Monday, February 15, 2010
The Persistence of Warmie True Believers
Ronald Reagan is credited with the following insight about lefty intellectuals--their trouble was not..."that they are ignorant, but that the know so much that isn't so."
With the walls of their predictions crashing down around them, the Warmie true believers dismiss as trivial the mistakes and corruption recently exposed throughout the community and repeat the old standards, as if mere repetition equals convincing on the merits. Here is MIT professor Kerry Emanuel, repeating what he calls "proven facts" aboutglobal warming climate change. I think he gets some things very wrong.
With the walls of their predictions crashing down around them, the Warmie true believers dismiss as trivial the mistakes and corruption recently exposed throughout the community and repeat the old standards, as if mere repetition equals convincing on the merits. Here is MIT professor Kerry Emanuel, repeating what he calls "proven facts" about
He writes that the earth is roughly 60 degrees warmer because of a few greenhouse gasses which gasses, he alleges, make up "only 3% of the mass of our atmosphere."
Nitrogen--780,840 parts per million (ppm) or 78.o84%;
Oxygen--209,460 ppm or 20.946%;
Argon--9,240 ppm or .9240%.
Together those three gasses make up 99.954% of our atmosphere or are 999,640 ppm. None of these three are greenhouse gasses. All the rest of the trace gasses have to occupy what's left and the bulk of these trace gasses is CO2, at 387 ppm. Calling it and the other seriously rare gasses 3% by mass inflates the importance of these trace gasses by a factor of 100. Water vapor gets to 4% of the wet atmosphere by volume, especially close to the surface, and is responsible for most, but not all, of the greenhouse effect. Professor Emanuel doesn't mention water vapor at all and leaves out its overwhelming effect to the alleged 60 degrees warming (namely about 57 degrees of it--95%). Wonder why he left that out and used a different measure (mass) 100 times more 'impressive' than the usual ppm?
He's right that the recent 40% rise in ppm of CO2 diffuse in the atmosphere (from the pre industrial agreed upon 280 ppm) almost certainly comes primarily from humans burning fossil fuels and from "changes in land use." Indeed, if there were no feedbacks, doubling CO2 now would theoretically increase the air temperature by anywhere from .35 to 1.8 degrees F. Professor Emanuel cites the highest as if it was the agreed upon number. Not so, but not wrong, per se, either as that is part of the agreed upon range. Finally, he is right to say that the rise in temperature in the past century was about 1.4 degrees F.
He later admits that the computer models (which are the whole of the "evidence" that the climate change will be catastrophic) are not very good, but then he throws some ad hominem bombs about cherry picking data and then pleads that we believe him (I guess on faith) that climate change is, both now and in the future, a problem for all mankind.
The rate and magnitude of 20th C. warming are wholly unremarkable in the long unbroken chain of climate change. There is no problem to face there.
Labels: Global Warming Hoax: Emanuel Keeps the Faith
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 10:33 AM 
