Thanks for your detailed calculations on the quantities involved. Another critical factor not often mentioned is that if you have a power station far from suitable geology, you may need to pump pressurised or liquefied CO_2 a considerable distance. While venting CO_2 out of a smoke stack at high temperature doesn't present an immediate threat because turbulence mixes it into the atmosphere, a large-scale leak at ground level of cold gas could be catastrophic (see e.g. http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/index.php#effects).

John, on your doubts about how a given concentration of CO_2 could affect the climate, have you worked the numbers (see e.g. http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/physics-of-the-greenhouse-effect-pt-1/)?

There ia an unmentioned Problem. What problems there may be in a new technology are unknown because those problems do not exist untill the technology is introduced. When we invent technology we invent the associated problems. These are called side effects. The potential for unforseen side effects with this technology are enormous. We just do not know what we might be creating.

There are severe energy penalties even before the compression stage. The version which uses oxygen enriched air requires pressure swing absorption (PSA) via numerous banks of machines to achieve continuous high volumes. The post-combustion CO2 scrubbing process uses reversible chemical mixtures based on amines or ammonia. These processes need energy to refresh the spent chemical and to condense or make up evaporative losses.

Nonetheless I believe Rudd promised $500m or so for clean coal research in his useless watered down emissions trading scheme. That means he not only broke an election promise but he is away with the fairies on technology issues as well.

what an interesting and, i believe, authoritatative discussion by a relevantly qualified person of CCS. it's an article that should be compulsory reading for federal govt ministers enamoured of the CCS fantasy. i share [as a qualified civil engineer, for what it is worth] john harborne's scepticism that CCS is any kind of feasible large scale responsible solution to CO2 emissions from coalburning. anyone can put together a little 'experiment' to pump CO2 into the ground that 'works' - they'll pump a bit of CO2 into the rock under the Tuggerah Lakes power station, for example - there was a news item yesterday on this. But the issues of finding enough suitable accessible geological space, and risks of venting and pollution of groundwater, are the defining issues on any real scale.

disappointing twist in the tail, though - harborne, a metallurgist, turns out to be a sceptic about global warming induced by CO2, on what seem to be no more than vague a priori grounds, that john can't believe so little CO2 gas up there could make such a huge difference to the upper atmosphere's heat retention properties. but john is no more a climate scientist or upper atmosphere researcher than i am. i would prefer to trust the global scientific consensus reflected in four IPCC reports. there is heaps of good theory, and there is heaps of evidence of observed side effects in terms of arctic and greenland icemelt, atmospheric and ocean surface layer warming, changing weather patterns leading to inland temperate zone dessication, and increased cyclonic activity, etc etc.

what is it about climate change that makes otherwise sensible people -experts in their own fields - turn into denialists or sceptics, in the face of so much persuasive evidence? it is just that it is too scary for some people to accept that dangerous climate change is, almost certainly, happening?

I am rather amused by tonykevin 1's post. I probably know more about global warming theory (for that's just what it is … a theory) that the warmers are pushing, than I do about CCS. He has assumed that I am an expert in the CCS field and accepts my exposé without quibbling, but seems to think I know little about global warming.

Despite the four IPCC assessment reports, proof of CO2-driven global warming has never ever been produced by the so-called environmental scientists. Prof Tim Flannery is not a climatologist, nor is Al Gore, but the warmers take their every pronouncement as gospel. As far as persuasive evidence is concerned, Prof Michael Mann's hockey-stick graph, so loved by the warmers and initially by the IPCC, has been convincingly proven to be fraudulent.

The IPCC has based its projections for catastrophic climate change on the output from 23 computer models (GCMs), no two of which give the same answer. Talk about high-tech. crystal-ball gazing! Yet these same 23 models failed to foresee the downturn in global temperatures that have occurred over the past decade. Average global temperatures rose by only 0.7°C over the 20th century, but the average temperature has fallen by that same amount in the past two years.

Tonykevin 1, you talk of scientific consensus. Science does not operate by consensus, and that should be the first lesson you should learn.

John, a workmanlike job of demolishing CCS and much appreciated.
It is a pity that you turn out to be Climate Change Denier and that is the motive for the article. I believe it is quite pointless arguing with you people as you appear to be off in a little world (?cave)of your own.

We need to wave goodbye to the psychology of prior investment and make a determined start on building a sustainable Australia.The electricity generating industry is a very appropriate place to start.
Fortunately Australia has many sources of renewable energy - wind,solar thermal,tidal.Geothermal,while not strictly renewable,can provide large quantities of base load power for a very long time.
We also need to get started on a nuclear power scheme using advanced reactors powered by uranium or thorium.
Whatever you may think about the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the plain fact is that burning coal is not a sustainable activity.Try applying the yardstick of sustainability to any of our current activities.If you are honest you may get quite a shock.

Good one John, what a lot of us suspect, another government and industry short term political solution, hoping it is vague long enough to be re-elected and not harm any of their funding source, that is, the unions. Mind you a lot of the Liberal Party seem to think the same way, dear old Petro Georgio is a champion of seqestration as well .. thankfully he's leaving parliament at the next election.

Really, the only way forward if you want to reduce CO2, I don't believe all the AGW hysteria but do believe we should continue to advance our community, is nuclear power.

There is no way we will suddenly stop producing coal fired power stations to give us power, the other methods, wind, solar just aren't up to it and are hobby methods at best. It is just not going to happen, so stop beating yourselves into a frenzy about it, we're not going back to living without electricity!

To tonykevin1, please stop worrying about climate, what you are seeing and what you write "there is heaps of evidence ..etc" is just climate and weather, don't take it out of context to be "proof" that the world is in trouble. There have always been extreme weather events, always will be - it's not our fault, you folks have to stop trying to make the human race responsible and get off the guilt trip, start liking yourselves and those around you instead of the dislike and hate (I'm not saying you hate, but lot's do)

Even if australia were to stop coal fired power stations tomorrow, it would take a month or two of China building more, to make up - face it, we're irrelevant in the big scheme of things .. but I do think we should tidy up down here as it is nice place to live.

i forgot to mention the whole geology- paleontology analysis written about extensively by dr andrew glikson in his writing. this work 'proves' from geological analysis that periods of high carbon content in the atmosphere - above 350 ppm - have been associated with the long eras of much higher average earth temperatures - 6 degrees higher - than now, leading to an unfriendly environment for human life. good for dinosaurs, maybe, but not for us. we are trying to hold onto the global climate we still - just - have.

these CO2 ppm data are really crucial in this area. to simply shrug them off is ignorant and irresponsible. when john trots out the old turkey of the world average being cooler now than 11 years ago - everyone knows by now that 11 years ago was an exceptionally hot year. look at the trendline from the graph of the past 30 years, or better still look at the 300 -year graph. these are readily available, and entirely convincing that CO2- equivalent levels are rising in the industrial era from around 250 ppm to now nearly 400 ppm.

as for the argument that it cannot be 'proved' that this is the cause of global warming, that it's 'just a theory' ... ! nor can darwin's theory of evolution be proved. he simply spent a lifetime amassing data that is consistent with it. yes, some people still prefer to believe the world was created by God in seven days. good luck to them and good luck to john too.

John's article is both concise and timely; the proposed remedies for AGW, including Clean Coal, are as illusionary and deceitful as the concept itself. The criticisms of John's comments about AGW are derisory; I note Kevin has referred to Glikson; Professor Glikson had a recent article published at Barry Brook's site and this article was also published at Jennifer Marohasy's blog; Glikson's article was seminal alarmism and confused regionalism effects with global tipping points based on abrupt and catastrophic climate changes related to variations in CO2; papers by Luthi et al and Shindell show otherwise. As for the idea that CO2 and temperature are causally connected, this cog in the AGW chimera has well and truly been demolished; perhaps the best example is the famous Scotese and Berner based graph;

http://www.junkscience.com/images/paleocarbon.gif

Hi John, I'm a recently graduated chemical engineer who completed a final year project designing an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant - the new-generation station that you have described in your article. I don’t mean to be critical, it’s a complex process to understand, but the power generation steps need to be made clear to understand the benefits of the new process; hydrogen gas is combusted in gas turbines and heat from the combusted gas is used to produce steam which is sent through steam turbines. These two power generation steps give the power station a higher efficiency than older plants. This equates to a massive gain in electricity production – which is ‘lost’ when used to compress the CO2 and other waste gases.
John, your assessment of carbon dioxide being a hazard is correct however why have you focused on it as a contaminant to potable water supplies? The ability of it to produce carbonic acid in strong enough concentrations to be a significant danger should be slim to none (that’s not to say that a geo-sequestration site should be located next to a dam or other water source). A real problem that is being weighed up currently is what to do with the H2S (hydrogen sulphide) by-product which is toxic to the environment in very low concentrations (CO2 gas isn’t toxic, it just asphyxiates).
Another issue, is that while most of the CO2 technologies are mature and have been used in industry for decades, they are not proven on the scales that would be required for large power plants. To my knowledge the largest CO2 sequestration project has been undertaken by Statoil, but that only would be able process about one fifth of the waste gas processed by a 1000MW power plant.
I don't think that clean coal is a long term solution, but an important short term solution, to allow time for the development of other technologies while still combating CO2 emissions - unless you want to take the nuclear option.

John,

A very informative article on CCS as others have noted. And, as others have noted too it is a pity you had to spoil it at the end by your gratuitous effort to deny the climate science.

Did you follow PhilipM's link and read up on the physics of the greenhouse phenomena? You should as should the other deniers.

John: Given the problems you describe, why do you think the Rudd government is both committed and determined to proceed with development and use of CCS? Why would anyone, let alone a government desperately trying to ward off recession, throw $500m. at the development of technology which seems destined to fail?

I have argued that the financial cost of applying CCS technology is such that the price of electricity generated from coal would be unable to compete with electricity generated from geothermal heat – based on Geodynamics generating cost estimates.

That not so little problem can of course be overcome by government subsidies. Rudd has stated that he is more than willing to provide those subsidies in the form of cash ($3.9 billion) and free emission licenses. That may make electricity produced from fossil fuels ‘affordable’ and ‘competitive’ with geothermal power until 2015. But thereafter?

Clearly, government believes that CCS will be able to effectively deal with global CO2 emissions. However, it has yet to explain why major emitters (China, USA) would consider using technology which is a logistic nightmare, expensive and could put their economies at a competitive disadvantage.

I much appreciated the (mostly) supportive comments from PhillipM, Daviy, Taswegian, rpg, cohenite and davey.

My article concentrated on black-coal power stations. But let’s not forget that black coal currently accounts for only about 35 per cent of anthropogenic generated CO2. The balance of the estimated 50 per cent from all stationary sources comes mainly from lignite, cement manufacture and iron smelting. Not hard to calculate the extra CO2 to sequester.

If by some miracle the fossil-fuel power generators were replaced by wind, solar or nuclear, you are still left with cement and iron (for steel), which are responsible for 20-25 per cent of anthropogenic CO2. You cannot smelt iron without coke and cannot avoid roasting limestone (CaCO3), which is the main constituent in cement, thus emitting CO2. We will still continue mining coal for steel and roasting limestone, until they are exhausted or until the sustainability zealots get steel and concrete banned.

Comments from davey (17/1) were great. Re the much improved efficiencies of new-generation IGCC power stations, a report in London Telegraph (21.12.08), mentioning that the UK government aims to save about 200 Mt of CO2 emissions by 2020, by generating 15 per cent of the country’s electricity from wind power. Instead of new-generation stations, that 15 per cent equates to around 100,000 wind turbines. Currently there are “only” 198 onshore and offshore farms, or 2,389 turbines – only about 97,000 to go! And the warmers call wind farms sustainable development! What about the colossal amount of energy, concrete, steel and other resources needed to build them (and they do have a use-by date), not to mention the blight on the landscape? Not only that, but five-sixths of the current lot of wind farms in UK were idle during Britain’s recent severe cold snap – no wind.

My reference to contamination of potable/brackish aquifers was simply to highlight a potential hazard. Near-liquid CO2 in water is much more reactive and much more concentrated than gaseous CO2 in water (i.e. carbonic acid). The latter is only weakly ionic and therefore mild, as in fizzy drinks.

Another post awaiting.

Among the many sceptics and warmers I know, none has any liking for CCS.

That said, I turn my attention to comments from tonykevin 1, Manorina and kulu, who dwelt on my being an AGW sceptic and on sustainability. My responses:
• The outputs of GCMs are only as reliable as the inputted data – GIGO. IPCC’s AR4 stated bluntly that their climatologists’ knowledge of the effects of aerosols and cloud dynamics was low, and yet they were rash enough to base their catastrophic climate projections till 2100 on incomplete data. As an analogy, if your PC were carefully programmed with all sorts of data to forecast the winner of this year’s Melbourne Cup, you might be astounded to find your horse ran poorly, simply because you failed to input data on the little-known scare effect of a bird flock on the turf. Climate is extremely complex and poorly understood.
• Warmers cannot seem to comprehend that the anthropogenic CO2-causes-global-warming link has not been established beyond the fact that, yes, CO2 has been steadily rising from the 285 ppm pre-industrial level (IPPC value), and so has temperature – but in decades-long fits and starts. However, that doesn’t prove that CO2 is driving warming. Oh yes, there are heaps of papers saying so, but most are hypothetical (on positive feedbacks and the like) and none has yet produced the proof positive – no “smoking gun”. The IPCC’s projections are based purely on untestable hypotheses. Sceptical scientists do agree that the 100 ppm of anthropogenic CO2 (plus 20 ppm or so more of CO2e) has caused about 0.2°C of the rise during last century.

Wrt tonykevin1’s first post, I would point out that climate change is not a brand-new phenomenon – it’s been happening for millennia. Ice-melts are nothing new. How did Greenland get its name in the tenth century, unless the ice had melted beforehand? And anthropogenic CO2 was definitely not the cause! In the past few days it has been reported that current sea-ice levels (satellite measured) are as they were in 1979. IPCC AR4 didn’t anticipate that setback either.

JohnH,

There is a difference between denying or undermining the science behind the general acceptance of the anthropogenic causes of accelerated climate change and questioning the world's ability to deal with it.

I, like you don't for a moment believe that renewable energy such as wind and solar energy are likely to come close to fixing the problem although of course they can make some contribution to reducing GHG emissions along with reforestation, perhaps a little bit of CCS and whatever else turns up.

I am not a scientist myself but have read enough literature about climate change to make me believe that there is an extremely strong probability that our GHG emissions have caused some global warming already and that this will escalate as time goes by. I will think again when enough evidence comes out to satisfactorily explain what is causing the global warming trend if it is not GHG and to explain why increased GHG in the atmosphere should not lead to increased warming in the future.

I am not a scientist but I have become a conservationist over the last 10 years as I have become increasingly aware of the continual damage being done to the environment both at a local level and on a global scale. Climate change is just one of the problems facing us, perhaps the worst one, but the one environmentalists have grabbed onto as a focus for their efforts to bring about change in the way the world uses its resources.

Wind and solar energy will not in themselves fix the climate change problem let alone all the other environmental problems that the world will have to face. I, like James Lovelock (I think) actually believe it’s already too late to prevent a collapse of society as it has evolved but if anything effective IS to done it must start by addressing the ultimate problems of population growth and growth in per capita consumption.

Mike Pope, I have great difficulty in comprehending the enormity of CCS in the Australian situation, given its seemingly insurmountable difficulties and the lack of suitable injection rock. I can only surmise that Mr Rudd has been poorly advised on the promise of CCS, as he has on the AGW religion, because he has listened only to IPCC adherents.

On 21/1 kulu wrote: “There is a difference between denying or undermining the science behind the general acceptance of the anthropogenic causes of accelerated climate change and questioning the world’s ability to deal with it”. I have extreme difficulty in agreeing with any of that statement. “General acceptance” equates to “consensus”; AGW “science” is hypothetical and unproven – shonky even – the best example is Mann’s hockey stick, but many others have been identified by sceptical scientists. Why is it that James Hansen prefers to use questionable surface-based temperature readings, rather than those from balloons and satellites (even though he administers NASA’s satellite measurements)? Why do GISS’s temperature curves not concur with those from other satellite sources, when they all measure the same, or very similar, thing? Why does Hansen edit GISS’s curves, to his advantage? “Accelerated climate change” – accelerated compared with what and when? Surely, you don’t call a 0.7°C increase over 100 years “accelerated”. Temperatures have been rising overall ever since the Ice Age. Since anthropogenic CO2 has accounted for about only 0.2°C of that 0.7°C, what effect would there be in eliminating anthropogenic CO2 from the air? Activists seem to think it possible to stop climate change – which only shows their lack of grey matter.

Have you read Prof Charles Birch’s book “Confronting the Future”? Published in 1975, its 360 pages expounded exactly the same philosophies that our current environmental activists do – close down fossil-fuel power stations; limit population growth; sustainable development; etc (except that he reckoned the world would largely grind to a halt before 2000). BUT WITH TWO EXCEPTIONS – he didn’t mention climate change or CO2. Yes, I too believe that environmentalists have grabbed onto climate change to promote their cause.

Excellent analysis John, and very useful for combatting the CCS proponents (i.e. the coal industry and their political servants).

There's nothing to be gained in debating climate change theory. I accept the evidence for AGW - in fact, I think the situation is far more dire than the IPCC4 suggests, and I think we're already past the point of irreversible and catastrophic climate change - but nothing I say will change the minds of AGW denialists.

But agreement on climate change theory isn't necessary for the current discussion, which is on "clean coal". All posts so far have been unanimous in challenging CCS as a viable means of addressing the massive pollution of coal-fired power stations.

Let's ditch the phrase "clean coal": it's simply a nonsequitur, and a deliberate greenwash by the coal industry. Coal is *dirty*. If it's used as a fuel, there's no getting around the fact that extracting energy from it produces not only CO2, but also highly toxic wastes (as the Tennessee disaster has demonstrated). The CO2 and toxic wastes are all pollutants, and have to be disposed of somewhere - and until recently, that "somewhere" has been the atmosphere.

Do we want to continue using coal as a cheap energy source, and live with the inescapable pollution it causes? I haven't heard anyone advocate this view, not even the coal industry. So this leaves us with three options: we pay a lot more for coal-fired energy so that the pollution is collected and disposed of more carefully (the coal industry's self-interested preference); we build nuclear power plants to displace fossil-fueled plants, and give ourselves an even more intractable pollution problem; or we pay the extra for non-polluting renewable energy, including the cost of weaning ourselves off dirty coal.

My choice is to pay the extra for renewable energy and a cleaner environment. AGW is simply an additional reason to do this, and creates some urgency to make the switch as quickly as possible.

JohnH,

Since your reply to my last post I have read up on the "controversy" generated on the science behind Mann's hockey stick graph. I found the following amongst other things that has me convinced that the criticisms of Mann's science has been hyped up to serve only the purpose of skeptics and not science.

From the US based National Research Council's Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate...

"The Committee consisted of 12 scientists from different disciplines and was tasked with explaining the current scientific information on the temperature record for the past two Millenia, and identifying the main areas of uncertainty, the principal methodologies used, any problems with these approaches, and how central the debate is to the state of scientific knowledge on global climate change."

And..

"The panel published its report in 2006.[28] The report agreed that there were statistical shortcomings in the MBH analysis, but concluded that they were small in effect."

Chappo

You’re dead right … nothing you say will change sceptics’ minds, because we’re still waiting for the AGW “smoking gun”, and we are not suckers falling for AGW alarmist propaganda. I notice, btw, that you put yourself on the same plane as Al Gore and Tim Flannery – their dire warnings are more way-out than even those of the IPCC’s experts.

Moreover, your use of “filthy” is both offensive and wrong. Flannery constantly used the term in his “Weather Makers” for emotive effect, when referring to “anthracite” (a term he wrongly applied, in his ignorance, to coal in general).

By your reasoning industrial processes should be banned, if they generate some nasty emissions or effluents. The manufacture of iron and steel products is one such. The trick is to limit their release to the surroundings. But industrial accidents are always possible and do occur, even in the best of regulated circumstances. To be sure, your Tennessee incident was on a large scale, but I’ll bet it is the only significant coal-fired power station accident you know about, so why blow it out of proportion?

Atmospheric emissions from power stations consist almost entirely of CO2 and water vapour. Scrubbers remove SO2 and electrostatic precipitators take care of all but a smidgen of fly ash (for burial or similar). Sure, fly ash contains a miniscule amount of uranium and thorium (as does the earth itself) but the radiation dosage from it is only a fraction of the background radiation that each of us endures annually – much less than from one X-ray.

CO2 is the stuff of life and is not “filthy” – in fact market gardeners use around 1000 ppm of CO2 in their glass houses to greatly improve crop yields. No doubt vegetation around the world is currently benefiting from the relatively small increase of 100 ppm (0.01 per cent) from human activity – and don’t forget that that amount (one molecule in each 10,000 molecules of air) has been very slowly rising over the past 250 years.

Btw, I have no connection with fossil fuel industry.

Kulu,

I am surprised that you found it necessary to “read up” on Mann’s hockey stick, in view of the fact that it has been around for years. I am not surprised that you found the view held by the US National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate – why should their view be any different from that once held by the IPCC?

However, you surely have realised that the hockey stick graph once held a pre-eminent position in the IPCC’s first three assessment reports, but not in AR4. Why? Because the IPCC has reluctantly concluded that the graph was totally wrong. It was wrong because Mann’s methodology and statistical analysis were extremely questionable. In fact he had been selective in the data he chose for his graph – clearly, he wanted to show that average global temperatures had been relatively flat over the past thousand or so years, thereby eliminating the inconvenient higher temperatures of the Medieval Warm period and the chilliness of the Little Ice Age, and to promote the alleged warming of the planet since the Industrial Revolution. Just what the IPCC wanted.

If you really want to read up on the subject, I suggest the two links below (there are many others). The first is by Ross McKitrick, the Canadian statistician who sorted out Mann’s work, after Steve McIntyre smelt a very rotten rat in Mann’s data.

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/APEC-hockey.pdf

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/monckton/monckton_what_hockey_stick.pdf

JohnH,

I choose to believe the US National Research Council’s Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate and many others on the Mann's hockey stick graph and I am suspicious of the two Canadians' motives for embarking on their anti Mann campaign. I do understand however that there were some errors in Mann's work. These have not proved fatal to their basic findings or to the science underlying the global warming trends.

I've had enough of this argument, it's going nowhere and anthropogenically induced climate change will continue with very little real effort by governments or business to prevent it.

Kulu

Why, then, do you think that the IPCC dropped Mann’s hockey stick graph from its AR4 after having so enthusiastically adopted it for its first three assessment reports? It wouldn't have been because Mann's work didn't stand up to scientific scrutiny, would it?

Wrt your final paragraph, everything points to a gigantic con by the green fraternity to have their revolutionary ideals adopted so as to “save the world”. If you check out on what the so-called Club of Rome was espousing in the late 1960s, if you read Charles Birch’s 1975 book, “Confronting the Future”, you will find that the greens are promoting the same survival agenda as they were back then. However, they adopted and are now employing GHG-induced global warming as a beautiful driver to achieve their ends.

I’m absolutely certain that you cannot produce one solitary bit of evidence that PROVES that global warming is caused by CO2. I know you can’t because the IPCC’s projections are based purely on hypotheses which the IPCC has never succeeded in converting to hard evidence.

Your warmers' case is rapidly wearing thin. Or perhaps you are unaware that within the past week Dr James Hansen’s recently-retired boss, Dr. John S. Theon, dumped on him. Dr Theon publicly declared himself a sceptic and stated that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.”

Then, a day later, Dr J. Scott Armstrong, prominent forecaster and founder of the International Journal of Forecasting, came forward with a press release saying that not only did his organisation’s audit of IPCC forecasting procedures showed they “violated 72 scientific principles of forecasting”, but that “The models were not intended as forecasting models and they have not been validated for that purpose.”

John, the point I made in my earlier post is that debating AGW on this thread undermines the value of your article, which retains its relevance regardless of whether AGW exists or not. It's therefore disappointing that you continue to use this thread to push your denialist agenda.

You further undermine your own credibility by misquoting me, either deliberately or negligently. Not once did I use the word "filthy" to describe coal. Inflating your opponent's claims so that you can deflate their argument is a cheap highschool debating trick, but unlikely to trick this more sophisticated online audience.

Your last post then goes on to contrive a supposedly generations-old global conspiracy of greens dedicated to the subversion of business as usual. Ah yes, the "coordinated enemy" ruse. Again, I don't think anyone is going to fall for such patently absurd claims, any more than they would fall for the proposition that you are working on behalf of a secret global cartel of transnational fossil fuel producers. Let's forget the Da Vinci Code conspiracy theories and stick with facts rather than politically-motivated myths.

As I said in my first post, I'm not going to debate the existence of climate change. If you don't have anything constructive to add in relation to the article on "clean coal", then I suggest that this thread has probably expired and it's time to move on.

Chappo

My apologies. You twice used “dirty” re coal, not “filthy”. So I was negligent, but there’s little difference in their meanings, is there?. Certainly, “filthy” was Flannery’s word of choice.

Wrt my continuing the warmers’ versus deniers’ debate, I was quite happy to present my essay, which was by invitation btw, to inform interested persons and basically leave it at that, but the rot set in with tonykevin 1’s tirade, followed by Manorina’s, both of which were downright abusive. I simply couldn’t let those sorts of comments pass.

As to your “more sophisticated online audience”, you could have fooled me. In fact, I believe the only really relevant comment offered was that from engineer davey on 17.1.09.

You accuse me of “contriv[ing] a supposedly generations-old global conspiracy”. Get real, I’m not a Dan Brown! If you haven’t acquainted yourself with the contents of the 1970s’ green tracts, such as Birch’s “Confronting the Future” – and I suspect you haven’t – then you are not qualified to pass judgement on what I wrote, are you? And don’t tell me that those pursuing population reduction, renewable energy sources, sustainability etc, as they were in the 1970s, aren’t now utilising AGW alarmism to promote their aims. The 1970s’ alarmists weren’t onto AGW then, because the climate was cooling. Btw, “conspiracy” is your word, not mine, but it does seem apt.

“Confronting the Future” is readily available, second-hand, on the Internet for under $7 and is a good buy, if you need to discover just what the current alarmist thrust is all about. I might add that Professor Birch had a full-page article in the Sydney Morning Herald on 29.2.1972, entitled “Science for Survival” – yes, he was pleading for survival of the planet even then.

As to my being a denier, I suppose you have heard of the record-breaking chilliness that has pervaded Northern Hemisphere recently. And I suppose you reckon, as many warmers would have us believe, that this temperature downturn was foreseen in the IPCC’s GW theory – which it wasn’t. But it’s good to have faith, I suppose.

JohnH, just lobbed into this thread and found your comment to Kulu:

"Why, then, do you think that the IPCC dropped Mann’s hockey stick graph from its AR4 after having so enthusiastically adopted it for its first three assessment reports? It wouldn't have been because Mann's work didn't stand up to scientific scrutiny, would it?"

No, your answer to your own question is wrong.

Before I continue, just a minor quibble. The IPCC could NOT have "dropped Mann’s hockey stick graph from its AR4 after having so enthusiastically adopted it for its first three assessment reports" because Mann et al did not have the paper published till 1998.

While there were issues with the MBH98 paper, subsequent research to TAR using other data sets and sources reinforced the so called "hockey stick". There are now many more "hockey sticks" and are all included in the AR4 in Chapter 6 - if you would bother to look.

You are either exhibiting a lack of knowledge of the AR4 or are deliberately being obtuse (I will not accuse you of deliberatley lying, yet). Which is it?

Either way, this diminishes any credibility that you purport to have in your article or subsequent responses, in my opinion.

Oh yeah, John:

"Clean Coal" is a misnomer. But hey, throw some money at the technology (something could eventuate in a couple of decades) - it will placate the vested interest groups.

To be brutally honest, you can't shut down an industry like that overnight - for whatever reason.

Q&A

Whoops, you certainly have caught me out. I worked from memory on the inclusion of Mann’s hockey stick in IPCC’s assessment reports and ended up with a sloppy comment.

It appeared around six times, and quite prominently, in the TAR. But, without checking, I thought it had been dropped from AR4. Of course, you are right – it appears in AR4 in Figure 6-10 and is also incorporated in Box 6.4, Figure 1. However, it certainly doesn’t hold the same prominence as it did in TAR, which means, presumably, that it has lost its credibility.

Fault has been found with Mann’s work, as you acknowledge, but I’m unaware of any criticism of the numerous other hockey sticks, 12 in total. However, since all are based on proxy data sets, and are similar in form, it seems reasonable to view their validity with suspicion. When one considers the wide variation in results in Figure 6.10, graph to graph, and the mess in Box 6.4, Figure 1(a), it is really surprising that any firm conclusion could have been drawn from them.

I’m surprised that you question the credibility of my essay on “clean coal”. Where do you find it incredible? As to the various posts I have submitted, they relate to my sceptical position on AGW, and were incidental to the thrust of my essay. If certain individuals hadn’t been abusive, they would not have appeared. So what did you find wrong or whatever with my article?

I agree with the content of your second post.

No John, it hasn't lost its credibility. While it did have issues, the tenets contained within remain just as strong. The reason why the MBH98 stick doesn’t hold the same prominence in AR4 is because there is a preponderance of other evidence supporting the theory of AGW.

It seems you question the validity of all proxy reconstructions on the premise they have the same shape and form as Mann’s, notwithstanding they are arrived at from different data sets and sources.

Do you really think they haven’t been scrutinised, dissected and reviewed to the nth degree given the amount of flack Mann received?

Tell you what; get rid of them all, who needs past climate anyway. We can start afresh, measure all sorts of stuff from now on and in 100 yrs we will know if the trend is up or down.

John, you did have had some good things to say in your article, you just should have left out the last 3 paragraphs.

It’s like Al Gore, he had some good things to say about global warming – unfortunately, he marginalised a lot of people because of his political propaganda – albeit the substance of his message was correct.

Q&A

Visitors departed … now your post.

The first comment I will make relates to your first paragraph. “Theory of AGW” – yes, “theory”, because no proof has yet been provided.

You say that Mann’s hockey stick doesn’t hold the same prominence because of the preponderance of other evidence. Really? I suggest to you that, if the hockey stick was the answer to the IPCC’s prayers (and initially it was), then it would still have held pride of place in AR4.

I do question the validity of the other proxy reconstructions, even though they, presumably, are based on different data sets to Mann’s effort. For one thing, proxies, by definition, are estimations of temperature and therefore possess intrinsic errors – they are not thermometer readings.

You have only to look at the wide variation from one plot to another in the 12 curves shown in Figure 6.10 (b). Why is one curve, say CED2004, not more acceptable than, say, MBH1999 or MSH2005? Why shouldn’t one data set be more reminiscent of actual temperatures than any other? At, say, 1300AD the vertical spread of temperatures is approaching 1°C, which is greater than the instrumental increase over the past 150 years. And bear in mind that each worker’s curve is an average fit.

Various expert statisticians at the US National Academy of Sciences were scathing of Mann’s hockey stick study because he “used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions” and because he downplayed the “uncertainties of the published reconstructions”. In other words, he fudged.

If you regard the composite blur shown in Figure 6.10(c) or the messy tangle of curves in Box 6.1, Figure 1, you could construe that temperature showed no fluctuation of note from 800AD to around 1900AD. But historical records attest to considerable centuries-long warmth during the Medieval Warm Period and chilliness during the Little Ice Age. You’d never guess it from the graphs though.

Sorry, but Gore and IPCC have not proved that anthropogenic GHG drive temperature and their climate projections are pure crystal-ball gazing.

Hi JohnH,

you finished your latest post with:
"Gore and IPCC have not proved that anthropogenic GHG drive temperature and their climate projections are pure crystal-ball gazing."

It's this kind of deliberate polemic that makes debate with denialists so difficult.

I go to great pains to qualify my statements when making climate change presentations, and I emphasise (as you do) that AGW is simply a theory. As any scientist knows, theories are never "proved", they are simply assessed against the evidence for closeness of fit, correlation with projections etc. "If I throw the ball up, it will come down" - and yes it does at exactly the predicted speed and momentum, suggesting Newton's theory of gravity warrants respect.

The hypothesis "Increases in atmospheric CO2 will lead to changes in climate" is subject to the same scientific principle. We apply our understanding of science to this hypothesis to generate projections of what these changes will be, and we test the evidence, modify the hypothesis, re-test, etc. And we submit this process to open scientific scrutiny, particularly peer assessment.

For you to suggest that such cautious, carefully-modelled projections based on AGW theory are "crystal-ball gazing" is insulting to *all* scientists, as it discredits the fundamental scientific approach of putting forward hypotheses and testing them against the evidence.

The case for AGW will never be "proven" (any more than you can "prove" the existence of gravity), but there is evidence to support it, and the precautionary principle must then apply given any cost-vs-risk analysis.

And even if AGW turns out to be wrong, why would anyone argue against reducing pollution, improving energy efficiency, and investing in clean, renewable energy sources so that we can preserve our irreplaceable fossil fuels for more valuable uses (such as medicines, plastics, fertilisers)?

John, you do yourself no credit by engaging in hyperbole and polemic. Perhaps you might re-read your own Clean Coal article and ask yourself what point were you trying to make? Was it to construct a soapbox, or was it to expose something important about the current approach to coal?

Q&A,

I am pleased you have devoted so much effort in responding to JohnH and other "skeptics" in such measured terms and with obviously cogent arguments.

While it might feel to you like beating your head against a brick wall since the skeptics refuse to be swayed, I believe it is still a worthwhile exercise on your part as there are doubtless many other more open minded people reading your posts. Many of these will surely end up discounting the fatuous arguments of the skeptics.

Chappo.

Your argument astounds me.

You state: “such cautious, carefully modelled projections based on AGW theory are ‘crystal-ball gazing’ is insulting to *all* scientists, as it discredits the fundamental scientific approach of putting forward hypotheses and testing them against the evidence”.

Perhaps you should analyse carefully what you have said – because I am not aware of any evidence for AGW that has been tested, giving an irrefutable outcome, which, by definition, is needed to validate the AGW hypothesis. If the evidence cannot be furnished, then the fundamental scientific approach is invalid.

You say: “The case for AGW will never be proven (any more than you can ‘prove’ the existence of gravity) but there is evidence to support it”. Please, what is that evidence? Moreover, with gravity, cause and effect have long been “proven”, because the proof is in personal experience and observation, but where has cause and effect been reliably and conclusively observed with AGW? If you say there is correlation between Keeling Curve and average global temperature, I suggest you check out solar activity (sun spots) versus temperature, because the correlation is considerably better.

Yes, “Newton’s theory of gravity warrants respect”, but not so the pseudo-science of AGW.

There are around 23 “crystal-ball” GCMs, no doubt all cautiously and carefully modelled, but no two produce the same result – so which “correct” ones did the IPCC experts select for their careful projections? The data input to the GCMs are incomplete, and that’s by IPCC’s own admission.

Earth’s climate is complex, with its elements constantly interacting, and the IPCC obviously hasn’t yet come to grips with its complexities, hence the need for the GCMs to be constantly tweaked.

I’m sure you are aware that average global temperatures have cooled over at least the past five years and especially over the last two, but initially the IPCC projected that temperatures would steadily rise – how do you explain that? I put it to you that IPCC’s projections are no different to mathematical extrapolations – unpredictable or unreliable.

I don’t dispute your penultimate paragraph, but your last paragraph is risible.

Kulu

I appreciate your thoughts. The people that count are aware and they are not close-minded.

If you follow JohnH’s argument to its conclusion, the only way to test the original hypothesis of AGW is to conduct the experiment. That is not rational, nor is it logical – for obvious reasons.

There is a plethora of metrics that can test the hypothesis - a particular analysis, when it supports another’s conclusion, adds robustness to it. JohnH does not appear to understand or appreciate this; whether it be tree rings, corals, ice cores, stalactites/mites, boreholes, etc or the various GCMs - regardless other indicators.

Over time, when there is a preponderance of conclusions from different sources (showing similar trends for the palaeoclimate temperature record, for example) then the initial hypothesis becomes theory.

Direct evidence in support of a theory can take a long time to present itself, and is often determinant on the technology/s available at the time. However, this in itself is not a sufficient condition to reject the theory, as JohnH is wont to do wrt AGW. Evidence of Einstein’s special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy is a case in point.

Even a 'wanabe' atmospheric physicist like a retired Novocastrian metallurgist would have difficulty ‘explaining away’ tropospheric warming together with stratospheric cooling.

JohnH

Snide and snarky remarks that the IPCC indulge in crystal-ball gazing just demonstrates to me you have no intention of engaging in reasoned or rational discourse, with me or anyone else, about climate change.

Time series analysis (in general) utilising time series filters (in particular) are excellent tools to help real scientists analyse trends. They are far from infallible (as alluded to in my response to kulu), however, they are most definitely not an example of a “crystal ball” as you allude to in your polemic to me, Chappo and others. They are infinitely better than any “analysis” I’ve seen come from any of your comments.

You combine outright denial of real trends, in whichever metric, which are abundantly clear and undeniably statistically significant, with stubborn refusal to accept what the numerous proxy-reconstruction temperature data sets show prior to the satellite era.

You’ve also repudiated GCMs without clearly understanding what the GCMs are or what they model; or how, where and why they do what they do. I intimated in a previous comment that you (notwithstanding your stated time honoured expertise in metallurgy) just want to dismiss any scientific support (past, present or future) for AGW out of hand.

Your response to me and others does not alter my perception that you are just an anti-AGW sophist and don’t know what you are talking about, but that is only my opinion.

I agree about your views on CCS, I’ll leave it at that.

The claim that human activities have played a significant role in changing global climate trends is obviously not one that can be proved beyond any doubt at all as there are so many variables, known and possibly unknown, controllable (GHG, clearing etc) and uncontrollable (sun spots, earth's orbit etc) that are involved in what causes our climate to behave as it does.

On top of this there are problems with establishing accurate data particularly from the past. There are also difficulties and some legitimate controversies involved in measuring some of the variable causes and effects of climate change - Newton was lucky he only had to explain gravity, not piece together the dozens of interrelating variables that effect climate.

In spite of these difficulties there are some provable facts that to my simple mind explain why global warming is much more likely than not to result from human activities.

It is a fact, is it not, that the burning of fossil fuels, and the clearing of tropical forests emit sequestrated CO2 and other GHG's into the atmosphere?

It is a fact, is it not, that CO2 and the other GHG's allow light from the sun to pass but absorb reflected heat from the earth?

If these are facts; and notwithstanding possible negative feedbacks that may mitigate the warming effects of increased GHG's then everything points towards an ever warmer climate in the future.

JohnH, I ask, are you saying:-

that the scientists have got it so wrong that global warming is unlikely to result from our activities,

or climate change may result from our activities but we need not be sufficiently concerned about it to warrant any meaningful action (ie the risks of doing something outweigh those of doing nothing, or, if it does happen others can deal with it)

Q&A

Really, your sinking to personal attack and invective does not surprise me, because this seems to be a trait among the warming fraternity when their bullying gets them nowhere. Quite often though, the sceptic is alleged to be in the pay of the fossil fuel industry. I notice, for instance, that Dr Michael Mann only a few days ago vehemently attacked one of his critics (Lawrence Solomon), claiming he received fossil fuel funding; this attack was in relation to Mann et al’s paper in Nature, purporting that the Antarctic is warming. Solomon’s criticism followed Mann’s admission that he had “carefully interpolated” temperature data – put crudely, he guessed the necessary values.

I would have thought that readers of these posts would have realised that my use of “crystal-ball gazing” was metaphorical. Perhaps my judgement was misplaced. The point I was making, of course, is that climate is so complex, with a huge number of interacting factors (some unknown) that it is impossible to foretell what the future holds.

We have been regaled over time with dire warnings that the polar regions would melt and that average global temperatures would progressively rise. But what has happened? Current sea ice and temperatures are at 1979 levels. We have been told that sea levels would rise dramatically – no they haven’t.

Re hockey sticks, may I suggest you read “The winter of incomparable cold” in New Scientist, 7.2.09, and then compare its data with those in AR4, Figure 6.10 (b). Strangely, the hockey sticks seem to have missed these important climatic events.

“Direct evidence in support of a theory [hypothesis!] can take a long time to present itself”. Climate scientists have been striving to find direct evidence since the 1970s (e.g. see National Geographic Nov. 1976 “What’s happening to our climate”, pp.576-615). How much longer will it take? Because, 40 years on, the science is still far from settled and just about all of the so-called evidence is controversial. In the meantime, governments around the world are being held to ransom and many are in turmoil over what to do.

kulu

I don’t believe any rational sceptic would argue the toss over whether or not human activity has affected climate. It’s a question of degree. Sceptical scientists argue that GHGs do increase warming, but it’s very small – around 0.2°C over the 20th Century – and that the rest of the 0.7°C rise is due to natural fluctuations.

One important issue concerns the surface-based weather stations, because surveys have shown that many are poorly maintained or have disappeared (mostly when USSR dissolved), and many have been warmed by urban development. So the historical temperature record is somewhat questionable. Balloon and satellite sensors are the most reliable, but they have only been employed since about 1978. Strangely, James Hansen reportedly still relies on surface-based instruments for his GISS graphs.

Of course anthropogenic GHGs released by burning fossil fuels and other sequestered sources enter the atmosphere. No argument. However, despite the billions of tonnes of CO2 that have been emitted, the change in atmospheric CO2 content is small. Since industrialisation began the level of CO2 has risen from only 0.0285% (IPCC estimate) to 0.0385%. It is that tiny difference of 0.01% that the IPCC’s experts reckon is leading the world to catastrophe.

The IPCC’s hypothesis is that the 0.01% causes water vapour to increase, causing temperature to increase, and so on (i.e. positive feedback). Now, kulu, do you really accept that 0.01% added to the air over 200 years – i.e. one molecule in every 10,000 molecules of air – can cause catastrophic warming and climate change? You would never pick the effect of 0.01% extra CO2 from background climate “noise”. GHG water vapour itself is more potent than CO2, and consider how much "noise" it creates from place to place, day to day.

Re your final paragraphs. AGW temperature, yes, but only slightly, and, yes, AGW is likely to result from our activities, but insignificantly – evidence in the historical record shows that the MWP, and the earlier Roman WP, were warmer than now. How can the IPCC be right when AGW is still an untestable hypothesis? GCMs are only tools.

JohnH,

A .285% to a .385% increase in CO2 is a rather large 35% jump in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. And if a mere .285% of the stuff played a significant role in providing the earth with a climate that has allowed 6.5 billion humans, there domesticated animals and plants plus a multitude of other complicated living things to exist then that set-up must surely be threatened by the rapid addition of so much more of it.

The fact that more GHG's have been pumped into the atmosphere than appears to have been absorbed by it is reason for concern as obviously the excess has been taken up elsewhere including the sea which itself has a finite capacity to safely sequester CO2. It is now showing signs of becoming more acidic as a result of its own CO2 burden and that is not good for the crustaceans etc who (I think- correct me if I'm wrong) are also long-term sequesters of CO2 and are essential for much of marine life.

On top of all this, once the sea and the other natural sequesters are themselves bloated with CO2 than, presumably the atmosphere will retain the full load of our emissions and there levels will rise even faster than they have done to date.

Lastly, if non-anthropogenic sources are to blame for climate change (as obviously they have been in the past) then what are the precise causes of this happening so rapidly, sun spots, wobbling earth, tilting earth's axis or changes to its orbit around the sun? What body of science is there to back these claims up and to provide credible evidence of it?

Sorry, one more thing - tiny amounts of substances emitted into the atmosphere (far less then our CO2 emissions) have had very profound effects on it. It didn't take huge amounts of CFCs to create a hole in the ozone layer with all the consequences that could, and has flowed from that

JohnH, your random and inexact use of evidence suggests that you have an ideological rather than scientific objection to AGW.

For example, you say "You would never pick the effect of 0.01% extra CO2 from background climate “noise”". On what scientific basis do you make this silly claim? You seek to emphasise that this is only 1 extra CO2 in 10,000 molecules, as if this can make no possible difference. Yet if we remove 4 CO2 molecules per 10,000 (i.e. all the atmospheric CO2) then the world's trees, grasses and crops would quickly die. kulu gives CFCs as an excellent example, but there are plenty of others where extremely low concentrations have major effects. Mercaptan is used to give household gas its smell: in fact, we can smell butyl mercaptan at concentrations as low as one molecule in 10 billion. At the same concentration as current CO2, butyl mercaptan is an overpowering stench; at only 0.01% stronger, it becomes life-threatening.

John, you ask "do you really accept that 0.01% added to the air over 200 years – i.e. one molecule in every 10,000 molecules of air – can cause catastrophic warming and climate change?" Yes, clearly we do - and in fact, that very climate change is already upon us. Melting of glacial and polar ice is beyond doubt. Increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events is beyond doubt. Rising global temperatures is beyong doubt. Rising sea levels is beyond doubt.

What hasn't been established is the cause. But whether it's sunspots, industrial activity or the flatulence of flat-earthers is irrelevant: increased concentrations of atmospheric CO2 are potentially catastrophic, and it would be criminally negligent not to take urgent action for mitigation and adaption.

My last comment on the subject is that we should take heed of global insurance companies. These transnationals make unseemly amounts of money from accurately assessing risk. In 2000 the global insurance council announced that the cost of damage resulting from global warming would, by 2050, exceed the world's capacity to insure against. I think I'll put my money on them being right.

Hi kulu

Yes, a 35% hike does seem large, but it is misleading. If you compare 285% to 385%, or 0.000285% to 0.000385% the hike is 35%. So the figure of 35% really means nothing. What does matter is the change in absolute terms of 0.01%, which is small. (Btw, you quoted 0.285% and 0.385% … you omitted a zero … should have been 0.0285% and 0.0385%.) Wrt your assessment of the 0.0285% having contributed to the warmth of the planet, water vapour is and has been by far the greatest contributor. The percentage of atmospheric water vapour varies between about 2% and 4%, depending on location. Now, that means that the amount of water vapour, which is a more potent GHG than CO2, is from 500 to 1000 times more abundant than the current level of CO2. No prizes for which has the greatest influence on global warmth.

Planet Earth has had much higher levels of both CO2 and temperature, but not always concurrently, in the past. See, for instance, http://www.junkscience.com/images/paleocarbon.gif , but, if you don’t wish to believe the diagram, there are similar references elsewhere.

You mention absorption by the sea – yes, it has increased the “acidity” of the sea. The pH of the ocean is around 8.3, which means that seawater is slightly alkaline. According to a Scientific American article a couple of years back, the pH was reckoned to have fallen to 8.2 (pH 7.0 is neutral). Seems that the sea is handling the absorption pretty well, although marine scientists argue that “acidified” seawater affects CaCO3 shell formation. Maybe, because, like most alarms over anthropogenic climate change, the so-called evidence is highly controversial. In any case, why don’t alarmists say “seas are becoming slightly less alkaline”? The answer is that “more acidic” is more emotive.

The atmosphere can hold a lot more CO2 than currently (see the link above). Sceptical scientists are confident (they could be wrong of course) that there is an upper limit of CO2 (about 700 ppm or 0.07%, if I remember correctly) where CO2 will cease to have further influence.

Chappo

Silly as it may seem, global temperatures do vary enormously, constantly, so how can one isolate the contribution due to anthropogenic GHGs from fluctuations due to other sources? (Obviously, I misjudged your ability to interpret the meaning of “noise”.) Could be that some IPCC experts can do so on paper, but that’s not the same as actually measuring it with instruments.

I appreciate your admission that CO2 is plant food – alarmists usually call it “pollutant”.

All well and good to provide several analogies, but they are false, because they don’t compare with the GHG-AGW situation. (Btw, you forgot Ebola virus and malaria parasites.) However, all of them are good examples of proven cause-and-effect. But with anthropogenic GHGs, cause-and-effect has never been convincingly established – even the circumstantial evidence is disputed.

For instance, according to IPCC experts, the signature of increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. It's not there.

You quote examples due to global warming (glaciers etc) but there is no proof that anthropogenic GHGs are the cause of global warming. As I’ve said before, there is greater correlation between sunspot activity and GW than between rising CO2 and GW. Sunspot counts have been done for umpteen centuries and it is pertinent that sunspot numbers were very low during much of the Little Ice Age, especially during the Maunder (1645-1715) and Dalton (1790-1830) Minima.

Btw, if you check, you will find that since at least 2004, average global temperatures have declined (markedly over 2007-2008), glaciers have stabilised and sea levels have hardly moved – contrary to IPCC projections. Coincidentally, the sun has been exceptionally quiet for almost a year – zero sunspots.

Unbelievably, you say “rising global temperatures [are] beyond doubt” (but are they?), followed by “what hasn’t been established is the cause” and “increased concentrations of atmospheric CO2 are potentially catastrophic, and it would be criminally negligent not to take urgent action …”. You don’t know the cause, but you want action … now that is like a blind man driving he knows not where, panic-stricken

JohnH,

Sunspots.

In the context of our concerns about climate change as it might effect us and the next couple of generations (people alive today or who will be born during my lifetime) sunspots may indeed contribute a little to climate variability but stellar physicists generally believe - on the basis of an, as yet, fairly limited understanding of the relationship between sun activity and climate - that that contribution is a small part only of the warming trend we are seeing. Sunspots have an 11 year cycle so they will tend to lower average temperatures when activity is lowest and vice-versa. We cannot in any case do anything about sunspots but we can (but won't) do something about GHG's.

Water vapour.

Water vapour is indeed the a potent GHG and again its role in the feedback loop is not fully understood but it reacts to climate change rather than being a primary "forcer" of it.

2008 coolest year?

Indeed as is constantly brought up by the skeptics 2008 was the coolest year... but wait for it... since 2000. I can't remember if you brought this one up or not. But we are talking about trends not about specific years. I understand too that it is still amongst the 10 hottest years since recordings began 100 years ago.

Kulu,

I agree that scientists’ understanding of the effects of sunspots on Earth’s climate is limited at this juncture. But bear in mind that the connection between anthropogenic GHGs and climate is just as limited – in fact, there are no empirical data (that is why the debate continues unabated!). As I’ve said before, the IPCC projections on temperature rise versus CO2 increase are based solely on hypotheses.

I haven’t involved myself much with sunspots, but usually read whatever I come across on the subject. From what I have gleaned, the sunspot-climate hypothesis revolves around changes in cosmic ray intensity. It seems that absence of sunspots allows more cosmic rays to penetrate into Earth’s atmosphere and they, in turn, increase microscopic moisture droplet formation (rather like in a cloud chamber). In turn, the moisture develops increased cloud cover which shields Earth from the sun’s heat, thus cooling its surface. Seems reasonable – but proof is needed. As I said, the correlation between sunspot intensity and average global temperature is better (around 80%) than between CO2 and AGT (around 25%). The sun is exceptionally quiet at present – Cycle 23 is complete but Cycle 24 hasn’t started yet.

One of the few web sites I read is that by Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist. Just today he had a comment on sunspots, You might like to view it at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/21/now-well-over-30-days-without-a-cycle-24-sunspot/#more-5774 . His comment is followed by one that states that the January sunspot was from Cycle 23, btw.)

I would argue that water vapour is a major driver of climate. Our planet derives its heat from the sun; therefore the sun is the main driver (when the sun disappears over the horizon or behind an overcast sky, then planet Earth cools).

I agree with your final paragraph. However, IPCC assessment reports have stated that temperature will rise with rising CO2. What has happened, though, is that CO2 is still rising, albeit slowly, but average global temperature has declined since about 2000 – it should have risen. If you haven’t seen the graphs lately, look at these: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20081216.html

Kulu

Last year I met up with an Ozzie colleague that has spent a lot of time in Antarctica. His speciality is ‘cosmic rays’. He confirms cosmic rays have relatively insignificant effect on global warming compared to GHG’s ... in his so humble opinion.

Water vapour is a significant GHG but what a lot of’ wanabe climate scientists’ fail to understand is that it is very ‘short lived’ (days compared to decades for CO2). Of course, these same people also fail to appreciate that ‘cloud production’ is primarily a function of temperature – you add energy to a system, it heats ups, water evaporates and then falls out somewhere as rain or snow. Try doing an advanced Google Scholar search on Andy Dessler for specifics.

I look in now and then at Mr Watts’ blog site, but was really put off when he “published” Roy Spencer’s paper before it was reviewed by his peers. I have yet to see Roy’s retraction on his ‘ocean cooling’ gambit when it was shown conclusively that there were errors in the Argo floats data set used to make these claims. What’s worse, Spencer’s claims were made after the errors became known. Don’t get me wrong, I hope Roy is on to something, but I am not going to hold my breath.

If you get a chance, look at the threads, comments and links contained within, at these sites.

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/how-not-to-analyze-data-part-4-lies-damned-lies-and-anthony-watts/

http://tamino.wordpress.com/?s=anthony+watts

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/07/aerosols-chemistry-and-climate/#comment-93013

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/instrumental-record/langswitch_lang/sw

Our wanabe says:

“... bear in mind that the connection between anthropogenic GHGs and climate is just as limited – in fact, there are no empirical data” - Wrong, he has no understanding of atmospheric physics/chemistry.

“that is why the debate continues unabated!” – Wrong, the “debate” (in the scientific community) continues (as it should) in climate sensitivity and attribution research.

“As I’ve said before, the IPCC projections on temperature rise versus CO2 increase are based solely on hypotheses.” It has been hypothesised that the Sun will shine tomorrow.

The guff continues, then:

“I would argue that water vapour is a major driver of climate.” – Who is arguing with him?

Cont’d

Cont’d

JohnH goes on:

“Our planet derives its heat from the sun; therefore the sun is the main driver (when the sun disappears over the horizon or behind an overcast sky, then planet Earth cools).”
And take away CO2 and the planet will be a big ice ball. Btw, ever wondered why night time maximums are increasing or the diurnal temperature range is shrinking?

“What has happened, though, is that CO2 is still rising, albeit slowly”.
and it appears we are going gang-busters to increase its rate exponentially.

“average global temperature has declined since about 2000 – it should have risen.”
He clearly does not know anything about trend analysis, let alone signal, noise and natural variability.

Yes indeed, look at the graphs, and if you can’t understand them, read the text:

“As a result of climate change, what would once have been an exceptionally unusual year has now become quite normal. Without human influence on climate change we would be more than 50 times less likely of seeing a year as warm as 2008 ...

... The rise in global surface temperature has averaged more than 0.15 °C per decade since the mid-1970s. Warming has been unprecedented in at least the last 50 years, and the 17 warmest years have all occurred in the last 20 years. This does not mean that next year will necessarily be warmer than last year, but the long-term trend is for rising temperatures.”

Next month we will see Watts, Marohasy, Carter, Evans and wife, and the usual cabal attend the annual Heartland Institute’s gabfest in New York – can’t wait to see the spin.

Meanwhile, all the world’s major decision makers are preparing for the COP 15 in Copenhagen in December – not so march to argue the science with the ‘deny-n-delay’ brigade, but to nut-out how they are going to adapt to a warmer and wetter world and to rethink energy use and land management practices.

This is where JohnH could have valuable input, he prefers not to.

Thanks Q&A,

You have saved me the job of responding to JohnH.

I will take a look at those web sites you noted.

I have a pretty good handle on the climate change science (from a layman's point of view) but learn more all the time from reading books and following blogs such as this one.

Climate change is a problem that desparately needs addressing. But if we were lucky and the scientists hypotheses were wrong then there are plenty of other environmental problems facing us that if not addressed could lead to the same outcome for civilized society.

If, and it's a big if, the world were able to address the climate change issue the measures needed to do so would go a long way towards addressing many of the other "threats" such as potable water shortages, degradation and loss of arable land, loss of biodiversity and wild fish stock collapses. Population and per capita growth cannot continue ad infinitum (or even over the next few decades) if the climate change and other issues are to be meaningfully addressed.

Kulu,

Sorry to say, but your reading of “climate change science”, especially blogs, has misled you. As I said previously, I rarely read blogs, because most of the contributors, even when they have real scientific knowledge, simply rant. And much of their rhetoric is pure “cherry picking” anyway. There is never any decisive outcome – that is why the debate has continued ad nauseum for decades. Many of the warmers have an agenda (e.g. “saving the planet”), while others simply have blind faith, rather like those who are religious nutters.

You say: “Climate change is a problem that desperately needs addressing”. I imagine you mean anthropogenic climate change, because climate has changed naturally for millions of years. But no one, not even IPCC experts, has yet proved anything but a minor connection between human activity and global warming. Every claim made that anthropogenic GHGs have melted polar ice caps or glaciers, or have increased hurricane frequency or severity, etc, have been shown to be invalid – in fact, data involved in several studies have been shown to have been corrupted (the recent melting of NW Antarctica, for example). Really, I don’t need to pursue this line of explanation – all I need to mention is Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, where he is into hyperbole like none other, but to the warmers he is a deity.

What must always be kept in mind is that the Little Ice Age chilled Earth from about 1400AD to about 1850 (some say even later), and then the planet commenced to warm up, as it did during earlier periods in our history (the MWP, for instance). So why shouldn’t the current warmth be part of Earth’s natural hot/cold cycle? The climate-change fraternity is hell-bent on blaming human activities – but, despite decades of trying, they have got nowhere, although they have managed to fool governments.

Perhaps you might like to visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harold-ambler/mr-gore-apology-accepted_b_154982.html .

I make no attempt to further debate with Q&A. I put his attitude and ill-mannered personal attacks down to a sad lack of discipline during his formative years.

Last post. Bye.

Yes, here here to your debating strategy John. There is indeed no point trying to have a rational scientific argument with someone who prefers to rely on stereotyping of opponents, conspiracy theories, deceptive and selective quoting of evidence, and an inability to understand even the most basic principles of science such as the meaning of "proof" or how percentages work.

I look forward to kulu's and Q&A's future contributions on other threads: I've found their posts to be well-informed, informative and open-minded.