"Heeeelp! They are going to throw me in jail!" Or weird denier weirdness from Roger E. Sowell, Esq. at WUWT

Waaaa...
Let me out!!!

If you're taking a break from reading the new IPCC report - from Working Group II, here's a distraction for you.

Someone named Roger E. Sowell, Esq. has written an article at WUWT (archived here) to fit with Anthony's theme of the week.  If you thought deniers couldn't get any nuttier, think again. (The "Esq." just means he owns a bit of land. It could be anything from a handkerchief sized plot in a community garden to an island in the Pacific.  It also probably means he's about 110 years of age.  I haven't seen anyone add Esq. to their name in decades.)

Update: I've been informed by riverat that some people who practice law in the USA append Esq. to their name, though one source says it's bad form to append it to your own name. It's a courtesy title. Sou.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.reckons he's a skeptic.  He makes a disclosure in keeping with his pomposity.

Disclosure: my own view after long and careful study and based on engineering, science, and mathematics, is that of a confirmed skeptic with a full understanding that carbon dioxide, CO2, does indeed absorb and emit thermal radiant energy.

What he means by that is that he accepts the science but doesn't.  He doesn't "believe" that CO2 absorption and emission means that more CO2 warms the planet.  In other words, he's a nutter.

There is more evidence underpinning my "nutter" hypothesis.

The basis for the jailing of skeptics is that many, perhaps millions, of human deaths will occur inevitably if drastic action is not taken immediately to prevent additional fossil fuel use.

First off, not many people are calling for the "jailing of skeptics", not even fake skeptics like Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Certainly not the  people he refers to (Lawrence Torcello, for example.)

Secondly, while strong action needs to be taken, I know of no rational person who expects "immediate action to prevent additional fossil fuel use" - or at least not any additional use - not immediately.  Or that if there isn't "immediate action" that many, perhaps millions, of human deaths will occur inevitably.  Although I must admit that some time over the next 120 years at least 7,000 million people are going to die.  What we do need is urgent and considered action to shift to clean energy. Roger E. Sowell Esq. missed out that part.  This is the Critical Decade. If we don't cut CO2 and shift to clean energy then it's a sure bet that a lot of people will die before their time. So he's partly right, just missing out on the bit where we are replacing a dirty, damaging energy source with clean, more renewable energy sources.

I noticed that Roger E. Sowell Esq. doesn't think the people who read WUWT have an IQ above 70, because he feels the need to explain:

By fossil fuel use, what is meant is the burning of coal and natural gas in power plants and process plants, plus burning petroleum products as transportation and heating fuel.   

I got as far as this when it became crystal clear that this wasn't any ordinary nutter. Roger E. Sowell Esq. was an "utter nutter".

In this particular case, the assertion is that those who promote research into climate change to show that no alarm is justified will cause the death of millions of people due to events such as ice caps melting, subsequent sealevel rise and coastal inundation, droughts, and heat waves.   

How many things can you find wrong with that sentence? (Apart from it being too long for people with an IQ below 70 to follow.)  How's this for starters:

Roger E. Sowell Esq. thinks that a scientist would do "research into climate change to show no alarm is justified".  Well, maybe that's not so silly.  That's what motivated Richard Muller and I guess what motivated Koch to fund his research.  At least he was scientist enough to recognise and admit that his base premise was wrong.  Not like Richard Lindzen, who just threw in the towel when he failed to find evidence for his Iris hypothesis, and took to the science denier speaking circuit.

Whereas many scientists probably wouldn't admit they were searching for evidence to support a pet hypothesis and would argue one needs an "open mind", you do need an idea to start with.  That idea might be a firm or woolly hypothesis - or it might not.  The open mind is more important when it comes to designing the research and collecting evidence.  Roger E. Sowell Esq., were he capable of designing a research project, would probably discard any evidence that he didn't like. No reputable scientist would do that.

Your other reaction might have been - WTF! Why does Roger E. Sowell Esq. think that anyone who promotes research should "cause the death of millions of people". Okay, some research has that potential.  Research into a killer virus and letting it escape the lab might conceivably do that. But climate science?  Not if it's done by a decent scientist.

I didn't bother with the rest of his article. I could see that Roger E. Sowell Esq. wandered into voluntary and involuntary manslaughter and spent most of his article talking about the ins and outs of that. Since his base premises were so flawed as to be laughable what was the point of reading further?

Evolution of a denier meme

It's an interesting development of a denier meme, just the same.  It reminds me of Recursive Fury, probably because that's been in the blog news lately.

In the first iteration a few days ago, Anthony led in with a misrepresentation of an article by a climate philosopher, wrongly claiming that he said deniers should be thrown in jail.  But the article didn't mention jail and wasn't talking about deniers. Professor Torcello was talking about people who fund disinformation campaigns. Roger E. Sowell Esq. might fit that description. I know nothing about him.

Anthony repeated his false claim in at least two other articles.  For good measure he tossed in a misrepresentation of a climate blogger and a former Archbishop.  That helped set the scene.

Now he trots out Roger E. Sowell Esq. who twists an already flawed denier meme into something even more twisted. It began with an actual suggestion that funding disinformation campaigns should be a criminal offence. That was morphed by deniers into fake sceptics should be thrown in jail. Now it's people who do climate science research to try to prove that climate science is a hoax should be thrown into jail.  It didn't take long to evolve.  It was only about 16 days in all, from start to where it is now.

By the time Anthony is finished with them, at the rate he's going, all the deniers at WUWT will be quaking in their boots, thinking they are heading for the gallows. Or at the very least, that FEMA concentration camp guards, supported by a platoon from Agenda 21 military force of the one world government, are going to knock down their door in the middle of the night and frogmarch them to Guantanamo Bay.

From the potential jailbirds at WUWT

No-one ever accused WUWT readers of being sceptical.


Owen in GA is an alarmist who says:

March 31, 2014 at 7:33 am
Stonyground says: March 31, 2014 at 7:21 am

So, in practical terms, what is this drastic action that we should be taking but are being prevented from taking due to the very existence of sceptics?

Ahh there’s the rub in it all. If you read the literature of some of the players, the answer is to MURDER 9/10 ths of the world population, destroy all industrial conveniences and live as our stone-age ancestors did. (Except for a small cadre of “elites” who would have all the modern convenience to better “guide” over the stone age remainder.)

I wish the above was sarcasm, but it is the unfortunate reality of what we are up against.

Neo may not be aware of the L'Aquila jailings or the witch hunt after our own floods in Brisbane and says:

March 31, 2014 at 7:47 am
There is a slippery slope to linking scientific research and predictions to legal culpability.
Just imagine the possible litigation from a weather report that understands or overstates the level of precipitation.
Of course, the horror of horrors would be to extend this level of culpability to political promises.

Ronald says "there wright!":

March 31, 2014 at 8:07 am
Can’t do I think there is a bit of a problem. To go to court and claim skeptics are a danger for humans by dismissing climate change they must proof there wright. On the other hand skeptics get the change to proof there wright to.

Don’t think models stand a change a gains real life data so there must be a real stupid judge out there for the alarmist to win that one.

Chuck says:

March 31, 2014 at 8:12 am
I see the call by climate alarmists that skeptics should be imprisoned as simply another indication that CAGW is a religion for them. Skeptics are the heretics of the CAGW religion and the call for imprisonment is a modern Inquisition.

Oh, this is a long one - and I didn't read it before writing the above, believe it or not (it's true!) Think how much the deniers have been squawking lately at the suggestion some of them are paranoid conspiracy theorists.  R. de Haan talks about a mortal struggle and more - and says:

March 31, 2014 at 7:22 am
Roger, thank you very much for your excellent article.

At te same time I would like to ask you if there is a case to take on the UN and all in support for abuse of science and scare mongering promoting punishing caps, taxes and restrictions of fossil fuel use and social behavior manipulations to execute their UN Agenda 21 which in principle is a centralist take over (coup) of the entire world, it’s economies, it’s financial system, it’s resources, you name it.

Now this would be a productive move that would bring us forward instead of defending our views with our back against the wall.

I have come to the conclusion that we have arrived in a mortal struggle for the survival of our western civilization and thought it was better to check for legal options before we blow up the world because that’s where we’re heading if these idiots continue to push their insane plans.

In fact we already have numerous human deaths as a direct result from the US and EU bio fuel mandate which triggered the Arab Spring Revolution started as food protests and energy poverty is already killing numerous people, even in the Western nations.

The practices of the totally corrupted UN is going to turn very ugly soon if we don’t undertake something more structural than trying to establish a dialogue with the warmists, an initiative I gave up years ago.

I know this question is in the same category as ” Could a lawyer have stopped the Nazi’s from starting WWII and root out the Jews” but still.

Here we have a bunch of crazies destroying Western civilization by raping science and bribing politicians, NGO’s and scientists while they completely wreck our economies leaving written and physical evidence all over the place.

I am looking forward to your response.

Roger E. Sowell Esq. hasn't responded yet.  However at the bottom of his WUWT article he wrote that he's touting for business. It takes no imagination to guess why he has to resort to free advertising on WUWT.

Specific legal advice is available from Mr. Sowell and anyone who seeks such advice is encouraged to contact Mr. Sowell.

PS This article is for real.  It's not an April Fools Day joke.

Water and clouds, weather and climate and denier nonsense at WUWT

Clouds and water are today's fare at Anthony Watts' science denier blog, WUWT.

About clouds

First of all there is some discussion on WUWT about a new paper from the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD)  experiments at CERN, which David Appell covered on his blog a couple of days ago.  Two findings of interest were reported from CERN.  Firstly that amines, even at very low concentrations (typical of atmospheric concentrations), combine with sulphuric acid to form highly stable aerosol particles at rates similar to those observed in the atmosphere.  This is important because apparently amines are expected to increase in the atmosphere from human activity, according to the press release.  Secondly, for all the cosmic ray fans, "cosmic ray ionisation has only a small effect on the formation rate of amine-sulphuric acid particles but they don’t rule out more significant effects if sulphuric acid particles nucleate with other vapours in the lower atmosphere".

About water

Then there is another article on WUWT titled: "Climate change is dominated by the water cycle, not carbon dioxide".  Steve "mad, mad, mad" Goreham has decided, against all the evidence, that water vapour and clouds are increasing by magic, or something.  Why do they always pick on poor little much maligned CO2?  Any decent science denier will tell you that CO2 is plant food and must be all good.

Now if Steve had written that water is a major player in weather, I doubt he'd have made much of a splash.  Everyone knows that.  Even Wondering Willis has figured out that water is important in weather (if not why).

In his WUWT article, Steve claims, wrongly, that: "Even the greenhouse effect itself is dominated by water. Between 75 percent and 90 percent of Earth’s greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor and clouds."  Although Steve links to Schmidt et al (2010) he tells a big fib.  (Why do deniers do that?  Link to a paper and tell fibs about what's in it?  Do they assume that no-one will check?)  The paper itself states that water vapour and clouds account for up to 75%, not "between 75% and 90%".  From Schmidt et al (2010):

With a straightforward scheme for allocating overlaps, we find that water vapor is the dominant contributor (∼50% of the effect), followed by clouds (∼25%) and then CO2 with ∼20%. All other absorbers play only minor roles. In a doubled CO2 scenario, this allocation is essentially unchanged, even though the magnitude of the total greenhouse effect is significantly larger than the initial radiative forcing, underscoring the importance of feedbacks from water vapor and clouds to climate sensitivity.

Steve Goreham goes on to argue that the world warmed by magic.  He doesn't use the word "magic" - he just says that oceans and water cause climate change, not CO2.  He doesn't say why water suddenly started acting up when it was swimming along nicely, barely making a climate ripple for the last 10,000 years until things started to heat up a lot in the last 100 years or so.  Pixies?  Goblins? Gods getting angry?  Some of Wondering Willis' thunderstorms had a gabfest and decided it was time for a change? I don't know what's in his mind because he doesn't say.

From the WUWT comments

This first one is from empty-headed Janice Moore on the CLOUD article (WUWT archived here):

October 7, 2013 at 10:56 am
Note: the phrase “… a quick fix for global warming” in the above article implies that the conclusions of these folks are to be regarded with caution, for their thinking is clearly hampered by the unsupported conjecture that humans can do ANYTHING to change the climate of the earth. LAUGH — OUT — LOUD. As if.

Janice Moore again, this time arguing that a 40% increase is "tiny".  Wonder what she'll say to a doubling?

October 7, 2013 at 12:21 pmMr. Mosher, you, perhaps unintentionally, mischaracterize the position of (as Dirk put it) “fringe skeptics” such as I. It is the tiny proportion of human CO2 to which we point as evidence. First of all, as you said, total CO2 is a small ppm, BUT, the key is: human CO2 is FAR outweighed and can easily be completely overwhelmed by natural CO2.

The next lot (archived here) are in the same vein, but in response to Mad, Mad, Mad Steve's article:

Martin Hertzberg says all the science is wrong:

October 7, 2013 at 4:00 pm

As I have written and said many times, in comparison to water in all of its forms: the ocean, clouds, snow and ice cover, CO2 is about as significant as a fart in a hurricane.

Chad Wozniak confused local weather effects with global climate change and writes:

October 7, 2013 at 3:54 pm
@PWilson -
Further proof of what you say is the fact that the west coasts of North American and Europe have much milder climates than farther inland. It’s because the oceans control air temps, not CO2.

Jimbo is right, but not for the reason he thinks:

October 7, 2013 at 3:47 pm
Sometimes I feel we are flogging a zombie horse.

peter is right too, but maybe isn't aware that CO2 works in the same way as water vapour, but on a global scale when he says:

October 7, 2013 at 3:36 pm
seems to me that Desserts are very real test beds for the effect of water vapor in the air. In extremely dry deserts you get radical temperature changes when the sun goes down and the temperature plummets.

Konrad doesn't "believe" there is such a thing as gas molecules absorbing radiation and has thought up some quiz questions that he presumably thinks are very sciency:

October 7, 2013 at 4:21 pm
To understand why the radiative green house hypothesis is in error, you only need to be able to answer the following simple physics questions -

1. Do radiative gases such as H2O and CO2 both absorb and emit IR radiation? Yes or No?

2. Are Radiative gases critical to strong vertical tropospheric convective circulation? Yes or No?

3. Does altering the quantity of radiative gases in the atmosphere alter the speed of tropospheric convective circulation? Yes or No?

4. Is convective circulation including water vapour the primary mechanism for transporting energy from the surface and lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere? Yes or No?

5. Are radiative gases the primary mechanism for energy loss to space from the upper atmosphere? Yes or No?

6. Does down welling LWIR emitted from the atmosphere significantly effect the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool? Yes or No.

Ronald "OMG it's insects" Voisin makes a brief appearance and replies to Konrad:

October 7, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Konrad, I like it.

dbstealey makes a small concession to Anthony's weak espousal of the greenhouse effect and adds the word "measurable" when he urges Sisi not to read anything that might challenge the denialist stance:

October 7, 2013 at 5:27 pm
Sisi,
CO2 does not cause any measurable global warming.
Stop reading the Guardian and you will do fine.

So many tiny minds with barely a coherent thought between them, and they all hang out together at places like WUWT.

(If you're a stray reader, I'm really a very nice person :)  I wouldn't pick on the regulars who comment at WUWT if they showed any signs of having learnt anything.  But the same people have been denying science for years and insist on boasting about their ignorance, thinking it's something to be admired.  They are all stuck, each in a different fantasy world of their own.  They talk past each other, repeating their own individual fixations ad infinitum.)

Jeffery S Patterson throws away the signal at WUWT

Anthony Watts does attract some strange characters to his denier blog WUWT.  Beggars can't be choosers and Anthony couldn't write a decent article all by himself if you paid him.  He relies on guest articles to keep his blog alive.

There's a new chap he's picked up from somewhere called Jeffery S. Patterson, who enjoys playing with numbers.  I'm not terribly interested in his numbers.  What interests me is the way his numbers take him away from reality.

Jeffery gets a lot wrong

In the midst of today's article (archived here) he writes a few very odd things:

The linear trend in slope evident in Figure 1a implies a parabolic temperature trend. The IPCC makes oblique reference to this in the recently releases AR-5 Summary for Policymakers:

“Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850 (see Figure SPM.1). In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years (medium confidence).”

True enough, but that has been true since at least the mid-1800s. The implication of the IPCC’s ominous statement is that anthropogenic effects on the climate have been present since that early time. Let’s examine that hypothesis.

First up, I see nothing in his quote from the IPCC that is an oblique or otherwise reference to a parabolic temperature trend.  All I read is that it's been getting hotter lately.

Secondly, the earth hasn't had each decade since the mid-1800s successively warmer than the last.  Nor has each decade since the mid-1800s been the warmest in the last 1400 years.  In fact, the early part of the twentieth century was a bit chilly - at least in comparison to now.

Here's a chart showing decadal temperatures and how the last three full decades (1971-80 to 2000-09), plus the current one so far, have been warmer than all those before them in the record. The decades from 1920 to 1949 were also successively warmer followed by two cooler decades.:

Data Source: NASA

Talking of the last 1400 years, here's a chart, Box TS.5, Figure 1  from the AR5 WG1 Technical Summary (page TS-103) for the Northern Hemisphere, going back around 1200 years.  The top chart is radiative forcing and the bottom chart is reconstructed and simulated NH temperature anomaly from a baseline of the average from 1500 to 1850.  Click to see it larger.

Data Source:  IPCC AR5 WG1 - Box TS.5, Figure 1 (page TS-103)

Jeffery later writes:

Around the year 1878, a dramatic shift in the climate occurred coincident with and perhaps triggered by an impulsive spike in temperature. As a result, the climate moved from a cooling phase of about -.7 °C/century to a warming phase of about +.5°C/century, which has remained constant to the present. We see that this period of time was coincident with a large spike in solar activity as shown in figure 7.

As far as his "cooling phase of about -0.7°C/century" goes, he doesn't use data prior to 1850 so how on earth he can say that with a straight face I don't know.  Even had he gone back in time he'd have been way off beam.  The earth did cool for about 5,000 years after the Holocene optimum, but it was at nothing like -0.7°C/century.   That amount of cooling would have taken us into a very deep ice age had it gone on for 50 centuries!

Jeffery mentioned the high temperature in 1878.  In fact that's what he's called his article: The Great Climate Shift of 1878.  Except there wasn't!

There was a big spike in the HadCRUT temperature record in 1878 as the chart below shows, but the "shift in the climate" (as indicated by surface temperature) didn't start in earnest until the early twentieth century:

Data Source: HadCRU

Below is the radiative forcing chart blown up. The top is volcanic forcing, the middle is total solar irradiance (TSI) and down the bottom are well-mixed greenhouse gases (WMGHGs). There is no sign of a spike of any type in 1878.  TSI went up in the twentieth century and there were a couple of large-ish volcanoes early in the 19th century but that's about it.

Data Source:  IPCC AR5 WG1 - Box TS.5, Figure 1 (page TS-103)

Jeffery seems to have adopted a narrative of the type that surface temperature can rise all by itself, given an initial prod, even though that prod is not sustained.  He is a science denier who looks to mathturbation to disprove human induced global warming.  But what he writes isn't supported by the data.  Here is how he finishes his article:

The climate record of the past 163 years is well explained as the integral second-order response to a triggering event that occurred in the mid-to-late 1870s, plus an oscillatory mode regulated by solar irradiance. There is no evidence in the temperature records analyzed here supporting the hypothesis that mankind has had a measurable effect on the global climate.

Jeffery is a bit weird with his "integral second-order response to a triggering event" - that doesn't seem to have had any lasting effect and that couldn't have been caused by the sun.  All he did was remove the rising trend and then looked at the data with the trend removed and said that there's no anthropogenic signal.  He's not the first to try that trick on one pretext or other.  John McLean, Bob Carter and Chris de Freitas tried that one on a few years ago and were picked up quick smart!

Jim Steele, another WUWT science denier, gets it wrong about Kivalina

See update below


Jim Steele is a so-called environmentalist who rejects climate science and fails geography.  Some environmentalist!  He's another born again denier whose articles have started to appear more often on Anthony Watts' anti-science blog.

Today on WUWT he has a go at the people of Kivalina.  Many readers may be familiar with this settlement because they took on Exxon a few years ago.  They didn't succeed in the courts.  The people of Kivalina will need to relocate in the near future as their settlement will soon be uninhabitable.

Kivalina is a tiny settlement situated on a barrier reef on the Chukchi Sea.  It's at the mouth of the Kivalina River.  Because the ice is melting sooner in spring and forming later in autumn, the settlement is more vulnerable to sea surges and storms than in the past, when ice lasted longer and protected it.  It is reported that the barrier reef is rapidly eroding from these storm surges plus, presumably, rising sea levels.

Jim Steele fails geography plus...

Jim Steele cites greater winter sea ice in the Bering Sea as evidence that the lack of ice is causing erosion at Kivalina. He writes (my bold italics):

Finally it is hard to understand Sackur’s claim, “No longer does thick ice protect their shoreline.” In 2012 the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported “ice extent in the Bering Sea was much greater than average, reaching the second-highest levels for January in the satellite record.” NASA’s Earth Observatory wrote, “For most of the winter of 2011–2012, the Bering Sea has been choking with sea ice… NSIDC data indicate that ice extent in the Bering Sea for most of this winter has been between 20 to 30 percent above the 1979 to 2000 average. February 2012 had the highest ice extent for the area since satellite records started.” And in 2013 Bering Sea ice was again above normal as seen in National Snow and Ice Data Center picture.

Two points. Firstly, it's not the winter ice that's the problem, it's the fact the ice is melting sooner and forming later than it used to.  Secondly, Kivalina is on the Chukchi Sea, not the Bering.  This chart from Cryosphere Today shows how the sea ice has been declining over the years.  Note particularly the anomalies in recent years - from the late nineties in particular.

Source: Cryosphere Today

Here are two extracts from a report by the US Army Corps of Engineers . The file properties indicate it is from March 2009.  The pdf file includes outlines of the past coastline and short term projections.  (My bold italics in the following):

Kivalina has not historically seen significant erosion. The Kivalina spit has seen cyclic accretion, with modest accretion on the Chukchi Sea side more prevalent during the 30-year period of 1970 to 2000. The higher energy storms that could result in significant erosion occur during the winter months when the Chukchi Sea is frozen. This has resulted in natural erosion protection in the past. However, with global climate change the period of open water is increasing and the Chukchi Sea is less likely to be frozen when damaging winter storms occur. Winter storms occurring in October and November of 2004 and 2005 have resulted in significant erosion that is now threatening both the school and the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative (AVEC) tank farm. This erosion has resulted in the loss of some teacher housing and the school and community washateria drain fields....

What is the expected time line for a complete failure of the usable land? 
The winter storms of 2004 and 2005 eroded 70 to 80 feet of uplands behind the school. The bank line is now within 25 feet of the main school structure. Erosion in the vicinity of the AVEC tank farm is similar, with only 5 feet of uplands remaining between the nearest tanks and the bank line. Without the construction of emergency erosion control structures, the school and tank farm will begin to fail within the next year if erosion continues at the same rate as it has during recent months,. Even if erosion slows, these critical structures are in imminent danger and are unlikely to survive for any extended period of time. Due to the physical lack of open land in the Kivalina community, these structures can not be relocated, and their failure would render the community uninhabitable. 

You sometimes read fake outrage on WUWT, from deniers who try to argue that the world's poor need to burn fossil fuels or they'll get poorer.  But when it comes to vulnerable people who's lives are being turned upside down by climate change, the deniers show their true colours.

Most of the WUWT comments are lashing out at the BBC, because there was an article on the BBC about Kivalina.  There was one comment by a person outraged that anyone would consider looking out for the interests of indigenous peoples. Heck, what decent plundering victor would give a toss for displaced persons.

PS So far, not a single fake sceptic at WUWT has commented on the fact that Jim Steele was wrong and that Kivalina isn't on the Bering Sea!  Nor that it's the fact the ice season is shorter that's causing problems, not mid-winter ice.

UPDATE: 4 August 2013 

Jim Steele has visited us and claimed that (my bold italics):

However the Bering Sea extent is a good climate indicator and correlates well with sea ice in the Chukchi.

Let's check that out, shall we?  Here is an animated gif showing the anomalies for the Bering Sea and the Chukchi Sea over the last few decades.  Note particularly the recent years I've circled:

Source: The Cryosphere Today - Chukchi and Bering

Looks like Jim's not just wrong but he's spectacularly wrong.  (Does anyone think it's necessary to do a correlation analysis to see just how wrong Jim is?)

Remember, Jim Steele is a man who thinks heat waves disprove global warming!  So is it any surprise that he maintains such wildly different patterns are a good correlation?

Self portrait of a typical science denier on WUWT

A science denier called Jonathan Abbott has written an article on WUWT about his discovery of and entrance to of the blessed community of the scientific illiterati.  He's fair game, given that he posted this not as a comment but as a full blown article.  So here is my take.  Not a pretty picture but typical of the educated conservative science denier who feels the need to rationalise his denial.  In this case in public.  Kind of like public baptisms into a quasi-religious cult.  It probably gives him a feeling of belonging to boast on WUWT about his conspiracy ideation and science denial.

Some items stand out and will interest people who are fascinated by the psychology of denialism:

• Jonathan says what stuck in his mind as a little boy was someone (he doesn't say who), long after all speculation had ceased, talking about an impending ice age.  He says this took place in "the early 80s", which was long after all but the most unrealistic scientists entertained any notion that pollution would lead to global cooling.  Particularly since clean air legislation had already been introduced in most developed nations in the late sixties and seventies.  So even as a small child his mind was primed to latch onto quack science.
• He studied engineering (sorry engineers, but your profession seems to attract people of certain mental inagility).  He says he read texts by Bertrand Russell and some science writers and he thinks that helped him in critical thinking.  It didn't.  As he demonstrates later, he didn't ever get past the notion of only accepting what suited him to "believe" and discarding any facts that he didn't like. That's not critical thinking, that's confirmation bias and lack of ability to think critically.
• He reacted against and was unable to distinguish between what is well-accepted science and what areas are at the frontiers of new knowledge (a similar disability to that referred to above).  He demonstrates this with emotive language.  He also exhibits a tendency towards conspiracy ideation as shown by his distrust of authority.  For example, he writes: "I first noticed predictions of global warming and the associated dire warnings of calamities to come. Some of these emanated from the Met Office and so I knew should be treated with a pinch of salt but other sources included NASA, which I then personally still very much respected; despite the space shuttle evidently being the wrong concept poorly executed, their basic scientific expertise seemed unquestionable." 
• He demonstrated zilch understanding of science, comparing the earth system, which is described by scientists in terms of known physics, chemistry and biology with the stock market, which is influenced as much by human emotions as economics.
• For no reason at all except he presumably didn't like it, he discounted the greenhouse effect and the impact of increasing greenhouse gases as being "implausible" "on the grounds of common sense".  Oh, and his conspiracy ideation comes to the fore again in his references to "charities", "pressure groups" and "the UN". 
• He expressed a concern for the environment, writing: "So I was quite passionate about the environment, but my focus was on keeping it clean and safe for all life to live in."  However that concern didn't extend to him educating himself about it.  It probably gave him a warm and fuzzy feeling but he refused to learn what keeping the world clean and safe for all entailed.  He scorned science.  Instead of reading it he mocked it and doubted it, especially as he seems to have got his science from the BBC.  Jonathan is a conspiracy nutter of the right wing authoritarian type, and is suspicious of organisations like the BBC. He made no mention of ever reading any scientific journals.  One can speculate that such an exercise would be too challenging.  Not intellectually challenging (he said he was an engineering graduate) but emotionally challenging.  Challenging of his world view.
• Jonathan got excited by the The Great Swindle and the release of decades of private emails of a handful of climate scientists.  Being of a conspiracising bent and combined with his world view he was a sitting duck for the disinformation brigade.  He was pining for someone to  tell him that climate science is all wrong and the scientists are all crooks (fitting his conspiracy mentality), so he fell for the big con hook, line and sinker - expressing no scepticism whatsoever.
• One thing, he is aware that he's a conspiracy nutter, writing: "Now at this point, I am sure some (perhaps many?) readers are thinking, ‘Great, an inside view of how someone becomes a believer in a conspiracy theory, perhaps I’ll base a research paper on this idiot’. My response is that like most people I have at times stumbled upon the real conspiracy theory nuts lurking on the internet." So he doesn't believe in the lizard men, isn't a birther or a truther, nor that NASA faked the moon landing - or maybe he does.  But he does believe in arguably the biggest paranoid conspiracy ever conceived.  One of incredible longevity and scope, involving all the major national scientific institutions, virtually all the scientific journals and their staff, virtually every scientific researcher in the fields relating to the study of earth systems, ranging from atmospheric physicists through to marine biologists, glaciologists, geologists and ocean chemists and everyone in between, governments of every nation in the world and most people who represent them, the media and probably 70% of the general public.  And all these people have kept up the hoax for decades!  If only a fake sceptic could prove them wrong or find a way into the secret cult.  (Kenji hasn't done much good spying for Anthony!)
• Jonathan then writes this: "But on WUWT and other CAGW-sceptic sites criticism of the position of the website founder isn’t just tolerated but often encouraged. "  What a joke!  Jonathan gives no hint that he's aware of Anthony's general rule of banning any and every one who accepts science from posting or deleting comments about actual science, even innocuous comments   This is particularly odd given that Anthony deleted comments to Jonathan's previous article just a few days ago, including comments about science and a comment that could be interpreted as being critical of him.  It just goes to show how people ignore facts.  You only have to see the demographics of WUWT readers to know the extent to which Anthony bans or otherwise discourages normal people to comment.  WUWT is 98% science deniers - almost the complete opposite of the real world.

Anyway, Jonathan indicates he is finally at peace, finding an chamber that echos what he wants to "believe".  He is relaxed, waiting for the coming ice age or, as he puts it: "I tend to expect some cooling I am pretty agnostic about it. Nature will assuredly do its own thing."  His cognitive dissonance quieted by lies and disinformation that suit  his world view, allowing him peace by denying reality.  Maybe something like this:

From the WUWT comments

Nope, nothing here this time.  Maybe later if I feel inclined.  So far there are 153 comments mostly of the 'rah 'rah type or "me too".  As everyone knows, WUWT is 98% science deniers - so it's much what you'd expect from the scientific illiterati.  Most seem to reject climate science because of their world view, distrust of authority, tendency to attribute any reputable source as having nefarious intent.  In other words, they view themselves as suckers and therefore have become suckers.  Classic expectations theory stuff.

PS I might later do a categorisation of responses.  For example, there appear to be a disproportionate number from engineers, some physicists.  A lot who reject science on ideological grounds (lots of words like "socialism").  I haven't yet read any that refer to any valid scientific basis for their rejection, which isn't a surprise.  A few emotional responses from people who expressed much comfort in knowing there are other science deniers out there in cyberspace.

I've written more about this here and here.

It's raining, it's pouring

Perennially Puzzled Bob Tisdale has written a second article on precipitation, on WUWT.  It's mainly a gripe that he cannot find data sets that agree.  When I wrote about his first gripe I made the uninformed observation that precipitation must be one of the most difficult things to monitor globally.  This would be so for any number of reasons that I expect readers here could imagine.

Anyway I've done a bit more reading and came across this paper by Udo Schneider et al (2013), titled: GPCC's new land surface precipitation climatology based on quality-controlled in situ data and its role in quantifying the global water cycle

Here is the abstract:

In 1989, the need for reliable gridded land surface precipitation data sets, in view of the large uncertainties in the assessment of the global energy and water cycle, has led to the establishment of the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) at Deutscher Wetterdienst on invitation of the WMO.

The GPCC has calculated a precipitation climatology for the global land areas for the target period 1951–2000 by objective analysis of climatological normals of about 67,200 rain gauge stations from its data base. GPCC's new precipitation climatology is compared to several other station-based precipitation climatologies as well as to precipitation climatologies derived from the GPCP V2.2 data set and from ECMWF's model reanalyses ERA-40 and ERA-Interim.

Finally, how GPCC's best estimate for terrestrial mean precipitation derived from the precipitation climatology of 786 mm per year (equivalent to a water transport of 117,000 km3) is fitting into the global water cycle context is discussed.

The paper is a very easy read.  It goes into a lot of detail, describing how the team collects data, corrects it, stores it etc.  And towards the end it has some information about global precipitation patterns, among other things.  I recommend it.

BTW - I'd say my uninformed observation was pretty close to the mark.

Still more Tisdale Tricks: How Bob tries to hide the incline at WUWT

Update: 31 August 2013  Getting a lot of WUWT visitors today!  I've provided an update for them.  Bob Tisdale is either as thick as a brick or a liar.  You can read and comment here if you want to!

By now most people who read climate denier blogs would be aware of the awful trouble poor little Anthony Watts has with anomalies.  He is befuddled, bamboozled and betrayed by them over and over again.  He's not the only one.

However this time it's Bob Tisdale who wants to hide the rising global surface temperatures.  He often gets up to tricks like this and this, but deniers are the only ones who are willing to fall for them.

But before we get to that, Bob comments (archived here) about the NCDC/NOAA global temperature record.  Here is an excerpt from his WUWT article from today:

The opening paragraph of NOAA’s press release NCDC Releases June 2013 Global Climate Report begins with alarmist statistics and an error (my boldface):

According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 37th consecutive June and 340th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985.

First, the error: According to the NOAA Monthly Global (land and ocean combined into an anomaly) Index (°C), the “last below-average temperature for any month was” in reality was December 1984, not February 1985. Makes one wonder, if they can’t read a list of temperature anomalies, should we believe they can read thermometers?

Being of a sceptical bent, especially when it comes to WUWT, I went to the NODC/NOAA website and downloaded the data for February and the data for December.  The data I downloaded was not inconsistent with the NCDC report.  According to these data, the February 1985 anomaly from the 1901-2000 mean was zero while the December 1984 anomaly from the 1901-2000 mean was -0.1.

Then I checked Bob's source.  It happened to be measured to four decimal places.  The February 1985 anomaly from the 1901-2000 mean was 0.0027 (ie zero to two decimal places) while the December 1984 anomaly was  -0.0971 (or -0.1 to two decimal places).  So one could argue that technically Bob was correct.  However taking a temperature anomaly to four decimal places, or even three decimal places is cutting it fine.  Fake skeptics are often quick to screech "error bars" except when they are looking at a denier chart.  Nonetheless, February 1985 was not below average in either record.  It was exactly average in the first source and above average in the second.

I wonder if NCDC/NOAA had said that December 1984 was the last month "below average" would Bob have gone to my first source and claimed they should have referred to February 1985?

How Bob Tisdale tries to hide the incline

Now we come to the part where Bob wants to hide the incline.  Bob writes:

Second, it’s very obvious that NOAA press releases have degraded to nothing but alarmist babble. 

Why does he say it's alarmist babble?  Well, it's because they do a comparison with the twentieth century mean instead of the 1981-2010 mean.  Bob even puts up a picture to show us the difference.  Here it is - as always, you can click it to see the larger version if you want to.

 Bob writes:

If the NCDC had revised their base years to comply with WMO recommendations, the press release wouldn’t have the same alarm-bell ring to it.

So Bob, being either a scaredy cat himself and not wanting to face up to the reality of a warming world, or preying on the fears of the scaredy cats at WUWT, decides to rewrite the NCDC media release so that all the little fearful brains at WUWT can stop being alarmed:

According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 17th consecutive June and 16th consecutive month (less than two years) with a global temperature above the 1981-2010 average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1996 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 2012, though December 2012 was basically zero.

Bob would just love to hide the incline.

---

Update (31 August 2013): I've inserted this clarification for Bob Tisdale, since he still doesn't "get it":


Here is the excerpt from the NCDC media release with Bob's suggested changes:

According to NOAA scientists, the globally averaged temperature for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest June since record keeping began in 1880. It also marked the 37th consecutive June and 340th consecutive month (more than 28 years) with a global temperature above the 20th century average. It also marked the 17th consecutive June and 16th consecutive month (less than two years) with a global temperature above the 1981-2010 average. The last below-average June temperature was June 1976 June 1996 and the last below-average temperature for any month was February 1985 February 2012, though December 2012 was basically zero.

Bob Tisdale is trying to hide the temperature incline!

Bob wants to "hide" the warming by shifting the baseline up!  He doesn't want you to know that it's more than 340 months or more than 28 years since any monthly temperature was below the twentieth century average.  No-one aged 28 years or younger has ever in their life experienced a year where the global average surface temperature was at or below the average for the entire twentieth century.   No-one aged 37 years or younger has ever experienced a June that was colder than the average June temperature in the twentieth century.  That's what Bob doesn't want his readers to know.   Is Bob Tisdale trying to deceive people?  Yes.  He tries to deceive his readers into thinking that there has only been a couple of years of global warming.   In the words of the IPCC - it is unequivocal!


- o - End of 31 August update

---

Think about this - are you a member of the privileged few?

The chart on the right shows the percentage of people in the world today younger than particular ages in years.  So 9% of people are younger than five years of age and 92% are younger than 65 years of age.

Data source: US Census Bureau

Lets play the anomaly game like Bob did, but using years. It's seventeen (17) years since there was a year with an average global temperature below the 1981-2010 average.  The last time was 1996. That means that around 30% of people alive today have never experienced a year where globally it was colder than the most recent three decade average.

For older readers who are as familiar with the period 1961-90, it's twenty eight (28) years since there was a year with an average global temperature below the 1961-90 average.  The last time was 1985 - and that was only 0.01 degrees below.  The second last time was 1978, a whole 35 years ago.

So almost half the people alive today have never in their lives experienced a year where the global surface temperature was colder than the 1961-90 average.  Almost 60% of people alive today would barely have noticed, since 1985 was only 0.01 degrees colder than the average.

Sixty per cent of the world today has never lived through a year colder than the 20th century average

What about last century as a whole?  The last time the annual global surface temperature was below the twentieth century average was 1976.  That's 37 years ago.  So around 60% of people alive today have never in their lives experienced a year cooler than the average of the twentieth century.

Data Source: NASA

Update:  Go here for the update.

Christopher the expert fiddler...

Update: I missed this, but an astute commenter on Wotts' blog picked it up.  The disrespectful potty peer calls President Obama "Mr" throughout until he gets to the end, when he puts President in quotation marks.  That's his birtherism showing.  Nice that Anthony allows this - not!  (I don't feel any qualms about being disrespectful towards Monckton.)

---

After a couple of weeks away, Lord Christopher is back on WUWT.   (You were all starting to miss him, weren't you.) This time he's tearing into President Obama, who is reported to have said:

But the flipside is we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago

The Lord might have missed Obama's speech made in May, but he's now caught up, since it was a much-asked question at the US Senate hearings last week.

First up, Monckton shows us all a stunning drawing in full technicolor like this:

I think it's an improvement on his previous drawings.  It brings to mind a locomotive for some reason.  And there's not quite as much of his ghastly pink background.  Of course it bears no resemblance to anything except Monckton's imagination.

Monckton waffles on in his usual fashion about being an "expert reviewer" for the IPCC.  I expect the IPCC lead authors will give his comments the attention they deserve.  (For the benefit of anyone new to climate discussions, anyone at all can nominate themselves as an 'expert reviewer' for the IPCC, even a potty peer.)

Moncton then makes some huge errors of fact.  For example, he says "the models expect an approximately linear warming...".  I cannot imagine that any of the models expect anything.  It's the scientists who interpret the models who may draw conclusions and thus have some expectations.  And I doubt any climate scientist has an expectation of a linear warming, given the system till now has not demonstrated linear warming.  Here is how the surface temperature has progressed over the past century and more:

Data Source: NASA

Even the five year moving average goes up and down over time, reflecting internal variation like ENSO and other forcings like volcanos, aerosols and the like.  Still, there is a definite upward trend.

Monckton continues his deceptions.  The reason is obvious.  He wants to argue that all the models are wrong.  So what he does is show charts for very short periods of time.  All except RSS is either five years or ten years. Not only does he pick very short intervals, but he puts up monthly charts so he can make sure that the noise of month to month variation masks any signal of the trend.  Not that you would expect to see the signal in a short period of time.  (The longest period he shows is for RSS, for which he puts up a monthly chart of sixteen years and seven months.)

Here's an example with UAH, Monckton's five years by month compared to the same period on an annual basis:

Data Source: UAH

Now Monckton's ten years by month compared to the same period on an annual basis:

Data Source: UAH

Now compare the above with all the data for UAH:

Data Source: UAH

It's pretty easy to see the cherry pick and why it pays to use as much data as you can if you want to see what's happening to the lower troposphere surface temperature.

Dishonest is the best adjective I can come up with to describe the man.

In the comments

One thing you can almost always count on in the comments to a Monckton article, is at least one pompous response.  This from Ben Wilson who says (spoilt only by the exclamation marks):

July 21, 2013 at 8:31 am  Lord Monckton, I would like to personally think you for the work you have done and are doing, and pray that your efforts will bear abundant fruit!!

Jon Jewett says:

July 21, 2013 at 9:13 am  

Dear Lord Monckton of Brenchley,

Thank you.

Should you ever be at loose ends in the Heart of Texas, you would be welcome at our table. We could shoot guns and eat BBQ and drink beer and go to a rousing Bible thumping Baptist Church service (all of the things that the coasters believe of us here.)

Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)

Robin sums it up quite well, though unwittingly, when he says (excerpt):

July 21, 2013 at 10:39 am  We are dealing with an ideology here pure and simple. 

Willis Eschenbach thinks most people are suckers

...and doesn't "believe" there is a free market for insurance

I've just read an article by Willis Eschenbach on WUWT (that's Wondering Willis of Remote Airports fame).  His article appears to be based on the premise that there is no such thing as a free market for insurance.

It's an interesting thought to appear on an ideologically-driven denier website of the free-market persuasion.

Willis main lie is:

... there is no evidence that  extreme weather events are increasing. 

Willis is trying to claim that one of the world's largest reinsurance companies, Munich Re is making stuff up when it produces charts like this one (discussed by Tamino). (Click any chart to enlarge it.)

And this updated one, from a more recent Munich Re report: Topics Geo – Natural catastrophes 2012

Willis' whole argument seems to be founded on the false premise that climate change isn't bringing more weather disasters.  He makes the following unstated assumptions:

1. people who pay more for insurance as companies raise their rates as risk increases, are wasting their money because floods, fires, storms etc won't get worse with climate change.
2. no insurance company will try to grab a bigger share of the market by offering lower rates than the industry norm.  There won't be a company that will back Willis' notion that weather disasters won't continue to increase.

In other words, people are stupid for paying higher rates.  I'm not so surprised by that first assumption.  Anyone who doesn't stray far from the realm of denier-land can't be expected to know that there are people in the world who are not quite as stupid as those they come across on places like WUWT.

The second assumption is more odd, because free market ideology is what motivates a lot of deniers to adopt their denialist stance. Willis is assuming the insurance market isn't a free market.  It is not competitive. There will be no company that will offer lower rates. Seems a bit of an odd position for someone on WUWT to take.

Insurance companies offer all sorts of things and compete with each other in my experience.  But like any business, if they make too many bad choices they may go under.  If an insurance company doesn't pay out for damages it insures against it will lose customers or worse.  If an insurer wrongly assumes risks are lower than they really are and it does pay up when disasters hit, it may well run out of funds and fold.

Wondering Willis is wrong - again

Going back to Willis and his big hot whopper:

...there is no evidence that  extreme weather events are increasing. Even the IPCC has been dragged kicking and screaming to admit this. The land has been warming for a couple hundred years, but nowhere in there are any thermal catastrophes, or any increase in the extremes of wind, water, and weather.

As we've seen there is evidence being stacked up that certain deleterious weather events are increasing.  Most extreme events are rare, otherwise they would not be called extreme they'd be called 'normal'.  That's not all. The IPCC itself reports certain extreme events are increasing in either or both magnitude and frequency, including heavy precipitation, heat waves and warm spells in various regions.  Extreme events associated with cold are decreasing.

The most common of the recurring extreme events are arguably extreme heat and extreme precipitation.  The weather in most places is pushing against the upper boundaries of "climate".  There are disasters associated with these extremes - fire, drought and flash floods.

This IPCC report is devoted to extreme events and disasters and, contrary to what Willis tries to claim, it does document an observed increase in some extreme events.  Already.  And we've got a lot more to look forward to as climate change kicks in more strongly this century.

If rising insurance costs are a concern, I'd suggest moving to an area that is less likely to be affected by fire, flood, sea surges, hurricanes and other disasters.  Insurance costs aren't going to drop from lowering climate risks, but you can still find companies that assess risk at the local level and will charge less where there is less risk exposure.

Ed "Ice Age" Hoskins is at it again on WUWT

Ed Hoskins has written another article on WUWT.  It's a very mixed up piece. He starts out arguing we're heading for an ice age, basing his assertion on very wrong premises.  I've written about his nonsense before - such as here and here.  These ice age alarmists are so tedious, aren't they.  If Ed Hoskins put half as much effort into learning about science as he does protesting and denying it, he could almost pass for an educated man.

Ed says the earth is as cold as Central Greenland

Ed starts out with Don Easterbrook's favourite trick, equating the temperatures on the summit of the ice sheet in Greenland with those of the whole world.  He even writes (I kid you not!):

The temperature record of the Holocene can be seen in the GRIP[3] Greenland ice core data. 

No, Ed.  The temperature record of the Holocene on the Greenland ice sheet can be seen in the Greenland ice core data.  That's not the whole world and nor do changes there reflect the changes in the whole world.  Apart from it being darned cold up there, the temperatures in the Arctic are amplified and have much bigger fluctuations than the earth as a whole.  (Ed doesn't bother to explain why the earth isn't a snowball and how we manage to exist or why his other favourite spot, Central England, isn't buried under two kilometres or more of ice.  I suppose he thinks if it's good enough for an Emeritus Professor it's good enough for him.)

Ed's wrong: Central England is hotter than ever

Next,  he claims that Central England temperatures have dropped therefore an ice age cometh.  He writes:

However since the year 2000 a change has occurred: the CET record shows a marked reduction from its high levels loosing all the gains that it has made since 1850, even though at the same time CO2 levels have escalated further to ~400ppmv.

Let's just look at that. (Click to enlarge.)

Data Source: UK Met Office Hadley Centre

Central England had a cold year when the world as a whole had the hottest year on record - in 2010.  The following year, 2011, was among the hottest, but Ed stops his chart before that year.  He stops at 2010 and doesn't include the last two years.  And it was only four years earlier than his favourite coolish Central England but hottest year on record for the rest of the world, in 2006, that Central England had its hottest year on record.  Just looking at the general trend, like the eleven year moving average, I think it's fair to say that Central England no longer has the climate of the mid-nineteenth century.  And the temperatures in Central England also fluctuate a lot more than those of the earth as a whole.

So much for Central England cooling down.  In any case, since when was Central England the whole world?

And speaking of England - the Met Office says it's warmer than usual right now!  More here in the Telegraph.  And in the USA and in India.  (How's that ice age alarmism going, Ed?)

Ed's wrong again: We are not due for an ice age for at least 50,000 years 

Then he goes for another myth.  Ed claims that:

On past experience, our current benign interglacial period should or could be drawing to its close.

What past experience he doesn't say.  The only hint as to what is in his mind is his reference to the Eemian, which he claims lasted only 10,000 years.  That's not so if Wikipedia is anything to go by.  The Eemian "began about 130,000 years ago and ended about 114,000 years ago."  By my arithmetic that means it lasted 16,000 years.  A big difference when Ed's argument is based on the fact that the Holocene began about 10,000 years ago.  Even if you only went by arithmetic rather than science, we'd have another five or six thousand years to go.

But that's not the whole story.  In this paper in Science, Berger and Loutre calculate that even without global warming, Earth wouldn't start getting cold for at least another 50,000 years.  That's because of the calculated insolation in future years.  Here is a diagram from their paper:

Long-term variations of eccentricity (top), June insolation at 65°N (middle), and simulated Northern Hemisphere ice volume (increasing downward) (bottom) for 200,000 years before the present to 130,000 from now. Time is negative in the past and positive in the future. For the future, three CO2 scenarios were used: last glacial-interglacial values (solid line), a human-induced concentration of 750 ppmv (dashed line), and a constant concentration of 210 ppmv (dotted line). Simulation results from (13, 15); eccentricity and insolation from (19).

The only way they work out that earth could start cooling sooner would be if CO2 dropped below around 220 ppm, which can't happen for thousands of years.

Humans have added 43% more CO2 to the atmosphere

Ed tries to argue that humans have only added 3% to atmospheric CO2.  How he comes up with that number defies all science, logic and arithmetic.  What Ed writes is this:

In addition the Global Warming advocates assume that all increases to CO2 concentration are due solely to man-made additions. This is not necessarily the case, as the biosphere and slightly warmer oceans will outgas CO2 and the Man-made contribution is only a minor part of that CO2 transport within the biosphere, possibly as small as 3% of the total[26].

No, Ed.  The oceans are still absorbing CO2 not outgassing it.  Partial pressure is outweighing the temperature effect by a long way still.  In fact, if roughly half of our emissions weren't being swallowed up in the oceans, we'd have already almost doubled atmospheric CO2.  As it is, (400-280)/280 = 43%.

CO2 and Energy

Then, as if he suddenly decides that CO2 emissions are important after all, Ed starts into some weird if well documented journey into carbon emissions by country, pessimistically saying it's all too hard.  I say it's well documented but must point out that most of these "documents" are from highly suspect sources like denialist websites.

I'm not going to go into all Ed's arguments or 'evidence' on that score.  What I do suggest is that if you do read what Ed writes, make sure you also read this new report from the International Energy Agency: World Energy Outlook Special Report 2013: Redrawing the Energy Climate Map.

As a taste, here are a couple of charts.  The first is energy-related CO2 emissions by country:

This next one shows per capita emissions and GDP by selected countries from 1990 to 2012:

The IEA seems to think we can still manage to get through this if we put our collective minds to it.  It writes of a New Policies Scenario and a 450 Scenario.  I'm still working through the report so I won't try to say any more for risk of misrepresenting it.

Re-capping the main points

The main points here are:

1. Assume anything and everything you read on WUWT is wrong or worse unless you can verify it in triplicate from reputable sources.
2. Don't lose hope that the world can shift to clean energy and survive global warming, (albeit probably still with the mass extinction event sooner rather than later).