoverished governments with weak legal structures and immature government accountability mechanisms.

Credit created by governments or the United Nations would have the advantage that it could be issued interest-free. Eliminating the cost of interest could cut production costs dramatically. Interest composes as much as 77% of the cost of capital-intensive goods [...] the overall average cost of interest has been estimated at about half of everything we buy. If money for alternative energy projects were issued interest-free, projects that have been considered unsustainable because of the burden of interest could become not only self-sustaining but highly profitable for the funding governments. [...] Interest-free credit could turn alternative energy proposals that would have been priced out of the private credit market into profitable venture

… is the straw man, I discussed it here

You assert “2) I’m against the settled science, that the majority accepted” this is also begging the question as you make the claim that “I” am against the “settled science”, however no such claim was made. Re-read the comments carefully – that’s what “ata panui” means.

Continuing down this path is in itself a straw man as it demonstrates you are unwilling to engage in the debate but would prefer to argue syntactics – consequently you are engaging in sophistry.

Care to comment on the EPA?

On March 9th, 2009 an internal Enivronmental Protection Agency (EPA) report titled ‘ Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act. By Alan Carlin NCEE/OPEI’ was released.

Oh and while you’re at it – maybe you can explain why a TAX is the solution to environmental responsibility.

Still waiting for you to get over yourself and answer Nick