Albert the Knowledge Penguin explains the real story of climate change, from the science to the politics, and gets it right. Read the rest of the story here. British cartoonist Darryl Cunningham has clearly done a lot of research, got a good grasp of the issues — and he eviscerates the Koch and Scaife-funded campaign to derail action. Great pay off line, too.
There are so many factually incorrect statements in this cartoon, it is hard to know where to start.
But my mother always told me never to argue with a Penguin.
The facts are what the facts are: but they don’t fit with your world view so you dismiss them as “incorrect”. Says a lot.
Precisely Gareth … although one could argue John’s “world view” is somewhat myopic.
Try this one for starters:
The increase in global temperatures correlates with the increase in Greenhouse gases.
This is a demonstrably false statement
Wood For Trees plot
John D –This is a demonstrably false statement
No. That is a demonstrably wrong statement.
Perhaps you’d like to take a look at this graph
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/01/new-peer-reviewed-paper-absence-of-correlation-between-temperature-changes-and-co2/
I know, it’s WUWT, but it links to peer reviewed research.
Show me the correlation between CO2 and warming.
I know, it’s WUWT, but it links to peer reviewed research.
It’s kinda hard to believe that an actual scientist wrote that appalling paper. I suspect it will either be savaged by peers, or completely ignored (more likely).
It would help if the translation from Portuguese to English were better, or maybe it’s just written in that garbled form?. Anyway, the author makes numerous weird assertions:
– CO2 increase is from warming of the oceans?. Err, fail dude!. We have those radio-isotope ratio measurements, and fossil fuel combustion estimates remember?.
– Water vapor is the cause of greenhouse warming?. Another fail dude!. How does one get more water vapor to remain aloft without first warming the atmosphere?. It’s short atmospheric lifetime (9-10 days) and temperature dependence means it can only act as a feedback, not a forcing.
– The 60’s and 70’s cooled rather than warmed as expected?. Dude, have you never heard of global dimming?. You know all those studies on how man-made aerosols caused a cooling effect, at the same time that greenhouse gases were causing a warming effect. The Montreal Protocol limiting aerosol pollution (particularly sulphates) saw to that. And as levels of aerosol pollution have dropped greenhouse warming has increased.
And yes, it’s no major surprise that global temperature takes time to respond to changes in forcing. How is that a revelation?.
Errrr, not Montreal Protocol (that was ozone) – Clean Air Acts.
I think you will find the paper makes a lot more sense when you check out the publisher, and note that is Vol 1 # 3
First of all: the graph on Watt’s post is not from the article he refers to, it’s an old graph done by D’Aleo. And all it shows is that, on short time scales CO2 and Hadcrut don’t follow in lockstep – which is not surprising since there is still internal variability in the climate system. There is of course also the issue that HadCrut does not include the artic and is diverging more and more from other temperature analysis.
If you look at the other temperature
The paper looks at even shorter time scales, analysing the correlation between CO2 and temperature on a monthly time scale, which is rather pointless, since you would expect a strong correlation on these timescales. I do admit that I have not read the paper in great detail because I found the author’s language hard to understand, but there are a few details that are enough to show that he does not really know what he is talking about. E.g. he says that “Only warming times correlate with atmospheric gain in CO2.” not realising (I guess) that what is “warming” depends on the choice of reference period for the anomalies. I.e. a different choice of baselines would lead to a different conclusion, which clearly can not be right.
Another red flag is the journal this paper was published in. But not surprisingly maybe. I’ve never seen such a badly written paper in any of the more known science journals.
D.
I’m no reference librarian, but the ‘new’ journal, Int J of Geosciences, seems to have been around since 1993. And the current version has a new name: Environmental Geology. They should probably call it by the current name, unless they are trying to make things harder to check, or to downplay the geology connection. A search of four Big 10 school libraries with atmospheric science programs showed only one had a few copies of IJG. This tells me the print version was lowly regarded. The poor grammar and mistakes in the online article noted above show their standards are no higher now.
The current version of “International Journal of Geosciences” has no relation to “Environmental Geology” (published since 1975) or its previous (Environmental Geology and Water Sciences, 1984-1992) or current (Environmental Earth Sciences, 2009-on) title. A descriptor line: “international journal of geosciences”, appears in some databases for “Environmental Geology”.
John D, are you so ideologically blinded that you cannot see the straw man in para 3 of Watts’ blurb?
“If CO2 is the main driver of climate change this last century, it stands to reason that the trend of surface temperatures would follow the trend of CO2”
If that’s the level of Watts’ understanding, then I can see why WUWT is commonly regarded as a joke site. No doubt there are other schoolboy howlers further in, but who cares?
Perhaps you’d like to critique the peer-reviewed paper, Rob, rather than creating a strawman over WUWT.
Peer reviewed in the third edition of a Journal that first published in May 2010? And what an interesting stable Scrip runs! Try clicking on some of the links in this glittering array and check publication dates (if any).
I notice a few of the commenters at WUWT who have actually read the thing seemed a little alarmed. I tried to download it but Adobe reader says the file is corrupt.
Major egg-on-face moment pending for WUWT, I predict!
Actually, thanks for that link, John. A publication called ‘Advances in Internet of Things’. You couldn’t make it up! Beautiful… quite made my day!
Sorry, John, I can’t read pidgin English, so I’ll have to wait for the translation. In the meantime, here is Real Climate’s first take:
“An interesting paper currently hurtling around the denialosphere: “Warming Power of CO2 and H2O: Correlations with Temperature Changes†by Paulo Cesar Soares in International Journal of Geosciences (www.scirp.org/journal/ijg/).
Full text at http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperDownload.aspx?FileName=IJG20100300002_69193660.pdf&paperID=3447
And an interesting take on the publisher from Improbable.com at http://improbable.com/2009/12/22/strangest-academic-journals
[Response: Indeed. This is possibly the worst paper I’ve ever seen published. It hasn’t even been proof read, so peer-review seems a little unlikely as well. There is one quotable line which pretty much says it all: “The volume of data and information is fantastic and one may unwarily select partial data and show bias results.” Indeed. – gavin]”
The good folks at Improbable.com note that the first issue of “Psychology”, one of the “journals” run by Scientific Research Publishing, consisted entirely of four papers that had been previously published elsewhere, some almost a decade earlier. But it gets better. One of those, entitled “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments,” received an Ig Noble Prize in 2000. The paper (original version available here) is definitely worth a read. Contributors to Hot-Topic and similar blogs may (or may not) find it insightful.
It’s also worth noting that, as usual, the globe is not only not warming but the current global warming is actually caused by solar fluctuations, and AGW science proves the peer review process is biased and corrupt and here’s a ‘peer-reviewed’ (*cough*) publication that proves there’s no AGW.
It’s carbondioxymoronic!
The concluding remarks are classic! 🙂
Sorry, John, I can’t read pidgin English
[Gratuitous insult snipped. Keep it friendly please, JD, RT et al. GR]
OK, sorry Gareth.
And thanks for the moderation. It is needed sometimes, all round I think. Sometimes tempers can get a bit flared.
Cheers
J
Rather a large own goal, John D – a sophomoric “peer-reviewed paper”, published in a fake “journal” and boosted by “climatologist” Watts.
Is that really the best you Koch-suckers can come up with?
I await the breathless announcement from Faux News that all is well with the world (apart from those inconsequential weather extremes in Russia, Pakistan, Queensland, Europe and Nth America last year).