William Happer, PhD.: The Real Story on Climate Change

[TNHarley]

I am 74 years old. And my interest is geology. Therefore, I have been in the mountains a lot since I was 20 years old. And I have seen, decade by decade, the snows come later and melt earlier in the Cascades, Sierras, Rockies, and Blues. I have seen the glaciers recede in all those ranges. This is not computer models, this is actual observations.

As far as the computer models go, they have been wrong. What we have seen, that, as a whole, they have been far too conservative. The melt in the Arctic and Antarctic has been far greater than any predicted. The intensity of the hurricanes has exceeded predictions. The extreme weather events have exceeded predictions. The temperature rise in the atmosphere has not been as great, but the amount of energy absorbed by the ocean has been far greater. So we learn as we go, and add factors to the models. As I learned in statistics, models are not correct, but they are useful.

The climate is always changing.
I also understand everything is changing faster than the last ice age, considering the info we have.
My question is, if man is automatically the cause of a "10X faster rate of change", how does an average of 6% increase in emissions do that? The math doesnt add up.

 

[SSDD]

Happer bases his critique on models. Hansen has shown, with his predictions from 1981 and later, to be quite correct in his science, even if the events he predicted occurred decades earlier than predicted. .

BULLSHIT...

 

[miketx]

I'm skeptical about ANYTHING on GW that comes out of Heartland. Just saying. But I'll watch a bit..

But you aren't skeptical in the least when someone tells you that you are actually counting theoretical particles? Interesting.

When he gets done counting them, he'll put them aside with the pieces of the smashed atoms from accelerators.

 

[Old Rocks]

I am 74 years old. And my interest is geology. Therefore, I have been in the mountains a lot since I was 20 years old. And I have seen, decade by decade, the snows come later and melt earlier in the Cascades, Sierras, Rockies, and Blues. I have seen the glaciers recede in all those ranges. This is not computer models, this is actual observations.

As far as the computer models go, they have been wrong. What we have seen, that, as a whole, they have been far too conservative. The melt in the Arctic and Antarctic has been far greater than any predicted. The intensity of the hurricanes has exceeded predictions. The extreme weather events have exceeded predictions. The temperature rise in the atmosphere has not been as great, but the amount of energy absorbed by the ocean has been far greater. So we learn as we go, and add factors to the models. As I learned in statistics, models are not correct, but they are useful.

The climate is always changing.
I also understand everything is changing faster than the last ice age, considering the info we have.
My question is, if man is automatically the cause of a "10X faster rate of change", how does an average of 6% increase in emissions do that? The math doesnt add up.

And I don't understand your question. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by over 40%, the amount of CH4 by over 250%. And we have put out gases that were never present before, some of which are thousands of times as effective GHGs as CO2. The increase in the GHG's has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by a significant amount, also. So, where does the 6% you state come from?

 

[Old Rocks]

Happer bases his critique on models. Hansen has shown, with his predictions from 1981 and later, to be quite correct in his science, even if the events he predicted occurred decades earlier than predicted. .

BULLSHIT...

LOL What a dumb fuck you continue to be, SSoDDumb.

Pubs.GISS: Hansen et al. 1981: Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide

Hansen et al. 1981
Hansen, J., D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, P. Lee, D. Rind, and G. Russell, 1981: Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Science, 213, 957-966, doi:10.1126/science.213.4511.957.

The global temperature rose 0.2°C between the middle 1960s and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4°C in the past century. This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980s. Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.

The Northwest Passage first opened up in 2007. In 2016, a 1000 passenger luxury cruise ship transited the passage.

 

[TNHarley]

I am 74 years old. And my interest is geology. Therefore, I have been in the mountains a lot since I was 20 years old. And I have seen, decade by decade, the snows come later and melt earlier in the Cascades, Sierras, Rockies, and Blues. I have seen the glaciers recede in all those ranges. This is not computer models, this is actual observations.

As far as the computer models go, they have been wrong. What we have seen, that, as a whole, they have been far too conservative. The melt in the Arctic and Antarctic has been far greater than any predicted. The intensity of the hurricanes has exceeded predictions. The extreme weather events have exceeded predictions. The temperature rise in the atmosphere has not been as great, but the amount of energy absorbed by the ocean has been far greater. So we learn as we go, and add factors to the models. As I learned in statistics, models are not correct, but they are useful.

The climate is always changing.
I also understand everything is changing faster than the last ice age, considering the info we have.
My question is, if man is automatically the cause of a "10X faster rate of change", how does an average of 6% increase in emissions do that? The math doesnt add up.

And I don't understand your question. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by over 40%, the amount of CH4 by over 250%. And we have put out gases that were never present before, some of which are thousands of times as effective GHGs as CO2. The increase in the GHG's has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere by a significant amount, also. So, where does the 6% you state come from?

The way i understood it was, we release 6% extra and 40% of that is absorbed.
This isnt what i have read but it says the same thing.
How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

 

[Old Rocks]

But consider what happens when more CO2 is released from outside of the natural carbon cycle – by burning fossil fuels. Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009). (A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years).

Human CO2 emissions upset the natural balance of the carbon cycle. Man-made CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by a third since the pre-industrial era, creating an artificial forcing of global temperatures which is warming the planet. While fossil-fuel derived CO2 is a very small component of the global carbon cycle, the extra CO2 is cumulative because the natural carbon exchange cannot absorb all the additional CO2.

The level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, the additional CO2 is being produced by burning fossil fuels, and that build up is accelerating.

How do human CO2 emissions compare to natural CO2 emissions?

Well, you understand wrong. Before the industrial revolution, the level was 280 ppm of CO2 , now it is over 410 ppm, the level of CH4 was about 700 ppb, now it is over 1850 ppb. And that, in spite of a large percentage of the CO2 that we have emitted having been absorbed by plants or the ocean.