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—an hir series—
Historical
and Investigative Research; 9 June 2014; by Francisco Gil-White Science thrives on debate, so a good way to
gauge the strength of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis is to
examine how its proponents reply to the challenge posed by the Antarctic
ice-core evidence. This is what we do here.
█ RealClimate.org and the ice cores █ Al Gore, Joe Barton, and the ice cores █
Geoscientist
Jeff Severinghaus replies to the ice core evidence █ Severinghaus
is confronted by his readers █ Conclusion Introduction: The importance of the ice core-evidence “While
some environmentalists might concede that the IPCC report is a political
document, they would also point to what they see as Mr Gore’s knockout punch,
a dramatic video based on the world’s climate record preserved in ice cores.” --The
Straits Times (Singapore) [1] The anthropogenic global warming (AGW)
hypothesis claims that current global warming is Man-made. Against the doubts expressed by skeptics, proponents of
this hypothesis have presented the Antarctic ice-core evidence as their
“knockout punch” (see quotation, above); according to proponents this
evidence proves that, in times past, changes in CO2 concentrations have been
responsible for major changes in temperature. In his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore posed in front of a giant
representation of the ice core evidence, shown as two graphs, one of
temperature levels and another of CO2 levels, covering a period of many
hundreds of thousands of years.
An
Inconvenient Truth : Al Gore
posing with data from the Antarctic The Straits Times: “The two graphs obviously
move in lockstep with each other, he says. With great panache, Mr Gore
concludes that when carbon goes up, temperature inevitably follows.” Literally, Al Gore says: “When there
is more carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.” But is that what
happens? On Al Gore’s graph one cannot tell whether CO2 or temperature rises
first. But in a more careful representation, as the The Straits Times
explains, “...if the graphs are
mapped onto each other instead of being counterposed one above the other, as
Mr Gore does, ...it becomes very clear that, very consistently, every
temperature rise actually precedes the carbon [dioxide] rise by some
800 years. This undeniable time lag is critical since what it says is that
more carbon in the air did not lead to global warming in times past. If so,
factors other than carbon must have set off the various periods of global
warming in times past. If so, the most
fundamental assumption of the carbon theory of human-induced global warming
rests on shaky ground.”[1] [emphasis added] Let’s summarize. The Antarctic
ice-core record shows that, at every glacial
termination, CO2 lags temperature: this is known as the ‘CO2 lag.’ So none of the major historical rises in
temperature were caused by changes in CO2 concentrations. Rather, it appears
that rises in temperature cause higher concentrations of CO2 (since CO2 rises
after). Does that make chemical sense? It
does. You may perform the following
experiment at home. On a warm day, put a can of soda in the sun, and at the
same time place an identical can of soda in the refrigerator.
Wait 3 hours, then place both cans on
a table and open them. Wait 30 minutes and then perform a taste test of each.
The question we wish to answer is: Which soda lost more gas? Answer: The hot soda. Why? Because the gas in soda is CO2,
and CO2 is more soluble in cold than in warm water. So as water heats, it
releases CO2. It therefore makes perfect sense that as the planet heats, the
oceans eventually release CO2 into the atmosphere, just as we see in the
Antarctic ice-core evidence. So is the ice-core evidence “Mr.
Gore’s knockout punch”? Yes, but he’s the one getting punched. Given the state of media discussion on
global warming, one may feel insecure on this point. One might prefer, before
making up one’s mind, to see partisans of the AGW hypothesis at least try
to defend themselves from the ice-core evidence. After watching them fail,
one could then abandon this theory without the nagging pangs of guilt that
usually accompany shifts against political correctness. RealClimate.org and the ice
cores I didn’t choose RealClimate at random. This website was
created by scientists intimately and notably involved with the IPCC.[2]
RealClimate heralds its academic
authority in its header: “Climate Science from Climate Scientists.” The
“About” section explains: “RealClimate is a
commentary site on climate science by working climate scientists for the
interested public and journalists. We aim to provide a quick response to
developing stories and provide the context sometimes missing in mainstream
commentary. The discussion here is restricted to scientific topics and will
not get involved in any political or economic implications of the science...”
[6] After such a strongly worded
commitment to avoid politics and economic policy one is surprised to find, in
a post dated April 2007, the heading: “THE LAG BETWEEN TEMPERATURE AND CO2.
(GORE’S GOT IT RIGHT.)”[7] Naturally, an article on the ice core
evidence should, as this one does, make reference in its title to the glaring
problem: CO2 lags temperature. But
if a politician selling worldwide economic reforms via anthropogenic warming
arguments is embarrassed by his own ‘best’ evidence, or if he isn’t, what
does that matter to climate scientists whose declared intention is to discuss
the evidence without “get[ting] involved in any political or economic
implications...”? Anyway. But we learn from this, at
least, that despite 650,000 years of data showing temperature rising before—not
after—CO2, the article will defend the bravado claim that Al Gore is still
right. Mind you, Gore can’t be right about the graph, for to speak of the CO2 lag is to concede that Gore
read his enormous graph precisely backwards. What the author is saying is
that, despite the CO2 lag, CO2 is
still (somehow) the agent of world temperatures. The author begins: “When I give talks about
climate change the question that comes up most frequently is this: ‘Doesn’t
the relationship between CO2 and temperature in the ice core record show that
temperature drives CO2, not the other way round?’ On the face of it, it
sounds like a reasonable question.” Notice: To wonder whether the most
fundamental premise of the AGW hypothesis might not be wrong, when the
purported cause turns out to be an effect, only “sounds... like a reasonable
question.” So respect for the rules of logic and the principle of causality
cannot animate this doubt; rather, explains the author, certain people “try
to discredit Al Gore,” and so “it is one of the most popular claims made by
the global warming deniers.” I am stopped cold. Most skeptics of AGW actually agree
that global warming has been taking place (at least for the period 1979-1998). But even if we didn’t, if this is a
scientific debate, why attack us with the epithet “global warming deniers”?
Sounds a bit like “Holocaust deniers,” doesn’t it? People beyond the pale.
Heretics. I glance nervously back at the “About”
page for reassurance that this website “will not get involved in any[thing]
political,” and then I am slammed by the article’s next few sentences. [Quote from RealClimate
begins here] [The troublesome
question] got a particularly high profile airing a couple of weeks ago, when
congressman Joe Barton brought it up to try to discredit Al Gore’s
congressional testimony. Barton said: “In your movie, you
display a timeline of temperature and compared to CO2 levels over a
600,000-year period as reconstructed from ice core samples. You indicate that
this is conclusive proof of the link of increased CO2 emissions and global
warming. A closer examination of these facts reveals something entirely different.
I have an article from Science magazine which I will put into the record at
the appropriate time that explains that historically, a rise in CO2
concentrations did not precede a rise in temperatures, but actually lagged
temperature by 200 to 1,000 years. CO2 levels went up after the temperature
rose. The temperature appears to drive CO2, not vice versa. On this point,
Mr. Vice President, you’re not just off a little. You’re totally wrong.” Of course, those who’ve
been paying attention will recognize that Gore is not wrong at all. This
subject has been very well addressed in numerous places. Indeed, guest
contributor Jeff Severinghaus addressed this in one of our very first
RealClimate posts, way back in 2004. [Quote from RealClimate
ends here] This combines an ad hominem
attack with a browbeating recourse to authority: If you think that Gore is
“wrong at all” because some people “try to discredit” him with his own ‘best’
evidence then you have not “been paying attention” to how “this subject has
been very well addressed in numerous places.” You are distracted. Don’t be intimidated by this. We’ll
get to Jeff Severinghaus (below). But first let’s see how Al Gore
replied to Joe Barton. Al Gore, Joe Barton, and the
ice cores Happily, a video of the congressional
exchange between Joe Barton and Al Gore is available on
YouTube.[8]
Congressman
Joe Barton (left) questions Al Gore (right) First, Al Gore took refuge in
authority: “...the [congressional] committees should be under no illusion of
what the scientific consensus is...” Every national academy of science in the
world, he insisted, endorses his views (this is false). He
placed great emphasis on the IPCC, which he called “the most extensive and
elaborate, in depth, highest quality, international scientific collaboration
in all of history” (this is also false).
For good measure, Al Gore compared believing in AGW to believing in gravity! Al Gore then rattled off on the
greenhouse effect and the lower part of the atmosphere, he disparaged as
“magic” the notion that the sun might be responsible for planetary
temperatures, and insisted that since the stratosphere gets cooler while the
troposphere gets warmer (he seemed a bit unsure on this...) then he must be
right. At long last he turned to Barton’s
point, which was about the Antarctic ice-core evidence. Said Gore: “On CO2
and temperature, when CO2 goes up, temperature goes up.” Notice the order: first CO2, then the
temperature. He did the same in An Inconvenient Truth, when he posed
before a gigantic graph of the ice-core data and said: “when there is more
carbon dioxide, the temperature gets warmer.” Not
so. It’s the other way around: when temperature gets
warmer, then we get more
carbon dioxide: CO2 increases follow temperature increases. After this, Gore insisted passionately
that “The planet has a fever” and followed with a moral argument: “If the crib’s on fire you don’t speculate that
the baby is flame retardant… You take
action,” implicitly calling Barton a ‘baby killer.’ For good measure,
Gore insisted that anybody who disagrees with him is reading a “science
fiction novel.” Then he returned to the substance of
Barton’s point: “In the ice core record,
as I’ve said every time I give my slide show, the relation...—it’s a coupled
system, they [CO2 and temperature] go up and down together...” Notice: Gore almost made an
explicit statement about the causal relationship but corrected course just in
time: “it’s a coupled system.” Well yes. It is. Nobody said it wasn’t
“coupled.” But as Barton pointed out the
temperature rises first. CO2 rises after (with, on average, an
800-year lag). After this, more virtuoso ink-spilling
from Gore on rotation wobbles, orbits, the sun, the glacial-interglacial
turns, all of it beside the point. Barton watched in silence and then
simplemindedly insisted: “The temperature goes up before the CO2 goes up.” Gore shot back: “Sometimes that has
been true in the past; the opposite has also been true in the past.” This is false. The
ice core data show that temperature
rises before CO2 at every glacial
termination. Geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus
replies to the ice Gore did not ably defend his pet
hypothesis. But perhaps the professional IPCC climate scientists who
contribute their views on RealClimate can do better? You’ll remember from the
post quoted above: “Of course, those who’ve
been paying attention will recognize that Gore is not wrong at all. This
subject has been very well addressed in numerous places. Indeed, guest
contributor Jeff Severinghaus addressed this in one of our very first
RealClimate posts, way back in 2004.” Jeff Severinghaus is Professor of
Geosciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of
California (San Diego). He is one of the scientists responsible for
documenting the CO2 lag by studying the Antarctic ice cores. So we can hardly
pick a better candidate to defend the AGW hypothesis from the ice-core
evidence. If Severinghaus cannot do it, the AGW hypothesis is in trouble. Severinghaus’ RealClimate contribution referenced above leads with the
title: “WHAT DOES THE LAG OF CO2 BEHIND TEMPERATURE IN ICE CORES TELL US
ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING?”[9] I now
quote the post in full: [Quote from RealClimate
begins here] This is an issue that is
often misunderstood in the public sphere and media, so it is worth spending some
time to explain it and clarify it. At least three careful ice core studies
have shown that CO2 starts to rise about 800 years (600-1000 years) after
Antantarctic temperature during glacial terminations. These terminations are
pronounced warming periods that mark the ends of the ice ages that happen
every 100,000 years or so. Does this prove that CO2
doesn’t cause global warming? The answer is no. The reason has to do with
the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag is
only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first
800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of
warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from
this ice core data. The 4200 years of warming
make up about 5/6 of the total warming. So CO2 could have caused the last 5/6
of the warming, but could not have caused the first 1/6 of the warming. It comes as no surprise
that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer
sunshine, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun that happen
every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of
ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm
Antarctica, also. From studying all the
available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a
termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes
Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes
CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole
planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further
CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a “feedback”,
much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a
loudspeaker. In other words, CO2 does
not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway.
From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O)
causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming. So, in summary, the lag
of CO2 behind temperature doesn’t tell us much about global warming. (But it
may give us a very interesting clue about why CO2 rises at the ends of ice
ages. The 800-year lag is about the amount of time required to flush out the
deep ocean through natural ocean currents. So CO2 might be stored in the deep
ocean during ice ages, and then get released when the climate warms.) [Quote from RealClimate
ends here]
At the end of an ice age, each time,
the warming begins first, and CO2 levels do not rise until about 800 years
later. Severinghaus concludes that rising levels of CO2 cannot be the cause
of warming during those first 800 years. I agree. No other conclusion is indeed
possible (not without rewriting the rules of logic or the principle of
causality). Some other cause, then (not
CO2), must be responsible for ending the ice age. Severinghaus writes: “It comes as no surprise
that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of
summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit around the sun that
happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and
goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm
Antarctica, also.” Notice: powerful forces unrelated to CO2—and powerful enough
to end ice ages!—are drivers of global temperatures. Though Severinghaus
immediately afterward says that “Some (currently unknown) process causes
Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm,” it appears from the above
that the mysterious “unknown” process might be the sun. “This process,” Severinghaus agrees, “also causes CO2 to
start rising, about 800 years later.” He poses the obvious question: “Does
this prove that CO2 doesn’t cause global warming?” One is tempted to answer
(perhaps timidly) “yes.” But Severinghaus replies, “The answer is no.” And
why not? “The reason has to do
with the fact that the warmings take about 5000 years to be complete. The lag
is only 800 years. All that the lag shows is that CO2 did not cause the first
800 years of warming, out of the 5000 year trend. The other 4200 years of
warming could in fact have been caused by CO2, as far as we can tell from
this ice core data.” Can we conclude from the above that
the ice-core embarrassment has been “very well addressed,” so that anybody
thinking that Al Gore is “wrong at all” has not “been paying attention”? I
hardly think so. Severinghaus himself makes clear that
his conjecture is entirely speculative: “The other 4200 years of warming
could in fact have been caused by CO2.” Could. Grant, for the sake of
argument, this very weak claim of in-principle possibility. Does anything
compel you to say it is likely? Even to those overflowing with charity
for Severinghaus his argument must seem baroque and full of special pleading. The objections are obvious. If some
powerful cause (powerful enough to end ice ages!) warms the planet for a full
800 years without any help from CO2,
then why can’t the entire 5000-year trend be entirely due to this other, so
powerful cause? And why isn’t this the first hypothesis? What is it that compels Severinghaus to
assert that when CO2 is finally released (after 800 years) it then takes over
to “amplify” the warming? It is this: “From model
estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse
gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial
warming.” Model estimates? What are those? Severinghaus is talking about computer
simulations (= ‘models’) built by IPCC scientists. In these, when the
simulated CO2 rises, it makes the simulated temperature rise—through a
simulated ‘greenhouse effect’—in the simulated Earth. Could other kinds of models be built?
In principle, yes. But as astrophysicist Lowell Wood explains (quoted in
Levitt & Dubner’s Super Freakonomics), nobody wants to be the
‘outlier’ in the climate-modeling business: “ ‘Everybody turns their
knobs’—that is, adjusts the control parameters and coefficients of their
models—‘so they aren’t the outlier...’ ”
What is an ‘outlier’? An outlier is a
model far from the norm. The norm here is composed of models that show
‘proper’ CO2-driven global warming. But why doesn’t anybody want to be the
‘outlier’? “ ‘[B]ecause the outlying
model is going to have difficulty getting funded.’ In other words, the
economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and
uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the models to approximately match
one another.”[10] Climate simulations—though still
tremendously crude—require unbelievably expensive supercomputers.[11] Scientists never have that kind of
money, so they must get it from somewhere. This means making the people with
the money happy. Who are the
people with the money? Those running the Western governments (the same
governments that compose the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC). And what makes them happy? Hearing that
CO2 causes global warming. Thus, in
order to build their simulations, climate
modelers have to include assumptions (“parameters and coefficients”) that will make CO2 the king of
planetary temperatures. Is this corruption? We address this
question in Part 6, but
for now, consider this: as documented by US Senator James Inholfe, the ratio
of dollars for scientists who support the AGW hypothesis versus skeptics is
“$50 BILLION to a paltry $19 MILLION and some change.”[12] A 3 to 1 ratio would already be quite
worrisome. But this is off the charts: supporters of AGW get 2,632 dollars
for every dollar that goes to a skeptic. This appears to have affected all of
climate science because climate science is in general horribly expensive. Result: “scientific consensus.” The point is this: If we only build
one kind of model, and then believe that CO2 causes global warming just
because it does so in the models, we have a circular argument. The models
were built to do that! Most people don’t realize that a
computer model or simulation—no matter how complex—is just a fancy way of
representing a hypothesis. It is tremendously useful for exploring the
implications of a hypothesis, and for testing its internal logic, but in the
end it is still just a (complicated) expression of a hypothesis. Even many scientists get this wrong,
thinking that they have shown something about the world because they can make
it happen in a simulation. But a hypothesis cannot—by itself—tell you what
the world is like. You need to gather evidence. For example, you need to trek to the
Antarctic and drill for deep ice cores in order to obtain data about past
atmospheric temperatures and past levels of CO2. If your model’s assumptions
were reasonable, then your model will predict at least the qualitative shape
of the data; if your assumptions are unreasonable, the data will contradict
the model. Or you can wait for new temperature
fluctuations to tell you whether your model’s predictions are any good. It’s called ‘doing science.’ When the data have been collected it
is best to be honest. Who can doubt that if CO2 had risen first in the ice
cores Severinghaus and colleagues would have shouted victory from the
rooftops? Can you imagine their howls if skeptics, despite such evidence, had
denied the global-warming role of CO2? But it went the other way. So they
tell us that CO2 causes global warming even
though it begins rising after the temperatures do. Well, if the
CO2-drives-global-temperature assumption is right no matter what the data
say, then we ought to be saving ourselves tremendous expense and a lot of
heroic trouble in the Antarctic. When we assert—regardless of which way
the data go—that our model is right, then we have faith in the model,
just as people have faith in various kinds of supernatural causes even when the
evidence does not support their beliefs. Guided by such a mind-frame, we will
attack those who disagree with us for being “deniers” (“atheists”), and we
will accuse them of not “paying attention” to the Unquestioned Truth spoken
by those all-important greenhouse models—our new totems, our new idols. Severinghaus is confronted by
his readers Perhaps noticing the religious fervor,
one reader of RealClimate, David Holland, commented: “Wow! Are you really
saying that we have no idea what starts to warm up our world from an ice age
but [we] know with near certainty what has caused the warming of the last
three decades?” Put another way, if we don’t know yet
why ice ages come to an end, shouldn’t we be a little less confident
that we understand current global warming (especially when the ice core
evidence does not support our AGW hypothesis)? Another question: how can we build
reasonable models of climate change that properly represent CO2’s
proportionate role without factoring in the “unknown” powerful cause that
ended ice ages? This “unknown” powerful cause, as
Severinghaus hints more than once, may well be the sun, and yet Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at
the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM), points out that, incredibly, the models “do not include, for example,
solar activity.”[13] Another reader of RealClimate, John
(no last name is given), noticed that the ice core data already contain a
test of Severinghaus’s claims, so he asked him about it. [Excerpt
from RealClimate begins here] Dear Jeff, I read your article “What
does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global
warming?” You mention that CO2 does not initiate warmings, but may amplify
warmings that are already underway. The obvious question comes up as to
whether or not CO2 levels also lag periods when cooling begins after a
warming cycle…even one of 5,000 years? [. . .] If there is also
a lag in CO2 levels behind a cooling period, then it appears that CO2 levels
not only do not initiate warming periods but are also unrelated to the onset
of cooling periods. It would appear that the actual CO2 levels are rather
impotent as an amplifier either way…warming or cooling. [. . .] If there is also a time lag upon the onset of cooling, then it appears that some other mechanism actually drives the temperature changes. So what is the time difference between CO2 levels during the onset of a cooling period at the end of a warming period and the time history of the temperature changes in the ice cores? [14] [Excerpt from RealClimate ends here] Remember: the AGW hypothesis claims
that tiny increments in CO2
concentrations produce large changes
in global temperatures. Surely, if this hypothesis is correct, the Earth
cannot begin cooling before CO2 levels start coming down. In the Antarctic
ice cores, therefore, we should see, at the beginning of cooling periods,
that CO2 levels decrease first, followed by a drop in temperatures (as shown
in the stylized diagram A).
But what if the ice cores show the
following pattern: at the beginning of cooling periods the temperatures drop
first, and then, after a lag, fall the levels of CO2 (as shown in stylized
diagram B).
If the ice core data show the second
pattern, reasons John, we don’t have any evidence to support that CO2
acts as an ‘amplifier.’ There would then be exactly zero evidence in the ice-core record to support the AGW’s most
fundamental assumption. It would be reasonable to conclude, in such a case,
that CO2 is “impotent.” So what’s the story? What do 650,000
years of ice core data say about the final phase of warming trends? Jeff
Severinghaus replies: “Dear John, The coolings appear to be
caused primarily and initially by increase in the Earth-Sun distance during
northern hemisphere summer, due to changes in the Earth’s orbit. As the orbit
is not round, but elliptical, sunshine is weaker during some parts of the
year than others. This is the so-called Milankovitch hypothesis, which you
may have heard about. Just as in the warmings, CO2 lags the coolings by a
thousand years or so, in some cases as much as three thousand years.” What causes a cooling trend to start?
Once again most probably the sun. I didn’t say it. Severinghaus did.
The temperature drops first, and CO2 levels then begin decreasing “in some
cases as much as three thousand years [later].” But does Severinghaus recant? Not for
a second. He writes: “But do not make the
mistake of assuming that these warmings and coolings must have a single
cause. It is well known that multiple factors are involved, including the
change in planetary albedo, change in nitrous oxide concentration, change in
methane concentration, and change in CO2 concentration.” Is it really “well known” that
“warmings and coolings” have something to do with “change in CO2
concentration”? No. That only happens in the IPCC computer simulations. The
Antarctic ice-core evidence refutes those simulations. Conclusion Perhaps there is still some way to
save the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. I don’t know. But I do know that, in reference to
the Antarctic ice cores, RealClimate was wrong to say that “Gore’s Got It
Right.” Gore got it precisely backwards.
I also know that Gore was wrong to
call “ridiculous” anybody who disagrees with him that the Antarctic ice cores
prove him right. Speaking of which, what do you call
selling the AGW hypothesis by making a movie with the Antarctic ice cores for
climax? But perhaps you are still unsure.
After all, Al Gore is a politician. And though Jeff Severinghaus is certainly
a relevant scientist, what we have examined here is a blog contribution. Fair enough. Up next I take on the world’s most
prestigious science journal: Nature.
____________________________________________________________ Footnotes
and Further Reading [1] “Who or what is the
real culprit?; Not all experts agree that man is to blame; others point the
finger at oceans or the sun.” The Straits Times (Singapore), May 1, 2007
Tuesday, REVIEW - OTHERS, 1625 words, Andy Ho, Senior Writer [2] Ball, Tim (2014-01-17). The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science (Kindle Locations 2835-2845). Stairway Press. Kindle Edition. [6] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/about/ [7] The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it
right.); RealClimate; 27 April 2007; by Eric [8] To
see the video of Joe Barton’s exchange with Al Gore, visit: [9] What
does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global
warming?; RealClimate; 3 December 2004; by Jeff Severinghaus [10] Levitt, S. D., and S. J. Dubner.
2009. Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why
Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. New York: HarperCollins. [11]
“O’Keefe and Kueter explain how a model works: ‘The climate model is
run, using standard numerical modelling techniques, by calculating the
changes indicated by the model’s equations over a short increment of time— 20
minutes in the most advanced GCMs— for one cell, then using the output of
that cell as inputs for its neighboring cells. The process is repeated until
the change in each cell around the globe has been calculated.’ Imagine the number of calculations
necessary that even at computer speed of millions of calculations a second
takes a long time. The run time is a major limitation. All of this takes huge
amounts of computer capacity; running a full-scale GCM for a 100-year
projection of future climate requires many months of time on the most
advanced supercomputer . As a result, very few full-scale GCM projections are
made.” SOURCE: Ball, Tim
(2014-01-17). The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science (Kindle Locations
1380-1389). Stairway Press. Kindle Edition. [12] “Newsweek's
Climate Editorial Screed Violates Basic Standards of Journalism”; Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works; August 5, 2007; FULL TEXT:
[13] HEAT
OF THE MOMENT; “Scientists abandon global warming 'lie' : 650 to dissent at
U.N. climate change conference”; World Net Daily; Posted: December 11, 2008 [14] John’s
letter and Severinghaus’s response are both quoted in the first RealClimate
article mentioned in this piece. To read them, please go to the link and
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