Thanks Brett and Joe.   This kind of stuff needs debating.

None more than this Gorey drivel.  He gets the big guilt thing going – our grandchildren will one day look back on us as a “criminal generation”.  And he even beats the tobacco drum – “industries and companies whose business plans are dependent on unrestrained pollution … are ferociously fighting …  just as tobacco companies blocked constraints on the marketing of cigarettes.”

Man, the skeptics are evil.  They refuse to buy into having their cost of living ballooned, and their taxes increased.   They refuse to have to pay for carbon credits and have the money sent to developing nations to finance their coal-burning power stations and their industries that produce windmills and solar panels with cheap labour to sell back to us.  They refuse to be taxed on carbon emissions.  Why do they exhibit this “criminal” behaviour?

First: AGW is a theory no better than any other theory about climate change.  Actually, it’s worse than some – Richard Lindzen has some very specific criticisms below.   (Thanks JB for the tip).  So it’s not that skeptics blindly and stubbornly refuse to believe something unpalatable, it’s just that they are genuinely skeptical!  Skeptical of a religious crusade based on bad science, argument from ignorance, wilful exaggeration and personal attacks.  A crusade that is already leveraging the power of the state to impose its charges by force of law.  Hmmmm.   I believe it was the founder of Scientology who wrote that if you would be rich, start a religion…  http://www.herkinderkin.com/2010/01/anthropogenic-global-warming-as-organised-religion/

Second: Even if AGW was proven and not merely a theory, increasing costs by carbon credits, taxes or whatever would not reduce our consumption of fossil fuels any more than the savage cost increases of the 1972 oil shock.  All such measures do is cause inflation.  (Maybe Gore counts on the fact that most of his audience were not even born in 1972, or were too young to remember.)  So the cure for the unproven AGW is as illusory as the malady itself.  Gore and the rest of the leaders of the AGW religion probably feel that they cannot lose.  When we have paid and paid and become impoverished, the earth will not overheat and they will say “See, together we saved the earth”.  And we will be so grateful…

Reference:

Richard Lindzen on AGW  http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/02/dr-richard-lindzens-talk-at-fermilab.html If you’re scientifically minded, click on the archive bit at the bottom and go through Lindzen’s full presentation.

Now take out the bottle of champagne from the fridge, and open it.  Also open the champagne bottle on the bench.  What happens?  The cold bottle opens with a hiss or a pop, and the bottle sits with bubbles rising in it,  The warm bottle spurts champagne, overflowing the neck so violently that you lose half of the contents.  Now do the same with the bottles of carbonated water.  What happens?  Much the same thing – the cold one bubbles away gently, the warm one overflows.  Now put the cold bottle of water back in the fridge without replacing the cap, in preparation for the second part of the experiment (keep the cap aside – I’ll tell you why at the end).

Congratulations!  Pour yourself a drink of champagne – you deserve it.  You have just demonstrated the possibility that cold champagne (and water) hold more CO2 in solution than warm champagne (and water)!

The volume of water in the oceans is approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometres, or 310 million cubic miles.  (Source : “The World Ocean.” The Columbia Encyclopedia. CD-ROM. 2007, 6th Ed. New York: Columbia University Press.)  Those oceans hold an awful lot of CO2.  So you have also demonstrated the possibility of something else.  Warmer oceans will hold less CO2 than cold oceans.  So we could expect that in the presence of global warming, the oceans (all 1.3 billion cubic kilometres of them) release CO2 directly into the atmosphere.  Rather a lot of CO2.

Hmmmm….  Is anyone wondering why the glacial records associate high levels of CO2 with high temperatures?  And why the CO2 rise always follows the temperature rise?  Don’t you think it possible that at least some of the CO2 is there because rather a lot of it would slowly bubble out of the oceans when they became warmer?   That would seem to expose Al Gore’s use of glacial records to support AGW theory for what it really is.  Poppycock.  Penn and Teller fodder.

Heh heh…  You have just wasted a bottle of champagne.  Cheer up – it is hard to be grumpy when you are drinking champagne.  So have another glass of champagne.  Go and relax for twenty-four hours, ready for the second part of the experiment.

After the twenty-four hours, go back to the fridge.  Open it and look at the bottle of carbonated water that you returned uncapped yesterday.  It’s no longer bubbling.  So if there is any CO2 remaining in it, it is held in solution.  Now remove the bottle from the fridge, screw the cap back on securely, and leave it on the bench at 21 degrees C for another twenty-four hours.

After the second twenty-four hours, open the warm bottle.  What happens?  It starts bubbling away.  And that’s the point of the second part of the experiment.  Congratulations, now you really have demonstrated that cold water holds more CO2 in solution than warm water!  If you have any more cold champagne, pour yourself one.  Otherwise, have a beer.

(The earlier part of the champagne experiment did not truly demonstrate that cold water holds more CO2 in solution than warm water.  It demonstrated only that when the pressure is released from water containing CO2 dissolved under pressure, it bubbles out more quickly if the water is warm.)

References:

Dr Jarl Ahlbeck “Increase of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration due to Ocean Warming” – see http://www.john-daly.com/oceanco2/oceanco2.htm

The IPCC scientists employ climate models incorporating man-made CO2 emissions to predict climate changes.  Their argument is to the effect that if the predictions are approximately correct and show an expected trend when CO2 is factored in (to their models), but fail to do so when it is removed, then that “proves” the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory.  AGW theory holds that man-made CO2 causes global warming, and that it will lead to a disastrous runaway greenhouse effect.

Scientists and thinkers have always used models to illustrate their theories about the universe.  The models did not test the theories; they illustrated them.  Yet Al Gore and the IPCC insist that the computer models provide supporting evidence for AGW.  Gore goes further – he says that “the science is settled” (!) and that there is scientific consensus in favour of AGW that proves the IPCC is correct.  As Penn and Teller would say, “Poppycock!” (or some other word to that effect).

Before the sixteenth century, there was almost universal scientific consensus that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun, moon and all the stars revolved around it.  Western astronomers believed it absolutely.  Their picture was the one described by Ptolemy, a brilliant Greek scientist, astronomer and mathematician, who published his work in Egypt about 150 AD.  In his model, stars were on the rim of a large outer sphere which rotated  approximately once each day.  The planets, the Sun, and the Moon each had their own, smaller sphere.  His model was unable to account for an inconvenient truth – the paths of the sun and planets were not what one would expect from them as they orbited the earth.  So he added epicycles, deferents and equants to explain the differences.  Click here for a description of the added constructs.

To put it clearly, it never occurred to him to abandon the theory.  Instead, he tweaked the model.

Craftsmen in Europe built elegant mechanical models and astronomical clocks based on the conceptual model of Ptolemy.  The model didn’t get everything right, it left a few puzzling gaps.  But using it, astronomers could make calendar and astronomical predictions that were more accurate than the present-day global temperature predictions of the IPCC computer models.  Yep, it was a pretty impressive model, supported by the consensus of all of the world’s pre-eminent scientists for over a thousand years.

And one other thing.  Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the universe was flat, plain wrong.

P.S.

The IPCC scientists create the computer climate models with AGW as a given premise.  Their choices of the factors and parameters to include in their models, and the weightings to be given to each, are a matter of scientific controversy.  And then to top it all off, the IPCC scientists themselves are the ones who choose the raw temperature data on which to base the observations, and they are also the ones who “normalise” those data.  Climategate revealed the extent to which the input data for the models have been massaged.  Even if modelling was appropriate as a test of the theory, how could we possibly have any faith in their results?

The scam has been sold to the world by the IPCC and Al Gore, and environmentalists have swallowed the whole thing, hook, line and sinker.  So have the media.  The ” war”  against Global Warming has become a cause celebre, and those who promote global action to reduce CO2 have become media darlings.  But the world is beginning to wake up to the scam, and when the IPCC, Al Gore and AGW itself are finally discredited, the media will disown them.   Environmentalism will be tarred with the same brush.

Damn!  Why tilt at the windmill of man-made CO2 and methane emissions when there are real enemies to fight?  Unlike man-made CO2 and methane from farm animals, deforestation and wetland destruction really do have a significant climate impact.  Strip-mining, oil spills, over-fishing, bottom trawling, whaling, industrial, agricultural and urban pollution, land-fill waste disposal, intensive forced farming and the destruction of natural wildlife habitats all diminish the sustainability of life itself.

Stick to your knitting, environmentalists – get back out and concentrate on the real environmental issues.  We need you to do that.  And to do it, you need credibility and respect.  It will be very hard to maintain your credibility when you smell of Anthropogenic Global Warming bullshit.

Eh?  The promoters of the greatest scientific scam since Piltdown Man are awarded a Nobel Peace Prize?  Anthropogenic climate change is at best a speculative theory, and Al Gore and the IPCC have cynically disseminated it as knowledge.  The truth is, scientists have not been able to validate the theory.  They have not demonstrated a causal connection between CO2 produced by mankind and global warming.  Moreover, the IPCC have cherry-picked and manipulated proxy and temperature records to provide a picture consistent with the theory,  failed to provide open access to the raw data they have used to record global temperatures, and relied on computer models for their “evidence” of man-made climate change.  In effect, they have perpetrated a sales job.  And Al Gore has taken a travelling slide show presentation as sales collateral on his mission to convince world leaders.  A presentation that promoted IPCC-manipulated data and conclusions as hard fact, glossed over the real temporal relationship between historical warm periods and atmospheric CO2, blasted scientific skepticism as bias, appealed to scientific “consensus” and “authority”, cast aspersions on all who would disagree with its message, and warned of catastrophe if we don’t accept this tenuous idea as the truth and take immediate disruptive action to cut CO2.

For that, he and the IPCC were awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.  It’s time to rename that prize.  This occurrence of it is nothing but a sales award.

P.S.  I have formally nominated Al Gore for the forthcoming Ig Nobel awards.  Two, in fact:

Nomination for the Ig Nobel Prize for History:

Citation – by using his presentation to show conclusively that there was no Middle-Age Warm Period, Al Gore has set the historic record straight again, exposing Chaucer and the Doomsday Book as frauds for incorrectly recording the presence of orange groves and black grape vineyards in England in the Middle Ages.

Nomination for the Ig Nobel Prize for Scientific Methodology:

Citation – By citing glacial records of rises in atmospheric CO2 that follow each rise in the temperature of the earth as proof that CO2 concentrations caused the rises, Al Gore redefines causality and demonstrates that our intuitive sense that causes precede their effects is fundamentally wrong.

For his chicken-licken successes, Al Gore may well become the first man in history to be awarded both a Nobel and an Ig Nobel award for the same piece of work.