On the Holy Order of Climatedeniers

This is a partial response to a series of articles by climate change deniers.

This piece responds to the first point at Mr MacIntyre's blog which links an earlier post of his .

"Climate Change on Mars"

Let's begin by noting that since this is based on a media piece it is not possible to tell whether the egregious errors and misrepresentations are the fault of the journalist, the interviewee, or both.

Frankly this piece is so bad that it is difficult to imagine that it is supposed to be serious. There are numerous articles in The Onion with greater credibility and scientific rigour than this. Apparently it really was published though, in The National Post at http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=edae9952-3c3e-47ba-913f-7359a5c7f723&k=0 .

The big "reveal" in this piece, the "gotcha", is that Mars is warming, probably because "he sun's increased irradiance over the last century". Actually the sun has been getting steadily hotter over the 5 billion years of Earths existence and is now about 25% hotter than it was when life first evolved on Earth.

Well duh, that's like what? grade 10 physics class? Granted most of us slept through those classes, but even so, as "new information" it ranks right up there with learning that Paris Hilton is female.

I'll reiterate the basics. The sun has been getting hotter for billions of years, yet the Earth has not. The Earths atmosphere back then was 98% CO2, and if it was still so the Earths' surface temperature would be something like 100 C, somewhere between Venus and Mars.

The Earth has not been getting hotter because the biosphere, the living Earth, has been removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Over epochs huge amounts of carbon has been stored geologically as limestone, oil, coal, etc. So much in fact that the atmospheric concentration dropped to as low as 200 ppm.

It's all at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change or any basic "introduction to climate change" site or pamphlet.

Aside: why did the original author say "sun's increased irradiance over the last century" when in fact the sun has been getting hotter for billions of years? Probable answer: if the sun has been getting progressively hotter then this simplistic model predicts that the earth should have been getting progressively hotter over the same period, and of course it has not.

Following up on this I find that apparently what he is saying is that "but from an unusually high level of solar radiation" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus , but even that does still not account for the fact that earth has not been progressively warming up for the past 5 billion years.

Simply being accurate and honest in presenting the model would have destroyed its credibiltiy, so the author apparently choose not to.

Mr MacIntyre notes: "which of course suggests that either we are causing the martian warming or some other factor is affecting both". Of course the primary source of all warming in the solar system is the sun; no one is suggesting that the CO2 itself is generating the heat. CO2 traps the suns heat, more CO2 leads to more trapping, but CO2 has never been suggested as the source of the heat.

This is all very basic and I am a little surprised that Mr McIntyre does not seem to know it. Perhaps it is not common knowledge to everyone on the street, but an inexcusable lapse in someone who presents himself as a credible critic of climate change.

The interview quotes Dr. Abdussamatov as saying "Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated,". Interesting, and wholly false, but that is the advantage of a media interview vs publishing in a scientific journal.

If Dr Abdussamatov is able to demonstrate this he should publish immediately and give his basis for the statement. As no evidence or reasoning is presented in the interview it is not possible to refute it other than point to the massive volume of work that does substantiate it.

Now things get kind of scary and I confess to being confused as it just does not seem possible that anyone with any scientific credential could possibly make the statements attributed to Abdussamatov. Is he misquoted? translation problems? there is no way to know.

Regardless, he is alleged to have said "Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away." ... and this is a scientist?

1) If the atmosphere actually acted this way then the earth would have a uniform cool temperature at ground level and progressively hotter as you increased elevation, like at mountain tops.

2) Who is suggesting that the mechanism for climate change is that the CO2 itself acts as a heat carrier? Since no one with any credibility (to my knowledge) has ever suggested it, his alleged debunking of it is totally irrelevant.

3) Am I really being asked to believe that an authority on solar radience does not understand that we are talking about trapping infrared radiative heat and not warm CO2 floating about?

This defies logic and I have to assume there is a gross misrepresentation of Abdussamatov. He may be wrong when commenting outside of his field, but I assume he is at least minimally competent with respect to his particular area of research.

The fact remains that this makes it difficult to comment on the rest of what Abdussamatov has to say. If he does not seem to understand the most basic mechanisms of climatic homeostasis how can we take his projections on global climate seriously?

He is alleged to predict a period of global cooling, and it is certainly true that climate change predicts that some regions of the earth will initially cool as the earths climate is disrupted. For example, it is expected that northern Europe will initially cool as melt from Greenland interferes with thermohaline circulation and hence disrupts the Gulf Stream http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream#The_effect_of_global_warming .

Aside: It is interesting to note that the media seems incapable of presenting a piece in support of climate change without having the requisite "journalistic balance" by also interviewing a climate change denier. However, the Post seems to have been comfortable presenting this story without any attempt at balance by interviewing someone with actual expertise on the subject. An unfortunate decision as it might have spared them publishing this rather embarassing piece.

Aside: The problems with the Post article are so basic that anyone with minimal scientific training should be able to shred it. As Mr MacIntyre apparently has BS in Physics I am frankly surprised that he chose to include it on his site. By apparently accepting this as credible I cannot help but think it undermines anything else he might have to say.

Regardless, none of the actual information presented in this article is inconsistent with climate change and as a refutation it scores zero; it is disinegenuous, misguided, and irrelevant.

More to follow ...