Episode-1581- Jim Steele on Challenging the Global Warming Myth
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (17.7MB)
Jim Steele Former California State Biologist Raises Serious Counter Points to Modern AGW Theory
Jim Steel is a former environmental educator and scientist who began his career in 1983. In 1983 San Francisco State University’s biology department wanted to close the Sierra Nevada Field Campus and use the savings to support more molecular and genetic research. In contrast the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering, Dr. James Kelley, was an avid supporter of field stations.
Dr Kelley understood that students must immerse themselves in the environment they are studying. Otherwise they would be forever misled by limited observations and the resulting bad models.
Although Jim Steele was just completing his Masters Degree, Dean Kelley believed Jim Steele was the best person to resurrect and grow the Sierra Nevada Field Campus. Together they turned the rustic Sierra Nevada Field Campus into one of California’s leading environmental education centers.
His understanding of climate change evolved as he sought to understand the causes of the declines in local bird populations that he had studied each summer as part of the Sierra Nevada Neotropical Migratory Bird Riparian Habitat Monitoring project. He soon discovered maximum temperatures in the Sierra Nevada had declined since the 30s as observed at the nearby Tahoe City weather station that is part of the US Historical Climate Network.
It became clear that the Sierra Nevada were not overheating despite publications blaming wildlife extinctions on global warming. The most important factors affecting local climate change were the cycles of El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation as well as landscape changes that had greatly altered the regional microclimates.
Believing the politics of global warming have been misguiding conservation efforts, Jim Steele wrote the book Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism. And the lessons learned from his students helped shape his writing style, making the book’s science lessons most enjoyable and easily grasped by all.
Resources for today’s show…
- Join the Members Brigade
- The Year 1581
- Join Our Forum
- Walking To Freedom
- TSP Gear
- PermaEthos.com
- AgriTrue.com
- GenForward
- The Duck Chronicles – Video Series
- Safecastle Royal – (sponsor of the day)
- Bulk Ammo – (sponsor of the day)
- Landscapes and Cycles – Jim’s Website
- Landscapes and Cycles – The Book
Bob Wells Plant of the Week –
Li Jujube – This tree Adaptable from zone 5 to zone 9. The Jujube is also called the Chinese date. It is a round shaped fruit, reddish brown, dry and wrinkled, sweet and chewy (like dates) when fully ripe in early fall.
This is an attractive, easy to grow tree: hardy, drought resistant, virtually pest and disease free and it is self-fruitful, which means it does not require a pollinator.
Find this plant and more at BobWellsNursery.Com – Bob Wells Nursery specializes in edible landscape plants and trees including: Fruit Trees, Berry Plants, Vine Fruit, Nut Trees, as well as the hard to find Specialty Trees. Find this plant and more at BobWellsNursery.com
Remember to comment, chime in and tell us your thoughts, this podcast is one man’s opinion, not a lecture or sermon. Also please enter our listener appreciation contest and help spread the word about our show. Also remember you can call in your questions and comments to 866-65-THINK (866-658-4465) and you might hear yourself on the air.
Also remember we have an expert council you can address your calls to. If you do this you should email me right after your call at jack at thesurvivalpodcast.com with expert council call in the subject line. In the body of your email tell me that you just called in a question for the council and what number you called in from. I will then give the call priority when I screen calls.
Join the MSB Today
Want Every Episode of TSP Ever Produced?
Remember in addition to discounts to over 40 vendors who supply stuff you are likely buying anyway, tons of free ebooks and video content, MSB Members also get every edition of The Survival Podcast ever produced in convenient zip files in blocks of 24. More info on the MSB can be found here.
The PDO was a factor in our record breaking winter in Prince Edward Island (551 cm) The other impact is the QBO:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-biennial_oscillation
I watch the PDO every year, which for the layman usually means “Warm Gulf of Alaska”. If that’s the case, ridge west, trough east and watch out Atlantic Canada 🙂
If you want a great explanation; Dave Tolleris (wxrisk.com) is great at explaining these things
Today’s show seemed heavy on emotions and light on facts. This is one of the rare Survival Podcasts I have had to bale on……. 🙁
For the record, I’m neutral on the subject in that I believe “both sides” have merit. I’m unable to pull out objective information in today’s podcast that was added in a constructive way to the climate change / non-change discussion.
Light on facts? Wow, don’t really have much to say in response to that, it is likely saying the night sky is light on stars.
I thought that the illumination of so many “studies” as being light (not to mention selective) on facts might have been pretty significant.
Remember that this was an interview. As soon as the guest would start to go into significant detail, most people’s eyes glaze over. But I think that there were a lot of “facts” presented, but if you really mean “details”, you are just going to have to buy the book. It seems that the details are in there.
Brian,
I provided lots of facts, but if you want peer reviewed references for what I put forth then go to my website. Each easy contains references or links to peer reviewed literature which provided my evidence.
http://landscapesandcycles.net
For those interested in the Allan Savory’s holistic grazing method here is a link to his TED talk. His method doesn’t work everywhere but in many places it has provided some spectacular results
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change
As a guy who has personally launched dozens of weather balloons and profiled and analyzed the atmosphere (skew T diagram), I have never found any permanent trapping layers (inversions) holding the heat from Co2. lol Hot air rises………and dissipates.
Sorry Al Gore, planet earth and the sun together are self-regulating engines. (The oceans are the regulators, the sun is the fuel.) Back to the basics for a second: When the planet warms up a bit (from the sun), water from the oceans evaporate and condense to make clouds. Clouds then provide shade and reflect energy from the sun back out into space. Clouds then precipitate and send water back to the earth. Water flows back to the oceans and the cycle begins again.
Scientists have performed numerous ice core CO2 analyses and graphed the relationship between CO2 and temperatures. What they have found is the OPPOSITE of what Al Gore presented. “An increase in temperature is FOLLOWED by an increase in CO2” In other words, CO2 does not affect temperature, but rather, temperature affects CO2, with a time lag. This time lag (about 800 years!) is caused by ocean temperature changes. It takes hundreds of years for an ocean’s average temperature to change. There is a natural oscillation in average temperature changes and this does affect CO2 with a delay.
Amazing episode. I consider myself to be an environmentalist. However, I don’t like being lied to and manipulated by the “Global Warming” crowd. If the government can convince us that “we” are the problem, they can sell authoritarian control. Global warming is a psychological ploy to cause us to accept the police state without question.
Every now and then there comes along a podcast which starts really losing my interest…..by 33 minutes I was pretty much done.
Stayed to the end, because even though I put my opinions on climate change in a box on the shelf (as suggested by Jack on many other podcasts) and the belief that even in a poor podcast there is usually a nugget or two of useful stuff….but nope.
lol, fossil fuels not disturbing the ground. Helloooo Gulf of Mexico.
Way to take a claim out of context and claim to not be engaged in perception bias while be eaten up with it.
Brian and Drew,
Think of the last time someone had you to their house for supper and dessert. Now imagine that supper is over and the table is being cleared for dessert. What would your nice host think if you if you said, “You know, dinner wasn’t that great. I really did not like it. The meat was undercooked and the vegetables were just bland. But what’s for dessert?”
That’s what you are doing here. Come on guys. Jack puts out a show almost every day of the year. Of course there’s going to be a few shows that don’t get you super excited. But shrug it off and move on. You don’t need to go to his house and pee on his lawn. That’s what you are doing here.
I loved the show, but not everyone has a meteorology background like me, so of course some of you won’t enjoy it. I have done extensive research on the global warming farce myself because it is something I enjoy.
If you take real prepping (not Hollywood prepping) seriously, then you know that not all of it is fun. It’s important to sharpen your mind and your awareness also. Jack does a great job of keeping us entertained. But it doesn’t hurt to push on through and listen to the content and try to force yourself to be curious, even when you do not feel like it.
Ah I don’t mind the criticism much, it comes with the job. That said I mind the fallacies, such as a lack of facts, that is kind of insulting because it isn’t factual. Everyone is entitled their own opinions, no one is entitled to their own facts.
DrewfromOZ,
You illustrate one point made in the podcast. The argument against alarmists’ claim that rising CO2 is killing species is supported by many facts. That has nothing to do with pollution and our need to minimize/prevent it. Of course oil spills can be devastating and we should take steps to prevent them. We all agree with that. But that was never the issue in this talk. But for some bizarre reason you think that because I argue curbing CO2 will not stop droughts and restoring habitat is the key or that I demonstrate rising Co2 has not endangered any species, its loss of habitat, you then suggest I think an oil spill is OK?
If you are not just sniping and denigrating something you disagree with, at least provide a substantive criticism relative to the talk that can be discussed.
I listened to the entire podcast, and man was it hard. I had to put years of personal research and common environmental observation aside. I feel like there were alot of statements said that just drove me nuts, like “by the way, the arctic is actually cooling”….I can’t accept that when the permafrost is melting and arctic ice sheets the size of England are caving day after day. I can’t accept that when I see Sea Lion pups on the beach in California starving to death because they can’t find cold enough water along the coast.
THAT BEING SAID….I think what Jim said about the potential to restore regions locally is dead on. If we restored a billion acres of local microclimates across the world, then global warming would be a distant memory. While I wish Jim would acknowledge the existential, hyper wicked danger that global warming could wreak on future generations, I would rather work with him to restore ponds, forests, and lakes and actually do something in the here and now.
Raleigh first thanks for listening, second consider going to his site and reading the research behind his claims.
I do however agree with Mr. Steele on the need to restore ecosystem health and the points made by Jack on coal mining. Without looking at studies or data it seemes to me if remove a significant portion of mountains you will affect the local climate and potentially there might be a point where that can create affects on other climates. Certainly you affect a climate when you clear cut massive trees of deforest large swatches of areas.
As for the use of biofuel I think it can be responsibly done in the manner of Mark Sheppard.
Raleigh,
I will need to go back and listen, but I don’t believe I said the Arctic is cooling. I hope what I said was the recent warming measured in the Arctic, is due to ventilating heat from the subsurface when insulating ice was removed by the winds. To support that I relayed the evidence that the upper 700 meters of the Arctic Ocean are cooling as illustrated in this graph:
http://landscapesandcycles.net/image/92559374.png
from the MIT/Harvard study Wunsch, C., and P. Heimbach, (2014) Bidecadal Thermal Changes in the Abyssal Ocean, J. Phys. Oceanogr., http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-13-096.
I am not sure what your personal research was but I suggest reading about the Dansgaard Oechger events when air temperatures rose by 5 to 15 degrees C in a matter of decades every thousand years during the Last Glacial Maximum while CO2 hovered around 200 ppm. The growing consensus is those warm events were caused by heat periodically released from the oceans due to natural feedback mechanism. (Read Dokken 2013) The recent 20th century warming is very similar. If the recently lost ice was due to CO2 warming, the upper 700 meter of water should have warmed not cooled.
Regards baby seals and sea lions, I have witnessed a few here south of SF, but that’s what happens during El Nino events, and that is 100% natural. That you would blame such events on CO2 is pure speculation and likely a result of the constant media fear mongering and bombardment that every thing bad is due to CO2. The best models can not duplicate El Ninos when simply driven by CO2. We must understand natural ocean cycles and their effects before we can blame CO2. Climate changes naturally and when we better understand that, we can build a more resilient society.
Raleigh,
I just checked out your website and applaud your efforts with greenthumb films and see us as allies, so that if we “restored a billion acres of local microclimates across the world, then global warming would be a distant memory.”
Having never heard of your efforts until now, I am curious of your sense regards how much media attention is given to such restoration success gets. How often are we given hope that we can act locally with great success. My sense is catastrophic climate change gets a few orders of magnitude greater coverage, creates far more fear and saps our belief that we can make a difference other than stopping CO2. Such climate hype commandeers funds that could better be used for habitat restoration at all levels. As I documented, climate fear mongering has even hijacked several conservation success stories for example:
Walrus
http://landscapesandcycles.net/hijacking-successful-walrus-conservation.html
English butterflies
http://landscapesandcycles.net/hijacking-conservation-success-in-the-uk.html
Florida mangroves
http://landscapesandcycles.net/mangroves–hijacking-another-conservation-success.html
Great Interview! Interesting, Informative, good follow-up questions.
wow…and i was totaly engaged with this podcast. I plan to get your book and look through your site. something that was touched on, that really hit home was the comments about our young people and the spoon feeding of information with out opposing views. This could be a great textbook possibly for some home school projects.
I have a few family members that are heavy into the environmental movement. Perhaps they will be interested in your work. I will be sending them links.
For a guy making claims that others are being deceived by their perception bias he offered some generalized anecdotal evidence without specific objective evidence.
This is a logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent. If P then Q. Q therefore P. If you have perception bias then you are wrong. The climate scientists are wrong, therefore they have perception bias.
The great thing about peer reviewed science is that every aspect of a science paper can be analyzed, and retested to see if there are any errors in the conclusion. If there correlation of data and the hypoteses or hypothesis are proven wrong then one has an argument.
One science paper by one scientist does not damn all work, as that is also another logical fallacy.
By the way I have not made up my mind one way or the other. But I do know one thing, and that is one cannot judge the scientific merits of something based on what the government does or doesn’t do.
Yea well go to his site and READ the extensive research.
Chris,
Its a difficult create a good balance between providing engaging generalizations that outline the important issues vs providing too much supporting details that overwhelms the reader/listener, especially in an interview format. It was an issue I grappled with every day.
The most common criticism I got from people who reviewed my book before I published it was that I provided too much detail. I cut nearly 200 pages of details to make the book more easily read by the layperson, while maintaining enough evidence and detail. Still I was criticized for providing too much detail. But those were people I knew and who trusted me and my previous conservation efforts. They trusted my first two lines of evidence, and did not care about reading additional supporting evidence.
People who do not know or trust me understandably want more evidence, and I apologize if it was insufficient. So I would be more than glad to provide you with more details regards any issue you thought was too general. My desire is to promote thoughtful discussion and promote better environmental stewardship. Please let me know what you thought was insufficient.
Lavendarlou,
Thanks for the kind words. I am in the midst of posting a 3 part essay on the drivers of natural climate change since the age of dinosaurs. I hope students will find it valuable and help people understand how the earth went from a “hot house” with 4000 ppm CO2 and no glaciers or ice caps to our modern “ice house” climate with much more variably climate and weather.
Before we can claim CO2 has altered climate, and if so by how much, we need a solid foundation in our understanding of natural climate change, and our students must become more aware of the natural drivers of change. The shifting continents and the resulting effect on how the oceans store, ventilate and redistribute heat are by far and away the most important drivers of global climate change. Those changes have made the earth’s global climate more sensitive to minuscule solar effects. Although it undoubtedly contributes, the least important factor is CO2. At the local level landscape changes are the most critical.
Once I post those essays I would love to have your feedback and your critique on how useful they were for students.
Really? Climate change denial in 2015?
4 questions by the bloke who delivered that piece on trophic cascades you liked so much. The one about the wolves changing the deer behaviour and therefore the course of the rivers.
1 Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?
2 Does atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the average global temperature?
3 Will this influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?
4 Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?
By the way I am NOT happy about climate change, I’m not using it to push any political agenda, I do not want it to be happening. All the solutions seem to involve either a crash of the economy (something David Holmgren provocatively writes about doing on purpose) or way too much government for my liking.
To try to give you an idea of the extra energy due to CO2 is something like the equivalent of 4 hiroshima bombs per second.
That’s more than 2 trillion since 1998.
If that is still not enough have a quick look at ocean acidification on wikipedia and have a little think about how climate change and ocean acidification may affect trophic cascades.
You’re never going to really know what is going to happen but with the way things are looking if you haven’t got an eye on this, you’re not prepared.
I like your show very much, but you’re way off base here.
Regards
Russell
“1 Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?”
Answer yes, about one third of one percent to be exact. Most people don’t know how little CO2 really makes up the atmosphere. Did you?
“2 Does atmospheric carbon dioxide raise the average global temperature?”
Yes and initially a great deal! Up to about .030 percent at which time CO2 reaches an effective saturation limit. Here’s why it’s possible that doubling CO2 won’t make much difference. The carbon that’s already up in the atmosphere absorbs most of the light it can. CO2 only “soaks up” its favorite wavelengths of light and it’s close to its saturation point. It manages to grab a bit more light from wavelengths that are close to its favorite bands but it can’t do much more, because there are not many left-over photons at the right wavelengths.
The natural greenhouse effect is real, and it does keep us warm, but it’s already reached its peak performance. Throw more carbon up there and most of the extra gas is just “unemployed” molecules.
Even the true believer climate scientists will admit this because it is scientific FACT and has been largely understood for more than 100 years. The claim is that additional CO2 raises humidity and that causes warming, this is the actual official explanation but how many people such as yourself even know that yet you just believe it because the same people that say GMO Corn is safe to eat say so?
“3 Will this influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?”
Effectively due to number two above and the answer is no. However yes sure if you put the atmosphere up to 20% CO2 it would be an extinction level event of a disaster but current use can’t even get close to pushing it over .5% that is 1/2 a percent.
“4 Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?”
Yes and it isn’t that big a deal due to everything I just said above. What is a big deal is the dozens of other far worse toxins created by fossil fuels at every level as they are extracted and produced. Again dioxins, trioxins, mercury, sulfur oxide, etc, etc, etc.
I have no doubt that man has done incredible harm to the earth and the overuse of fossil fuels is part of the harm, it just ain’t CO2 that is the big problem.
If you actually have an open mind I suggest these two videos,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5c4XPVPJwBY
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ew05sRDAcU&feature=youtu.be
Then ask yourself why you are told that there are two choices, you believe in AGW or you hate the planet and can’t in anyway be an environmentalist. Did you LISTEN to this show, did you actually hear what was said.
Do you really think it is a stretch that the same system that lies about voting, drugs, GMOs, pharmaceuticals, diet and war might be lying about this too?
FWIW, 10 years ago when I was LESS environmentally concerned I totally believed in global warming. Then I got educated, I looked at a lot of different things. The motivation, who was behind it, the real suppressed science and most of all the actual data of what has happened since we were promised no ice in the arctic by 2012!
I personally think that belief in this weak theory to the exclusion of anything and everything else has done far more harm to our environment then any other single thing in the past 20 years.
When you get done with all that, google Maurice Strong.
Then know this
1. He is an oil billionaire
2. His current job is consulting with the Chinese government on monetizing carbon credits
This ain’t what you think it is bro.
And Maurice Strong? Carbon credits. This is a really bad idea. Too much government, too much money for the non real economy. It’s a shitty solution.
It is what I think it is, unfortunately, and wankers like this are going to make a shit-ton of cash from it, while doing too little, too late.
1 yup. 400 parts per million
2 Co2 effect does not saturate. You’ve been sold a pup.
There is some measurement done around 1900 which seem to show that this is the case but this science was superceded from the 1940’s on.
Co2 is mixed pretty well throughout the whole atmosphere (unlike water vapour- it’s dry up there) so what happens, to put it crudely, is that if you think of the atmosphere as layers, adding more co2 means more co2 in a layer above a ‘hot’ one. This mean that instead of the heat escaping into space, it moves up to that next layer and some of it is held in the atmosphere.
Effectively this means that when we add co2 the heat loss layer is higher in the atmosphere and the total heat in the atmosphere is increased. Do you see how this works? Air gets drier as you go higher which means less greenhouse effect, Co2 stays fairly constant proportionally. So adding more CO2 means more greenhouse effect higher in the atmosphere.
3 I’m not sure why you talk about 0.5%. Which is 5000 ppm.
More co2, more greenhouse effect. That’s the physics. Right there.
4. We’ll take the second video as a case in point. You REALLY are not paying attention here.
His graph at 1:55 shows quite clearly his source. You can build that graph yourself at woodfortrees.org
The vertical axis is the temperature anomaly. Yup that’s right, his own graph is showing a temp anomaly of about 0.5 of a degree.
The horizontal axis shows time from 1995 to present. Not even close to long enough. Also cherry picking. I mean really, you’re a smart dude and you get taken in by this?
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/catch-22-no-1/#more-7360
is a quick and dirty takedown of that nonsense.
Next graph at 2:19 graph begins at 1901. Again on a high point. Play with the graphs at woodfortrees.org Look at the noisy graphs, see the trend.
And yup they lie. They lie about wars and terrorists and drugs and democracy and all sorts of shit. But it’s the scientists here that are talking. The government doesn’t want to hear.
This is not a ‘my environmental disaster is bigger than your environmental disaster’ pissing contest. I’m not trying to score points, your vision for a better world as I understand it from your podcasts is very similar to mine. I ain’t fighting you, but I am telling you that you’ve got this one wrong.
Wow talk about cognitive dissonance. I was done when you got to claiming CO2 doesn’t have a saturation limit, given this is over 100 year old known scientific fact. I wasn’t sold anything, clearly you have been though.
And holy shit, you say this, “And yup they lie. They lie about wars and terrorists and drugs and democracy and all sorts of shit. But it’s the scientists here that are talking. The government doesn’t want to hear.”
You have to be out of your mind! The government has been salivating on taxing this shit for over a decade. 99% of the so called research being done here is being paid for with what? Public money. Good God, when someone wants to believe something they will damn sure convince themselves of it.
Russell,
Virtually no one argues against CO2 being a green house gas or that we have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The debate however is about climate sensitivity to CO2 and everyone will agree that CO2 COULD raise temperature by about 0.2 C. There is tremendous debate about the earth’s climate sensitivity to CO2, as witnessed by how models are all over the place and far warmer than observed reality.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
Back during the last glacial maximum from about 60 to 10 thousand years ago, the Dansgaard-Oeschger events caused 5 to 15 C increases and decreases in Arctic temperatures in just a decade or two. CO2 barely changed. When the Northern Hemisphere was rapidly cooling, in contrast CO2 was increasing. The causes of these climate events are still highly debated, but the EVIDENCE suggests CO2 is NOT the driver of those climate change events.
If you dont understand natural climate change, how can you blame CO2? The Dansgaard Oeschger events occurred with no more than a 10 ppm change in CO2. So why would you ever think that rising CO2 is causing the changes we observe now? What we are observing now is all about how the oceans absorb, ventilate and redistribute solar heated waters. The consensus based on Argo data shows the Pacific Ocean has not warmed in the past decade despite rising CO2. That suggests low climate sensitivity to CO2. Likewis the astern USA and eastern Antarctica have not warmed. Again that suggests low climate sensitivity to CO2.
Jim, we’re already at 0.6 degrees and would be higher if it wasn’t for the oceans taking up the heat.
The graph you linked to to is obviously to try to make the point that observations are not matching models.
Christy, who plotted the thing says this:
While there is much that can be discussed from these results, we wonder simply why the models overwarm the troposphere compared with observations by such large amounts (on average) during a period when we have the best understanding of the processes that cause the temperature to change. During a period when the mid-troposphere warmed by +0.06 °C/decade, why does the model average simulate a warming of +0.26 °C/decade?
Unfortunately, a complete or even satisfactory answer cannot be provided. Each model is constrained by its own sets of equations and assumptions that prevent simple answers, especially when all of the individual processes are tangled together through their unique complex of interactions. The real world also presents some baffling characteristics since it is constrained by the laws of physics which are not fully and accurately known for this wickedly complex system.
You will note from this a 0.06 degree per decade increase. Also you must know that the tropical mid-troposphere is only one part of the global climate.
There is no Dansgaard-Oeschger events in the holocene. (our current epoch which started 10 000 plus years ago, so no, probably not a dansgaard-Oeschger event.
And as to your statement:
So why would you ever think that rising CO2 is causing the changes we observe now?
The answer is that there isn’t anything else doing it! That’s it. End of the line. Looked and looked and looked. Nothing, zip, nada. Co2. Greenhouse effect.
Yes yes yes ,cold pacific ocean. Global trends, however, are up in the oceans as a whole. Why? Not sure. Doesn’t change the basic physics though.
Eastern usa, antarctica, blah blah blah, it’s cold outside therefore no global warming.
Really. Hand waving hand waving an misrepresentation. Your interview was all about habitat destruction, and therefore not climate change. Rather than the truth which is habitat destruction AND climate change.
Russell
Russell,
If you want to honestly discuss the issues, I suggest you use more evidence, instead of empty insults, such as “Eastern usa, antarctica, blah blah blah, it’s cold outside therefore no global warming. Really. Hand waving hand waving an misrepresentation”
Such comments reveal you would rather snipe than discuss. I provided those 2 regional examples that contradicted the idea of warming as a global phenomenon. Those examples illustrate how you must understand regional climate change before you can blame CO2, and how you must explain, not dismiss, blatant contradictions. But there are plenty more examples for those not blinded by belief. And if natural climate change is powerful enough to cool the USA and Antarctica despite rising CO2, it is powerful enough to warm the earth whether or not CO2 is a contributor.
Tree ring data shows no warming since the 1960s. Tree rings measure natural habitat, in contrast to the instrumental data increasingly recorded at airports. Much of the global avearge warming is due to minimum temperatures, not maximum, and the increases in minimum are best explained by landscape changes. The rate of warming in Greenland was greater in the 1930s (Chylek 2006). Records for the past few hundred years reveal cycles of warm water intrusions that warm the Arctic and transport southern fish.
References to a 0.6C degree warming deceptively implies CO2 is the driver of that century increase but for the whole USA maximum temperatures rose that much from the end of the Little Ice Age to the 1940s, and only due to a drought, just barely exceeded those past temperatures. The greatest rate of glacier retreat by far, at places like Glacier National Park , happened by 1940. The melt rate is slower now. The scientific consensus is CO2 concentrations couldn’t theoretically add any significant warmth before 1950. Despite more CO2, Argo data shows the upper 300 meters have not warmed or slightly cooled since 2003 (Xue 2012). Nor has the Pacific warmed in the last decade. And despite more CO2 satellite data shows no warming for the past 18 years.
Typically such contradictions would cause scientists to pause and reconsider a flawed model of climate change. And except for the alarmists who have hitched their funding and reputations to CO2 catastrophes, and their devoted internet snipers, more scientists are acknowledging the theory’s problems.
Dr. Hans von Storch is a prominent climate scientists and was a author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was interviewed in June 2013 and asked about the failure of global models to predict the current lull in the global warming trend. Dr. von Storch replied, “If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.”
Yet Russell you say “The answer is that there isn’t anything else doing it! That’s it. End of the line. Looked and looked and looked. Nothing, zip, nada. CO2. Greenhouse effect.”
Obviously you did not look very deeply past the hype that supports your blind belief.
You confuse higher temperatures from ventilating heat versus the theory that Co2 traps and accumulates heat and raises temperatures. The greatest warming has happened locally in the Arctic Ocean. But it only happened after the shifting winds of the Arctic Oscillation blew ice out to the north Atlantic, which then allowed stored subsurface heat to ventilate. As a result the upper 700 meters of Arctic Ocean has cooled as referenced earlier but raised air temperatures. A similar change in sea ice around the Antarctic Peninsula also resulted in ventilated heat. Polar warming has nothing to do with CO2 and in fact Arctic air temperature were cooling in the 1980s and early 90s, until the ice was blown away.
I mentioned Dansgaard Oeschger events because they raised temperatures 10x greater than what has been recently witnessed, in just a tenth of the time, without rising CO2. You need to explain such causes of natural warming, not dismiss them. And if you honestly “looked and looked” you would know the same dynamics causing Dansgaard Oeschger events are considered to be working today, due to ocean ventilation of heat, but less dramatically because there is less ice.
Obviously you know little about ocean acidification. I suggest it is you that should have a “quick think” about the past. During the Cretaceous period, named for the abundance of global chalk deposits formed from the calcium carbonate deposits from coccolithophorids. CO2 was believed to be as high as 4000 ppm, yet coccolithophorids did not dissolve in theoretical acid, they flourished. Coccolithophorids also pump Co2 into the air as they do today. I suggest you read about cycles of acidification due to upwelling and the biological response http://landscapesandcycles.net/ocean-acidification-natural-cycles—uncertainties.html
To summaize, you are the only one here handwaving with empty insults, your cherry picked details that fail to explain the bigger complex picture, and dismissal of the abundance of contradictions regards climate sensitivity to CO2. And obviously you did not read the copious details showing how wrong you are to claim “Rather than the truth which is habitat destruction AND climate change” That is just another of your empty assertions. Read the details at http://landscapesandcycles.net and then try engaging in a more substantive debate.
But Jim you are not a scientist, oh yea, never mind. LOL
Such comments reveal you would rather snipe than discuss. I provided those 2 regional examples that contradicted the idea of warming as a global phenomenon.
There is nothing to discuss here. It’s been done. And done to death. Regional examples do not contradict climate change as a global phenomenon.
The global system is complex and adding energy to the system will alter weather patterns as the system tries to stabilise. This will have different effects in different parts of the world.
Either you don’t know this, and therefore should not be commenting, or you do know this and are misrepresenting. Either way your message is spreading FUD. With no credible alternative explanation of what is happening. Even Anthony Watts thinks you are not worth listening too, and he’s desperate for anything to use against the ‘warmists’.
Nobody with any credibility supports your arguments.
And still no response at all on ocean acidification…
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2014/01/28/the-myth-of-ocean-acidification-by-carbon-dioxide/
Not even slightly good enough Jack. This isn’t science, this is cherry picking and misrepresentation. Either all the scientists in the world are part of a vast conspiracy or he should publish his findings and win a nobel prize.
There will come a time when you’ll have to go on air and admit you are wrong about climate change.
That day will not make me happy. That day will make me sad that another human being has realised how badly we’ve fucked things up for those to come.
Says the guy that read exactly zero of the research the MOUNTAINS of research on Jim’s site.
I have been an avid climate change enthusiast, because it seemed to make sense, and I suppose got caught up in the hype, I see the micro-climate theory as very plausible idea to get behind as well, as I am an avid supporter of holistic management, restoration agriculture, etc etc. I am curious though many of your examples of restore micro-climates had to do with places that were going through more drought like conditions. Is there examples you can point me too where regions are experiencing more precipitation than usual, or in my case heavy than normal rainfall events on a regular basis, rather than drawn out shower conditions (with possibly the same total precipitation over the season). Does the micro-climate change theory support the increased extreme weather events idea, or is that idea also hyped up (somewhat of false flag like concept in politics?). Cheers, great work Jack, you never cease to blow my mind
Curtis,
There is a see saw pattern between regions with heavier rains and droughts driven largely by the El Nino/La Nina effect and Pacific and Atlantic Multidecadal Ocillation. To start a peer reviewed paper on the subject is The influence of the inter-decadal Pacific oscillation on US precipitation during 1923–2012 by Dai 2012. When the southwest USA gets droughts Indonesia gets rains and vice versa. For example in 1997/98 when California was getting extreme rains Indonesia had droughts and fires. The Sahel has been getting wetter while the southwest got drier.
These oscillations alter sea surface temperature patterns that also set up atmospheric blocking patterns that cause storm systems to linger causing more drought or more rain. So those natural variations set up oscillating patterns that often last for 20 to 40 years.
Much of the extreme rains hitting the USA are due to the paths of atmospheric rivers or hurricanes, both of which are affected by El Nino events. Because the nature of these rains rob one region of moisture while supplying another, looking at just one small region for only a few decades is misleading if you are looking for trends.
I am in the Sierra Nevada right now and just visited our restored meadows and despite California’s drought it is lush and wetter than it had been in the past 40 years.
Come on then Jack, lets do this.
You say:
I was done when you got to claiming CO2 doesn’t have a saturation limit, given this is over 100 year old known scientific fact.
Where did you get this fact from?
I have shit to do, I am done debating this and wasting time when people have religious faith in something there is no point. You go “do this” with someone willing to waste their fucking time on it.
As pointed out here in the show, neither Jim nor I claim that CO2 has no effect simply that the effect is minimal compared to what the main stream claims and that individual effects on bio regions individually are far more the cause of 99 out of 100 things currently blamed wholesale on global warming.
Now I am done, I am under no obligation to entertain your need of comment debate.
You have shit to do? So do we all, Jack.
You do have an obligation to be correct, and prove you know what you are talking about.
The thing is that I can prove that the co2 saturation effect is bullshit, why it’s bullshit and that the level of bullshit that it is is analogous to claiming the earth is round.
I have no religious beliefs around this whatsoever, in fact, I don’t want it to be true.
But the facts are, this guy is a crank, you gave him a platform, and climate change is big, scary and will affect those you love and those I love alike.
Why not talk to Toby Hemmenway about this?
Regards
Russell
Tell you what at this point you have reached the point where I tell you to go fuck off out of my face. I have my opinion, I have backed it up with facts many fucking times. I don’t have time for your shit. I will NOT tolerate you any further as to goating me on this. You want to state your views, fine as long as you follow the sites content and comment rules. You fucking tell me what I am OBLIGATED TO DO one more time and then next time you type in the tsp address you will find yourself looking at a blank screen. I point you to this and then kindly say one more time, go fuck off out of my face with your climate religion, http://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/about-tspc/disclaimers-policies-2
😉
‘For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.’
– H.L. Mencken
‘Always listen to people that say they are searching for truth, never? those that say they have found it’
– Unknown
‘The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.’
– Stephen Hawkings
‘Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.’
-Richard Feynman
‘Even if fifty million people say a foolish thing. It is still a foolish thing.’
-Anatole France
‘To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.’
– Thomas Paine
‘Those who don’t read the news are uninformed, those who do are misinformed.’
– Mark Twain
Talk to Toby, he’s more than scientist enough, anti-government enough and permaculturist enough.
I’m not trying to goad you, I’m not fighting you, I just can’t stand lies, and half-truths.
I’m not your enemy.
You seem to not comprehend “fuck off out of my face”. YOU WORRY ABOUT YOU! YOU WORRY ABOUT WHO YOU TALK TO. Got it?
The last straw I predict will soon fall!
You have NO FACTS you have only theory that is the current state of this all scientifically. I am done, if you choose not to be, you will be done soon at least here.
Russell,
I suggest you offer more evidence, instead of insulting handwaving. There is a bit of a debate on what might constitute greenhouse gas saturation. However the IPCC implies it happens to some degree writing in their Physical Scientific Basis for the Greenhouse effect,
“The two most abundant gases in the atmosphere, nitrogen (comprising 78% of the dry atmosphere) and oxygen (comprising 21%), exert almost no greenhouse effect. Instead, the greenhouse effect comes from molecules that are more complex and much less common. Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect. In the humid equatorial regions, where there is so much water vapour in the air that the greenhouse effect is very large, adding a small additional amount of CO2 or water vapour has only a small direct impact on downward infrared radiation.”
https://www.ipcc.unibe.ch/publications/wg1-ar4/faq/wg1_faq-1.3.html
Because their are less greenhouse gases in the polar regions (water vapor) CO2 alarmists focus on the loss of Arctic ice as “evidence” of Co2’s power, because the high humidity nearly “saturates” the tropical atmosphere.
65 million years ago in the Cretaceous when crocodiles lived in Arctic and palm trees were growing in the Antarctic, Tropical ocean temperatures were not much higher than today yet proxy evidence suggests CO2 was 10X higher at 4000. Even at those high concentrations, CO2 driven models fail to simulate the Cretaceous temperatures, underestimating the Arctic temperatures. That too suggests 1) the CO2 effect approaches saturation and 2) ocean heat transport is a more powerful driver of climate.
To clarify, I think more CO2 can presently still add some warmth but I doesn’t seem to be as much as alarmists’ claim nor is it catastrophic. I don’t think the atmosphere is totally saturated with CO2 but it is approaching that limit.
Regards catastrophic effects, is Russell arguing we would be better of in the Little Ice Age that ended in just 1900 in the USA? During the depths of the LIA trees were not sprouting for hundreds of years, and tree line in the Sierra dropped. Is Russell arguing the a longer growing season, whether natural or CO2 induced, is catastrophic?
Thanks for the reply.
Co2 is not approaching saturation. Not even slightly. It just doesn’t work that way.
Why don’t we start this from the beginning?
Lets start with Knut Ångström’s assistant Herr J. Koch experiment from 1900/01 where (and I shall paraphrase) he filled a tube with co2, measured the amount of radiation, removed 2/3 of the co2, measured the amount of radiation and found almost no change, thereby showing that the co2 effect was saturated.
Are we in agreement here?
Regarding the rest of your post; that’s a strawman argument and I won’t bite.
Russell,
We are far from agreement. First your example is non-sensical and supports my argument. If 2/3 of the CO2 was removed and no change in radiation, then you are making an argument that changes in CO2 made no difference, and thus the test tube must have been saturated.
If you know the equation for how CO2 affects energy, then you would know that as the concentration increases the amount of back radiation from CO2 becomes increasingly less.
The formula for converting the change of CO2 to watts/m2 is a natural logarithm which plateaus. In other words it saturates.
Regards avoiding the rest of the supporting evidence, you seem quick to dismiss everything that contradicts your beliefs, by calling them cherry picking, strawmen, etc. Good science must address contradictions, not profess blind belief.
Sorry for the late reply, life is busy.
The point of the co2 tube experiment seems to show that Co2 can be saturated, but this is only true at so called ground level. The atmosphere is not a single unit, it isn’t a layer like glass or plastic in a greenhouse.
So this experiment which showed co2 effect saturating was a red herring and is where the problems with thinking it would saturate started.
In fact what happens is that the infrared radiation (heat) from the earth moves upwards and hits a greenhouse gas molecule, (co2, h2o or some other gas) and that molecule radiates energy in a random direction, or the energy hits the surrounding air molecule and transfers that energy, creating heat.
Adding more co2 simply moves more co2 higher into the atmosphere creating more opportunity for energy to be trapped in the earths system, rather than escaping into space. Thus the atmosphere heats up.
Either you agree with this science or you do not.
Your example of the concentration of co2 increasing, leading to less effect is what was observed in the Koch experiment.
You are right that the effect plateaus, but it doesn’t work that way in the atmosphere, because CO2 saturation at lower levels does not have an effect, since it is the layers from which radiation does escape that determine the planet’s heat balance.
CO2 theoretically will saturate, it’s just not how it’s working at the moment in the atmosphere.
I have a question for you Jack. I have had a hard time remembering the plant that you said your Asian customers jumped right into buying due to how well they are known in the Asian countries. I was wondering if you said the plant was the plant mentioned in this episode the Li Jujube or if it was another one. Thank you for the help and thank you for the podcast Jack.
Both Jujube and Goji but Jujube they go nuts over.