[Geezer]

Pete,

Are you sure you are a skeptic? Scientists are skeptics. They have to be. They want to see the evidence.

However, scientists don't start off with a preconceived notion that there is a grand conspiracy determined to undermine their opinions. They evaluate the available evidence, and if it confirms their theory, they view that as confirmation. If it doesn't, they reconsider their position, even if it means they have to go back to the drawing board.

There are a lot of very knowledgeable posters on TNS, but you have successfully insulted all of them. You could actually learn a lot here if you choose to, but you seem to be more interested in raging against the machine than anything else.

Frankly, this a bit surprising. I've been checking up on your bio, and it says you are a compliance engineer. Compliance engineers are usually pretty good at understanding the rules.

Oh! BTW, at your behest, I did Google you, but it seems you've been kicked off a great many web sites already.

It's your call. Do you want to learn anything here, or are you just using TNS as your soapbox?

(It's a binary question.)

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi Geezer ,

Do you want to learn anything here, or are you just using TNS as your soapbox?

Answer = YES & NO.

As for the earlier bit, others may may well

.. start off with a preconceived notion that there is a grand conspiracy determined to undermine their opinions

but not this old geezer. I, like all true sceptics, started off with an open mind (in fact unconcerned about the effects of our use of fossil fuels) until in April 2007 I read Mark Lynas’s booklet “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet”. After that I was a very concerned father and grandfather, but, like a true sceptic I decided to do my own research. So far I have found no convincing evidence that our use of fossil fuels is leading to CACC but plenty convincing evidence of other agenda.

As for Googling me and deciding that I am a compliance engineer, a good scientist does not jump to conclusions from scant evidence. Try adding EMC to your search.

Hi JP & BenV I hope that because I responded to Geezer and did not

.. stick to the question at hand, which is about the youtube video ..

I haven’t used up my last chance of commenting on this blog. It's about the best blog that I have had the pleasure of contributing to. Once again I commend the efforts of the designers.

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[Bored chemist]

" So far I have found no convincing evidence that our use of fossil fuels is leading to CACC"
I can't understand this point of view.
There isn't any sensible doubt that the temperature is rising. There's no sensible doubt that the CO2 levels are rising. We know it's down to fossil fuel use for two reasons- first it can be "carbon dated" and it's ancient so it must have been buried somewhere for millennia. Secondly and probably more obviously, we know how much tax has been paid on it, so we know how much fuel we have burned. There's no doubt that CO2 traps heat because it absorbs IR (no matter, to what extent).
So what you end up with is, in effect, saying
"I know we are warmer in bed, and I know we have put another blanket on the bed, but I refuse to accept that there is a causal relationship between those facts."

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi Bored_chemist , methinks that you may not fully appreciate what CACC means – Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change – note that first word Catastrophic. I recommend that you pay a visit to Professor Judith Curry’s “Physics of the atmospheric greenhouse(?) effect” (http://judithcurry.com/2010/11/30/physics-of-the-atmospheric-greenhouse-effect/#comment-62506) and pay particular attention to the analyses offered by Roger Taguchi. If after that you’d like to see the latest version of Roger’s article “Net Feedback in Global Warming Calculations” please let me know and I’ll send you a copy of his 12th April 2011 issue. It’s a heavy read but well worth the effort for anyone who really wants to learn about the science. After all, isn’t that what this blog is all about?

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[Bored chemist]

I think you need to ask the people in places like Bangladesh about the meaning of the word "catastrophic".

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi Bored_chemist , don’t you agree that a distinction needs to be made between natural disasters caused by extreme weather events and natural or other catastrophic climate change?

I’m a bit concerned about these exchanges drifting away from the question that was originally posted, i.e. “What does Iain Stewart's "CO2 experiment" Demonstrate”? I’d hate for the moderators to lock the thread because of this so let’s stick to the question, eh?

If you disagree with my opinion that the demonstration misrepresented the extent to which CO2 absorbs IR compared with the other “greenhouse gases”, especially H2O, then please would you explain why. I suggest that a far more honest demonstration would have initially been run without the filter for both CO2 and water vapor, correctly informing the general public that H2O has a far more significant effect and accounts for most of the “greenhouse effect” that makes this wonderful earth habitable by life as we know it. The viewers would have seen CO2 having virtually no effect, as acknowledged by the demonstration designer Jonathan Hare, who said

The thermal imaging camera we used was sensitive from ca. 1 to 5 µm, quite a large part of the IR spectrum. A lit candle or match produces lots of energy through the IR to the visible. Consequently a candle looks very bright (colourful) on the false colour IR camera image. .. You would think from what I said above that when you view the candle through the tube using the camera, and you introduce CO2 the bright flame would 'disappear' due to the IR absorption. However, when you try this it doesn't work, the candle doesn't disappear! The reason is that the CO2 absorptions observable by the IR camera are quite weak and are only in a relatively small part of the spectrum. The only way to get the demonstration to work is to have a 'CO2 filter' on the camera. This only lets through IR at around 4 µm, close to one of the CO2 absorption's (which are broadened a bit at atmospheric pressure). The filter blocks out much of the IR energy so that the CO2 absorption is not so swamped anymore and this allows us to now observe our vanishing candle effect.

I speculate that the effect of H2O would have been seen quite clearly without any filter because it absorbs strongly across the 1-5µm band (http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/forcing/images/image7.gif). If filtering was essential to improve the “showmanship” of Professor Stewart’s demonstration could not IR filters at each of the relevant wavelengths have been used together?

Of course if the objective of the showmanship was to mislead the viewer by overstating the impact of CO2 then the set-up achieved its objective.

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[JP]

Pete, I hadn't weighed in on this before because your posts were a bit too much rambling editorial against climate scientists and their "agenda."  Now that it's more on the subject of the question, I'm happy to give my opinion on the science of it. 

To start, I agree that this one youtube clip is misleading.  It's hard to condemn the program or presenter based on this alone, since it's out of context.  However, I think that when he says at the start that this is an example of how CO2 effects the earth's climate, it's a bit of a stretch.  Not because there isn't an effect due to IR absorption on the earth.  There certainly is.  But because a candle/CO2 tube is hardly the same as the earth/sun/atmosphere, so drawing a direct link between this youtube clip and the earth's climate is misleading. 

It is a non sequitur to jump to the conclusion that this is a deliberate attempt to mislead people or that CO2's absorption of radiation isn't important in climate change.  Just because his introduction to the experiment might mislead viewers to think that it's a close model of the atmosphere/sun/earth system doesn't have anything to do with climate science.  All it does is prove that this one youtube clip might be misleading to viewers.

Are there calculations showing what kinds of concentrations of CO2 you'd need in the atmosphere of the actual earth/sun/atmosphere system to account for a temperature increase of a few degrees?  We know that the sun and the earth roughly radiate as black bodies, and we know the absorption spectrum of CO2 in the atmosphere.  Climate models aside, it shouldn't be hard to at least come up with a rough order-of-magnitude estimate.

[JP]

This site might be interesting regarding those calculations.  http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/djj/book/bookchap7.html

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi JP, I’ll respond to your helpful comments soon but in the meantime I hope that you will excuse me for experimenting here for a moment in response to Bored_chemist's comment of 22/04/2011 17:35:55. It really belongs on the locked "Another HockeyStick Illusion?" thread and I'll try to get that one opened again for my response but in the meantime I need to find out how to post a pdf diagram. Once a moderator unlocks the "Another Hockey Stick Illusion?" thread I'll delete this from here and post a more complete response there.

Hi Bored_chemist, perhaps, as an analytical chemist, you can clear up other uncertainties of mine while BenV is trying to find an expert who can respond on size-dependent fractionation in deep firn. Let’s start with the very first part of the ice sheet development process, the falling snow.

Professor Hartmut Frank, Chair of Environmental Chemistry & Ecotoxicology, University of Bayreuth, sent me this slide from one of his presentations last year to graduates at Technical University in Gdansk). He described it  as “ .. a simplified illustration of the major processes which are leading to changes of gas concentrations in the secondary bubbles (including and especially of carbon dioxide) .. ”

The slide provides a diagram showing falling snow beneath which is the section of a fully developed ice sheet. It discusses the manner in which atmospheric air collected within the voids of forming snow has already been depleted in CO2 before it even hits the top of the ice sheet. Alongside it says “Assuming a specific weight of 1 dm3 snow as 0.1 kg/L, it consists of 10 Vol-% of snow-ice and 90 Vol-% of air. Thus, a dm3 snow may contain a total carbon dioxide content of which 4 mg is adsorbed and 0.54 mg comes from the air between the snow flakes –explaining the high values found in ice cores by the gas extraction over long time in the molten state”.

It then goes on to summarise the snow/firn/ice compaction stages after “Deposition:
- Compaction to firn, air bubble closure (when?),
- Chlathrate formation (CO2~ 5 atm) [CO2•5 H2O] preferred diffusion of CO2 into the ice matrix
- Chlathrate formation (N2, O2at ~ 20 atm)
- Carbonic acid formation (formulae shown) N2, O2 non-reactive: selective depletion of CO2
- Primary bubbles disappear.
- Upon drilling and horizontal storage of ice cores, expansion and back diffusion of N2, O2 and CO2 (and slow decomposition of carbonic acid) into secondary bubbles occurs, at different rates”.

My question to you at this stage is whether or not that initial adsorption of CO2 in the snow is a chemical or physical reaction.

JP I tried to post the pdf but received the message “Your file is too large. The maximum attachment size allowed is 192 KB” despite the pdf only being 70kB and the text 34kB = 104kB. Can someone please help me out here as it will save a lot of words if I can post the pdf.

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi JP , thanks for your two responses today. I wholeheartedly agree with your

It is a non sequitur to jump to the conclusion that this is a deliberate attempt to mislead people

Jumping to such a conclusion would be no more valid than that made by Geezer yesterday @ 07:40:47. It does not follow that just because I wrote an article “European Non-compliance with the EMC Directive” I am a compliance engineer (http://www.beagle-ears.com/lars/engineer/cmplnc.htm).

If I had never seen any other BBC presentations made by Professor Stewart I would never have drawn the conclusion that I did, but I have seen other presentations of his. As I said in my E-mail to Professor Stewart and Dr. Hare on this,

Please Professor Stewart, would you reconsider how you present climate science in future. .. You fully appreciate the merits of graphics rather than words to paint the desired picture, as seen clearly in Part 2 of your Climate Wars broadcast where you show in the background lots of meaningless formulae then that infamous Michael Man “Hockey Stick” for 6 seconds from 5:58 minutes  (http://www.tvclip.biz/video/dkdGKQMvE-s/bbcearththeclimatewars2of3fightbacktoaviclip06avi.html). ..
In my opinion your comments in Climate Wars:
- at the end of Part 1 “It was the beginning of an organised fight-back driven by a band of maverick scientists supported buy powerful businesses and politicians” (http://www.tvclip.biz/video/CIANePEjOfI/bbcearththeclimatewars1of3battlebeginsclip5flv.html),
- and at 01:56 minutes into Part 2 that “Industry was fighting back. A key part of their strategy was to highlight doubts about the science. They used the media and the Internet to promote the views of the minority of scientists that were sceptical",
were designed to persuade the audience that sceptics were using devious tactics to undermine established science. It appeared to me in those parts that you took great delight in trying to get that message across. Any honest scientist will openly acknowledge their uncertainties, welcome debate about them ..
I wondered if that demo was part of the BBC’s “The Climate Wars”. While trying to find out if that was so and when that demo was broadcast (I suspected that it was before Climategate and found that Wikipedia says that it was in 2008) ..

I then pointed Professor Stewart and Dr. Hare towards this thread and hope that they either respond to my E-mail or, better still, comment here. I also pointed them both to the locked “Another Hockey Stick Illusion?” in the hopes that they or associates can contribute.

I will spend a little time looking through what you linked to today @ 00:23:22 but my first impression was that it was written by a science student, has not been peer reviewed, contains nothing new and could be misleading for unwary members of the general public. The reason I thought this is that it repeatedly suggests that the IR wavelength is in the “mm” range. Once could be a typo but 11 times?

I was surprised to find that it could have been written by Dr. Daniel J. Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering, Harvard University so I have just dropped him an Email about it. If he responds then I’ll pass on what he says. I’ve also invited him to have a look at the analyses provided by Roger Taguchi, which I recommended to Bored_chemist yesterday at 15:12:08.

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[JP]

The reason I thought this is that it repeatedly suggests that the IR wavelength is in the “mm” range. Once could be a typo but 11 times?

I suspect that's a transcription error.  The plots show microns, which is the correct value.  The html says "mm."  Perhaps whoever went to type this up saw mu and typed m? 

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi JP , quick follow-up to my comment about the link you provided, it transpires that the book “Introduction to Atmospheric Chemistry” by Daniel J. Jacob, Princeton University Press, 1999 PDF version (http://acmg.seas.harvard.edu/publications/jacobbook/index.html) is available for free viewing. You may find it more useful than your source.  CHAPTER 7. THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT does show the correct units for IR. That chapter, unlike Professor Stewart’s demonstration, makes it quite clear that

.. By far the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor because of its abundance and its extensive IR absorption features ..

It also gives a very even-handed description of that vexed question of feedback effects in Section 7.4 RADIATIVE FORCING, but that’s another issue beyond the scope of Professor Stewart’s demonstration, so best left alone here.

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[Bored chemist]

Though water vapour has clearly got nothing to do with the original video clip, it's time to point out that
Nobody disputes the fact that water vapour absorbs more IR than CO2; it is a more potent and more common greenhouse gas.
It produces the most powerful greenhouse effect of all the gases in the atmosphere.

And it has nothing to do with the question of whether or not adding CO2 to the air (which we have done) will also add net warming to the climate (which we have observed).

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi Bored_chemist, the point that I’ve been trying to discuss here is not how significant or otherwise H2O is in relation to other greenhouse gasses but how the demonstration by Professor Stewart was in my humble opinion designed and presented in such a way that it gave a distorted picture to its audience of how significant CO2 is as a greenhouse gas.

You say

.. it has nothing to do with the question of whether or not adding CO2 to the air (which we have done) will also add net warming to the climate (which we have observed) ..

I have no disagreement that we add CO2 to the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels and in other ways (like breathing [prop] [:0]) or that there has been a welcome amount of warming since the Little Ice Age, but that topic is “off-question” so may be frowned upon by the thread moderator.

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[peppercorn]

I have no disagreement that we add CO2 to the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels and in other ways (like breathing)

As you are no doubt well aware these two sources of CO2 are very different.
CO2 fom humans (or any other living, oxygen breathing animal) is part of the carbon cycle that helps keep our environment in balance.
CO2 from fossil fuels are obviously not part of the 'current' cycle and therefore cause an inbalance.
...
But then I don't have to tell you this do I?

[Geezer]

Jumping to such a conclusion would be no more valid than that made by Geezer yesterday @ 07:40:47. It does not follow that just because I wrote an article “European Non-compliance with the EMC Directive” I am a compliance engineer

You are quite right there Pete. My sequitur was based entirely on your TNS bio;

telecommunications network and support systems and Electromagnetic Compatibibility (EMC)compliance requirements

[Pete Ridley (OP)]

Hi Geezer, although this is “off-question” and may upset the moderator, it takes courage to admit when you are wrong so congratulations.

The reason that I mentioned in my TNS profile that I was involved in EMC was so that anyone so inclined could Google me and not get confused by all of the other Pete Ridley’s around the world. Another blogger elsewhere thinks that I’m running a recycling company.

Now, have you anything else to add about that demonstration of Professor Stewart’s (or any of his other BBC presentations)?

Best regards, Pete Ridley

[yor_on]

Saw you write about water vapor and its possible forcings.

A greenhouse gas is any gas known, or unknown, that traps heat in the atmosphere (absorbing infrared radiation). Including Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), Nitrous Oxide (N2O), as well as including fluorinated gases as hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride, created in industrial processes.

Water vapor is a major greenhouse gas but due to its short cycle climatologists consider it more of a feedback than a 'forcing' of the temperature we see raising now. That means that although it reacts to temperatures we don't expect it to be actively conserving heat for longer periods than a few weeks in the atmosphere. Its 'life-cycle' is too short, but it contribute as we get more vapor circulating with increased temperatures too.

"Only the stratosphere is dry enough and with a long enough residence time (a few years) for the small anthropogenic inputs to be important. In this case (and in this case only) those additions can be considered a forcing. Oxidation of anthropogenic methane (which is a major source of stratospheric water) and, conceviably, direct deposition of water from increases in aircraft in the lower stratosphere, can increase stratospheric water and since that gives a radiative forcing effect." 

And when it comes to CO2 it's very much a question of how long it will stay in the atmosphere conserving heat. Where water vapor is a question of days, CO2 is a question of? Centuries?

"The evidence that CO2 is a greenhouse gas depends mainly on physics, not on the correlation with past temperature, which tells us nothing about cause and effect. And while the rises in CO2 a few hundred years after the start of interglacials can only be explained by rising temperatures, the full extent of the temperature increases over the following 4000 years can only be explained by the rise in CO2 levels."

Here's somewhat older quote I used before, just to put it into perspective.


---Quote—

Ice cores provide evidence for variation in greenhouse gas concentrations over the past 800,000 years. Both CO2 and CH4 vary between glacial and interglacial phases, and concentrations of these gases correlate strongly with temperature. Before the ice core record, direct measurements do not exist. .

Measurements from Antarctic ice cores show that just before industrial emissions started, atmospheric CO2 levels were about 280 parts per million by volume. From the same ice cores it appears that CO2 concentrations stayed between 260 and 280 ppm (Parts per million) during the preceding 10,000 years. However, because of the way air is trapped in ice and the time period represented in each ice sample analyzed, these figures are long term averages not annual levels. . .

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of many of the greenhouse gases have increased. The concentration of CO2 has increased by about 100 ppm (i.e., from 280 ppm to 380 ppm).

The first 50 ppm increase took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 1973.

The next 50 ppm increase took place in about 33 years, from 1973 to 2006.

--End of quote--

So If I look at the worlds coal consumption 2008 of 3 300 million ton, then about 2 000 million ton was consumed by Asia. And you know what, we are coming out from our recession now says our ‘economists’. So now we can start all over again. The steel production is up as from August 2009 to 106.5 millions ton according to ‘World Steel’. And China have in ten years gone from 124 millions tons, to now over 500 millions ton steel yearly. And its coal consumption have raised from 1998, 652 million tons to over 1400 millions tons last year according to the oil company BP energy-statistics. And sixty eight percent of the worlds electric power is generated by fossil fuels today, mostly coal and ‘natural gas’ (methane).

Now? - Anybody want to guess how long it will take for the next 50 Parts Per Million (PPM)?

---Quote—Lisa Moore, Ph.D., scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense.--

Here's a table showing a selection of greenhouse gases, their global warming potential (GWP), and their lifetimes:

Greenhouse Gas . . . . . . . . .Lifetime years . . (100-Year GWP)
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) . . …. . . . hundreds .. .. . .1
Methane (CH4) . . . . . . …. . . .. . . 1 . . . . . . .25
Nitrous Oxide (N2O) . . . . . . . . . .114 . . . . . . .298
Hydrofluorocarbon-23 (CHF3) . . . .264 . . . .. . .14,800
Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) . . . . ..3,200. . . . .22,800
PFC-14 (CF4) . . . . . . . .. . . . . .50,000 . . . . .7,390

Notice that the carbon dioxide lifetime is "hundreds of years", rather than a specific number. The IPCC ‘Third Assessment Report’ defines a gas's lifetime as the amount of the gas in the atmosphere divided by the rate at which it is removed from the atmosphere. That sounds simple enough, except that not all gases are removed by just one (or mainly one) process. Ironically, the gas that accounts for the greatest proportion of global warming, carbon dioxide (CO2), is the hardest to pin down. When CO2 is released into the atmosphere, about three-quarters of it dissolves into the ocean over a few decades (- Acidity -). The rest is neutralized by a variety of longer-term geological processes, which can take thousands of years.

From IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: About 50% of a CO2 increase will be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.

From U.S Greenhouse Gas Inventory Reports: (CO2) Atmospheric lifetime: 50-200 years. No single lifetime can be defined for CO2 because of the different rates of uptake by different removal processes.

From RealClimate: “My model indicates that about 7% of carbon released today will still be in the atmosphere in 100,000 years. I calculate a mean lifetime, from the sum of all the processes, of about 30,000 years. That's a deceptive number, because it is so strongly influenced by the immense longevity of that long tail. If one is forced to simplify reality into a single number for popular discussion, several hundred years is a sensible number to choose, because it tells three-quarters of the story, and the part of the story which applies to our own lifetimes.” ("How long will global warming last?")

For other gases, a meaningful lifetime is easier to calculate because one process dominates their removal from the atmosphere:

* Methane is mostly scrubbed from the atmosphere by hydroxyl radicals (a chemical reaction).
* Nitrous oxide is destroyed by photolytic reactions (chemical reactions involving photons or light) in the stratosphere.

As you can see from the chart, some gases have extraordinarily long lifetimes. Because emission rates are vastly higher than removal rates, greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere and will affect climate for generations to come.

----End of Quote----

[yor_on]

By the way, this is what I mean by a 'correlation' between CO2 and ice-cores Peter. It's not really necessary for us to find that the CO2 found in ice-cores matches a perfect description of the CO2 in the atmosphere at that time it was 'free'. What's interesting is the trends, and if they shows a break under the last 250 years, and that they do. So global man-made warming is true as far as I can see. But, as for what more than CO2 that may have a direct effect? We learn more about that every year. What's scary about CO2 is not that it's so abundant, it's the way it 'clings' in the atmosphere. CO2 is a rather small part of the atmosphere in fact, but its importance is huge. This one will give you a good idea of the amount, translated into weight How much CO2 by weight in the atmosphere? (2007)               

Assume that we could stop all man-made CO2 production today

The CO2 already produced by us would still sit in the atmosphere and add to the warming for at least 50 years, more probably a century. A generation is mostly defined as being 20 to 25 years as I've seen, so four to five generations will have a 100 percent warming even if we stopped today as I understands it (well, this may be a tad exaggerated as it constantly get taken up by sinks, as our oceans, but the great part of CO2 will hang up there, very slowly clinging off, and in fact stay for longer than that hundred years I use as a description here). So, it's not really about us, to me it's about our kids, and their kids. As for methane I've seen a lot of people count it out as a major forcing as it's lifetime is too short, but it has started to move the last decades as described in Russia, the Arctic, Canada and Antarctica.

Here are three relatively recent links to that.


Measurements of carbon fluxes around the north of Russia, led by Igor Semiletov from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.
Study: Arctic seabed methane stores destabilizing, venting. 
What lies beneath Antarctic ice.

And though Russia publicly seems to act as if they're not worried, taking the idea 'man made global warming' lightly they spend up to 55 billion roubles (1.9 billion dollars) a year on repairs to their infrastructure and pipelines, damaged by changes in the permafrost in western Siberia. Permafrost thaw threatens Russia oil and gas complex: study. Eh, that's methane being released too Peter.

And there is more to it, as the acidity in the oceans increase we will find more and more areas that are dead of all sea life. They are growing annually as I understand it. we will also see the smallest organism (krill etc) die out in the Arctic and Antarctic, disrupting all sea based food chains, all the way up to ourselves. If you believe or not I don't really care, this is what we already see happening now, at a smaller scale. But I don't find this arguing over Global Warming as giving as you seem. Canada is already dismantling its weather stations it seems NASA dosen't get the money they need for their weather satellites, etc etc. So don't you worry Peter Those bad, bad, facts I expect to become less, not 'more' in the foreseeable future. Well, until it's pushed right into your face

But by then we already will be too late.

==

As for Russia reducing their emissions Europe is building for using the Russian methane fields as we speak, Britain amongst those countries expecting to use that Russian gas. Putin has already used it as a new political club, forcing other countries. And those pipe lines have a annual leak of around 30 percent methane as found in several independent studies. As we see the 'methane fields' come into production there is a very real risqué of it destabilizing those frozen 'methane-ice' underwater. If they do the only evidence will be the water bubbles as the methane raise, getting freed. And those only some Russian oil laborers will see. Most of the big industry in Russia today, including energy, is controlled by the mob as I read it. You expect them to worry about environmental concerns Peter?

Not that I expect them to be that different from counterparts in the West. It's the market that decides your concerns as a cooperation, that and the stockholders, environment is a thing where you spend your money where it speaks loudest for the least investment, and only where it won't hurt your own interests. That's also why I find it worrying when states starts to put the cap on environmental research. Because it doesn't really help if they do, it won't go away. If what I think I see is right, closing the door on it will only make it worse. We need that research, our whole planet needs it. Without we will react, but it will be too late. And even though we will be dead most probably, our kids kids will look at us with loathing, seeing how we put short-term profits in front of creating a longterm sustainable environment. There is nothing I hate more than id* telling me that 'we don't need all those species, we can make do without them.' Sure, we can all live hermetically sealed inside domes too, but is that what we want?

Earth won't care Peter. She will come back, if now worst come to worst, with new species to populate Earth. To her we just represent a short intermission, a breath taken and then let out. But to us, and our kids?

[yor_on]

As for my statements on research?

---Quote-

Researchers are barred from publicly releasing meteorological data from many countries owing to contractual restrictions. Moreover, in countries such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the national meteorological services will provide data sets only when researchers specifically request them, and only after a significant delay. The lack of standard formats can also make it hard to compare and integrate data from different sources. Every aspect of this situation needs to change: if the current episode does not spur meteorological services to improve researchers' ease of access, governments should force them to do so.

---End of quote--



==Quote.

Much of the reason why “data are vexatious” is because this research has been starved for instrument resources.

A prime example: ICESat, now offline for gathering more cryo data due to the failure of its last working laser of the three units onboard, an anticipated failure that came as no surprise. We knew that a replacement spacecraft was imminently necessary with the last laser failure in 2008, we know that polar observations are very important to narrowing uncertainties w/regard to climate change. Despite this, we had no spacecraft ready for launch; a replacement will not be launched until 2014.

One could argue that failure to plan and construct a replacement (and what would be wrong with simply an identical satellite, if budget was an issue) was down to poor oversight of the mission but one would be wrong. One could say that other, more important Earth observation missions took priority over an ICESat replacement but one would again be wrong. No, this feckless gap in our data will most likely be revealed as political in nature once historians produce a definitive account; the particular inclinations of the administration in charge during the period of interest are a hint but we’ll see about that.

Fortunately ESA has launched a replacement for CryoSatNow since they had a slightly more urgent attitude about climate change and quickly produced a replacement for the spacecraft lost on their first launch attempt. Meanwhile NASA is doing gap-filling via other means to make up for the loss of ICESat. But thanks to crappy management we’re now faced with a data splicing nightmare, a pointless challenge for investigators which also naturally will provide fodder for Dark Ages personalities determined to throw sand in the wheels of public policy.

There are other examples. Ocean heat content is tough to fathom (hah!) in part because the ocean is not as richly instrumented as necessary. This is a great intellectual challenge for researchers but at the end of the day, the fact we can’t account for missing energy (Trenberth?) is a serious problem when it comes to public policy; the heat we can’t measure is made into a subject of debate which again retards policy response.

The amount of money we’re talking about in all cases here is paltry compared to what we spend on other things. Compared w/a $60 trillion global economy the gap between proper resources and poor resources is invisible.

This parsimonious approach to instrumentation is one of the reason I laugh when I hear rejectionists muttering about all those rich scientists and their giant AGW gravy train. Innumeracy strikes again.

== by Doug Bostrom.

I think the next NASA satellite for studying the climate is planned for 2017 myself though?
(although the quote is over a year old (from when I first used it 2010), so it may have been delayed, again)

As for CryoSat-2 it might be launched from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Northern Russia? CryoSat-2 2012..

and when it comes to Canada, I wrote about it Here.