Bishop Hill Diversionary tactics
Feb 22, 2011 Climate: Ward A truly Wardian performance by the LSE man at the Grantham Institute site today, taking a pot-shot at Christopher Booker because of his (entirely correct) observations about the inaccuracies in the science in Sir Paul Nurse's Horizon programme. No true statement should ever go unchallenged it seems:
Dr Bindschadler indicated that human activities emit the equivalent of about seven billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere each year, whereas natural sources, such as volcanoes, only produce about one billion tonnes. Christopher Booker, whose weekly column in The Sunday Telegraph regularly recycles the content appearing on 'sceptic' blogs, attacked Dr Bindschadler's statements, describing them as "mind-boggling" and "a grotesque misrepresentation". Mr Booker claimed that natural sources account for more than 96 per cent of annual emissions of carbon dioxide. So who is right? With a typical flourish, Ward then proceeds to avoid the question he has just posed and embarks on a lengthy discussion of various aspects of the carbon cycle, but one that never quite gets back to the ratio between human and natural carbon dioxide emissions. As readers here know, Bindschadler got it wrong and Booker was right. The ratio is nothing like 7:1. Unfortunately, Ward just can't quite bring himself to say that truth.
Reader Comments (176)
PaulB
You'll need to explain that to a dumbo like me, I'm afraid.
It seems that you are suggesting that nature is capable of dealing with "natural" levels of CO2 emissions but that anthropogenic emissions are too much for it (forgive me; I'm trying to keep this simple for my benefit).
I agree that humanity has been emitting more CO2 in the last couple of hundred years but given that CO2 levels have varied by more than 100ppm over several millennia and the earth appears to have coped pretty well, I can't see why this should be a major problem for it.
I don't believe in the "good CO2: bad CO2" joke but it would be interesting to know which bit of anthropogenic CO2 is causing the problem. The stuff we breathe out? The excess we create through land use changes? Or is it just the part that we use for transport and heating and power, which appears to be what the alarmists are determined that we should give up?
Dave B's quote from Essex & McKittrick includes numbers which, to my limited way of thinking, would reduce the additional CO2 released by mankind in his normal activities virtually irrelevant.
Ward's website is quite astonishing, in inviting comments and seemingly not displaying any.
Having read his piece around 9.30 this morning I've dived back several times to see any responses and yet even now at 4.15pm, nary a one!
He's definitely no competition to WUWT for the Blog Awards.
There were over a dozen comments visible earlier - but they have been hidden or removed subsequently.
There seems to be a war of attrition against sceptics on all the warmist blogs right now.
I started posting on their new Climate Brief blog the other day and, surprisingly, all my posts got through and I had a few lively exchanges with the editor, ex-Greenpeace Christian Hunt (behave!). I even got away with a link to Josh's cartoon, but not any more - the shutters are down.
Also CIF is practically a sceptic and sanity free zone at present. During a spat with Leo Hickman about his disgusting set-up of poor old Johnny Ball - I got through three different accounts in 24 hours.
Still, I sense they're happier talking amongst themselves there.
"Sorry if this obvious point has been made before (I haven't read the entire thread - although David B at 1:44 did mention it), but it bears repeating anyway. The alleged "misrepresentation" by Bindschadler is based on a misunderstanding of assumptions that are often made in scientific discourse. But then Booker isn't a scientist, so how would he know that ;-)" - Paul B
Nice try but no cigar. How could Bindschadler be taking about net values if he includes volcanic emmision? Are you suggesting that volcanoes only started producing CO2 when man started? Bindschadler was being interviewed for a TV program, and its prefectly reasonable to believe that what he said is what he meant.
DaveB
Well, please read Paul B's comment at 3:44pm above.
By 'playing devil's advocate' you have allowed the whole point of Bindschadler's misrepresentation to become clouded again.
Now Paul B is doing it as well. He even name-checks you.
Well done.
Paul B
No, you are missing the point.
Please see my comment at 1:57pm.
Please don't resurrect this meme. It's all been chewed through already. Asking nicely ;-)
DaveB (David B - one and the same, I assume?)
Just to be clear I was referring to this:
Which has had exactly the consequences I predicted. I spent considerable time commenting on this when it was first debated I genuinely do not want to have to go over it all again.
We have a semi feral dog that some neighbors feed out where I live at present. It likes to bay at the moon. I have no idea why the coyotes haven't ate it yet, but each full moon, there it is out behind the house in the large open area I cleared for brush fire control, baying at the moon.
I think I will start calling it "Bob"
Paul B
Apologies. Should be:
Or it would be if 50% of the gross anthropogenic annual contribution of ~5% were not absorbed by natural sinks.
Eddy
Because the CO2 that comes out of volcanoes is also "net" - ie it is geologically old carbon and there is no equivalent sink
DaveB (David B - one and the same, I assume?)
An understandable mistake but a mistake nonetheless.
I genuinely do not want to have to go over it all again.
In my case at least, you don't need to.
Don Pablo, it's unlikely he's howling at the moon (natural wolves howling has no correlation to moon cycles) there's usually only 3 occasions canines howl, a call for the pack to meet up, either the whole pack or a lone animal calling the pack, as a celebration when they do meet up, or to warn others to stay out of a packs territory. Maybe he's just missing his pack, or if the neighbours fuss him too much he could think he's the Alpha warning others to steer clear.
Comparing Ward to a Dog is really doing mans best friend an injustice, dogs don't tell lies.
BBD
Yes. I just went by the figures in the original quote from Essex & McKitrick, which I'm assuming are correct. Of course you're quite right in that natural sinks currently mop up a lot of the extra carbon. But that doesn't affect the principle of my argument about whether Bindschadler's numbers are correct.
@DaveB
My apologies.
Paul B
You say
No, it just muddies the water.
Here (again, for the nth time) is the Nurse/Bindschadler exchange:
It's a mess, isn't it? I don't disagree about the year-on-year accumulation, but the argument was/is about how the average viewer would parse this conversation. And whether or not it could be characterised as carelessly or even intentionally misleading.
Paul B
I should have been clear that I added the emphasis to the quote above. Specifically in order to clarify potentially highly misleading take-away from this:
In the light of the >3% anthropogenic vs <97% natural contributions to annual CO2 emissions.
BBD at 1:57
Less tiresome than wading through all the snarkey ad homs directed at Nurse and Bindschadler that litter this thread! Or do you want the Bishop to adopt RealClimate type moderation?
Here's why I think its you who are misrepresenting the figures.
Your 97% natural emissions is virtually all part of the carbon cycle and is balanced by being reabsorbed in the oceans or in plants from where it came.
On your figure a few posts back, only about 50% of the anthropogenic emissions is taken up in a natural sink. Therefore the trend in atmospheric CO2 (which is after all what is at issue) is (almost) entirely down to anthropogenic emissions.
So to include the emitting part of the carbon cycle as a way of apparently minimizing the anthropogenic emissions without mentioning the reabsorbing part of the natural cycle is, as I say, disingenuous or just naive.
@Samtheskeptic: I am so in agreement with what you say:
I have often commented on exactly this point. So we don't need to cut our 'emissions', we just need to find a way to get them netted out in the returns. ;-) Indeed, to take it from the sublime to the ridiculous, who is to say that man-made emissions aren't being 'returned' (and netted out), whereas, emissions from some other source is failing to be 'returned'.
That's the trouble with playing Devil's advocate......
@Foxgoose
Also CIF is practically a sceptic and sanity free zone at present.
The Guardian CiF carried out a great cull of skeptics a month ago. An astonishing number of comments were deleted, or completely removed, and accounts were canceled all together. If accounts were people, this could easily go down as genocide of skeptical commenters. The CiF hasn't been the same since the Great Cull.
The article that caused it was called Why have UK media ignored climate change announcements?
Guess who was the author.
BBD
You're being unnecessarily pedantic here, considering that the context is a television interview. FWIW I would parse it in exactly the way intended. And if I was in doubt, I'd look up the numbers and still parse it in the way intended. And I think the average viewer would take it (as intended) as a realistic indication of the rate at which CO2 was building up in the atmosphere (ie very rapidly). And if Bindschadler added, "oh yes and there's all this extra carbon emitted from plants and oceans and its all reabsorbed as part of the background cycle" the average viewer might well say "So what? That's more details than I need to know"
Paul B
As I say above, the issue here is with the Nurse and Bindschadler exchange. I am neither being disingenuous or naive.
You are pushing the focus away from where it properly belongs.
Which is that, in a BBC documentary supposedly about the importance of communicating science well in order to prevent wrong-headed or anti-scientific memes from taking hold, the President of the Royal Society and a NASA scientist had the exchange I reproduce above.
Comment on what was said, rather than trying to direct the thread away from this. And indeed, from Bob Ward's peculiar and obfuscatory treatment of it in his post.
Paul B
CO2 is building up in the atmosphere steadily, not 'very rapidly'. Why does everyone feel the need to exaggerate?
I'm not being unnecessarily pedantic. I just don't agree with much of what you say. Differences of emphasis, largely, but emphasis can be, well, important, wouldn't you agree?
Snotrocket (nice name!)
We can recognize carbon from fossil fuels because of its isotopic signature. The build up of specifically fossil fuel derived carbon in the atmosphere is very clear. This helps us to work out what proportion of anthropogenic carbon is being taken out into natural sinks. The point is, we don't know how much longer these sinks can continue to take up a large fraction of it.
I'm sure someone posted the other day how the natural carbon sink/source figures were estimates +/- 20% so we don't really know where the rise, or most of the rise whatever, in co2 is really coming from, so just to clarify, we're still talking about what ward et al said of the rise figures Vs what the IPCC et al said, rather than what actually is...right?
Hmmm.
Paul B: I was starting to enjoy the exchange between you and BBD. You lost it for me when you did that warmist thing (not meant to be ad hom):
My emphasis.
My understanding is that the 'effect' of the build-up of CO2 is not linear. It will take an awful lot of the stuff to really break the 400ppm barrier. And if it does, so what?
Frosty, I remember something similar. Also, Mauna Loa observatory readings, although reliable, do not distinguish between anthropogenic and the natural CO2 in the atmosphere.
Paul B: You shouldn't take the p*ss out of my first name. My second name is 'Science'.
Paul B
You say
Again, the trouble here is emphasis - or you could call it tone, if you prefer.
We don't have any real idea of what the 'missing' sinks are are or how the operate, and it could be regarded as part of an alarmist discourse to imply - as you do - that they will lose capacity over time.
I think the average viewer would take it (as intended) as a realistic indication of the rate at which CO2 was building up in the atmosphere (ie very rapidly).
Give or take, you are correct - that’s just how the “average viewer” would take it.
And that’s why the exchange was disingenuous: a less partisan presenter would have qualified the point with riders such as that the concentration of CO2 is inversely and logarithmically related to its efficacy as a GHG, that the position of current CO2 levels vis a vis the asymptote is not known, that the sign, let alone the intensity, of the relevant feedback mechanisms is not known. And so on.
None of these points are particularly esoteric or difficult for a professional to express in lay terms. If you look hard enough, you'll find most of them in AR4 (though not, of course, in the SPMs).
If some fool in the pub pokes his finger in my chest while making low-grade arguments like Nurse did, I can live with that. But when the president of the RS and a Nobel prize winner to boot spouts the same banal tosh in a high-profile, peak-time documentary on a national TV network, one is entitled to ask what is going on.
For Goodness’ sake, a sports commentator would die of shame before daring to talk on TV when so pitifully ill-prepared.
Snotrocket
LOL
For you and BBD, who don't appreciate my saying that CO2 is building up "very rapidly", my answer is that the background levels during the ice ages have varied between 180ppm and 300ppm (this is based on data from Antarctic ice cores), whereas since 1960 alone, the level has risen to about 390ppm.
That looks to me like a very rapid increase indeed.
Given that the level of CO2 is part of the feedback loop that drives the climatic variability of the ice ages (the difference between the relatively mild climate we have now and having several-kilometre-thick ice sheets covering large parts of the Northern hemisphere) perhaps you can see why many scientists feel that what you would describe as an "alarmist" approach is justified.
(stands well back and dons tin hat ...)
PaulB
So there is such a thing as "good" CO2 and "bad" CO2 after all and nature knows the difference and ignores the "bad" CO2. And before you raise your eyes to heaven and mouth "I'm dealing with a nitwit here" I really can't see any other way to interpret that quote.The trouble is, without somebody spelling it out for me and all the other little ignorami around here, I don't buy it. It might be possible to identify fossil-fuel CO2 (which I note in your posting has become 'carbon' -- did you mean that or was that slip of the tongue?) by its fingerprint but I am still waiting to be convinced that nature knows the difference or that, over time, it is incapable of dealing with that 3% which is just as natural as the rest, merely from a different source.
[And either way, Bindschadler demonstrated in one simple statement why scientists need to watch what they're saying. Whatever he meant, this thread alone is evidence that that is not what he said.]
Frosty
Comparing Ward to a Dog is really doing mans best friend an injustice, dogs don't tell lies.
Point taken.
Perhaps the dog is really a vampire or werewolf?
"Natural causes only can produce - yes, there are volcanoes popping off and things like that, and coming out of the ocean, only about one gigaton per year." --Bob Bindschadler
If you assume that the Lake Nyos emission is typical, and that there are about 3 million subsea volcanic vents, then the total global carbon release (as C) is very roughly 8 Gigatonnes/year, not counting eruptions on land. [This is estimated based on the analyses of CO2-laden water entering the lake. The actual Nyos vent rate (via standpipe, early in the project) was roughly 4 times higher than the putative inlet rate. The former would yield a figure of 30 GtC annually, again, not counting land volcanoes.]
Paul B
Leaving aside the uncertainty over estimates of CO2 in ancient atmospheres, I believe you are over-stating the certainty on the role of CO2 in the shifts between glacials and interglacials (a view shared by eg Roe G. In defence of Milankovitch; GRL, VOL. 33, L24703, doi:10.1029/2006GL027817, 2006).
I've never been comfortable with the way Hansen and others have tried to insert CO2 forcing into paleoclimate studies, especially when Milankovitch forcing seems capable of explaining the onset and termination of glacials on its own.
It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect example of alarmist discourse constructed upon uncertain science than the one you provide above. Thank you.
Paul B:
So, on the principle that you 'don't know' if the sinks can take it, you and your buddies are prepared to tax us back to the dark ages. I love the way you think. NOT.
Interesting visualisation of CO2 posted at WUWT if that helps - it did me.
Sam the Skeptic
The isotopic signature relates to the carbon atom in CO2, so its reasonable to use the two interchangeably.
Nature does sometimes know the difference. The reason carbon (CO2) from fossil fuels has its characteristic signature is because plants preferentially take up one form of carbon (CO2) rather than another. So fossil fuel carbon, which is derived from plant material, has a plant-like signature. But that doesn't make one type of carbon "good" and another "bad". Its the buildup of atmospheric CO2 that is - potentially - "bad". And while carbon sinks might - conceivably - mop up the extra carbon, they show no signs of doing so right now and I'm not aware of any process that has been described by which they might do so in the longer term.
BBD
I try to please ;-)
Obviously I don't expect actually to convince anybody here of my views. But I did get interested in the argument about the supposed misrepresentations by Nurse and Bindschadler, because it seemed to me pretty obvious that Bindschadler had got the substantive message across, and that it was Booker who was - as you accused me of earlier - muddying the waters.
I think Bindschadler intended to decieve,whether Nurse was in on it or just a "useful idiot" I don't know, the Globalwarming industry is desperate to reinforce in the public mind that the atmosphere is full of "carbon".
When I ask people what the CO2% content of the atmosphere is they say anything from 20 to 90%, when I tell them it is 0.039% with some 4% of that being "manmade" they look at me in utter disbelief.
Paul B
Oh, I see. And perhaps it is the little fairies that tell the trees which is which? Have you ever studied ANY science? Incredible!
Paul B
While I understand exactly what you are saying, I find it vexing that the mish-mash presented by Bindschadler is supposed to be a 'substantive message'. Frankly he does not deserve your support here, and Booker was correct to point out that what he said was effectively misleading.
Is it really necessary to treat the public as idiots like this? Consider what some of them do when they think that they have been mislead.
Sir Paul and Dr Bindschadler are culpable here, as is the BBC for failing to clean this up during the editing process.
Snotrocket
So who's the alarmist now?
The way I prefer to see it, the technological response to the challenges posed by climate change will see the decarbonization of energy supply and will ensure precisely that we are not forced back to the dark ages when the non renewable sources dry up.
Paul
While you are here, may I ask if you would countenance a considerable expansion of nuclear capacity as a necessary part of decarbonisation of electricity supply? This is not a trick question, but it does help me understand 'who' I am talking to.
Paul B:
That's the problem I have Paul: the 'sometimes'; the 'maybes'; the 'possiblies'; and the 'coulds' that warmists emit, polluting arguments with their probabilities.
And just to get back on track a bit here. In an earlier post where you tried to cast the account, you still managed to re-introduce the idea that we (the sceptics) have 'misrepresented' Nurse when the weight of opinion seems to be that 'we' did no such thing: he did. (And I'm happy to accept that, if he had been talking Net amounts his argument was sound; but he wasn't, and enough people seem to think that to be the case.
Anyway, all in all, a most enjoyable afternoon spent in discourse. So much better than the foul-mouthed diatribes that trolls/anti-trolls set up in other blogs (CiF, Dellers, Booker, etc). Thanks for that.
"And while carbon sinks might - conceivably - mop up the extra carbon, they show no signs of doing so right now and I'm not aware of any process that has been described by which they might do so in the longer term."
Why the declaration of uncertainty when things don't go your way? You seem to be certain of everything else.
I am told the increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere has contributed to the so-called green revolution. The food production, that is. And that, if plants could vote, they'd vote for more CO2. What do you reckon?
Snotrocket
Unless I am confusing him with someone else, Paul B made some very interesting contributions here at the end of last year. He said then that he preferred engagement with opposing views to the echo chamber. We were talking about the MWP -- perhaps Paul can confirm it was indeed him. FWIW I recognise his writing style and I think we have chatted before.
Put yourself in Ward's place, your Grace. What on earth does it avail Booker to be technically right if he is on the wrong side? Even the Devil can quote scripture, but that does not make the Devil right, does it?
BBD
Yes I did discuss with you on a previous thread. And you're right, I do find it more interesting discussing with people with opposing views rather than just agreeing with people who agree with me and dismissing all those who don't as corporate shills or (dread word!) "denialists"
Re this
The answer is yes, I think running a modern society using only renewables is not yet feasible and we need to expand nuclear (and/or CCS - clean coal) in the medium term, by which I mean the next 20/30 years. That's one of my main issues with political greens, many of whom are unable to change their long-held views on nuclear energy to respond to new priorities.