Well, Homer Hansen is at it again. It seems he’s talking out of both sides of his….. uhmm,…. mouth!!! That’s it!! Both sides of his mouth!
The other day, HuffPo posted an article by James “Homer” Hansen.
A Fork in the Road
In it, Homer states we’re at a point where we need to decide.
We stand at a fork in the road. Conventional oil and gas supplies are limited. We can move down the path of dirtier more carbon-intensive unconventional fossil-fuels, digging up the dirtiest tar sands and tar shales, hydrofracking for gas, continued mountain-top removal and mechanized destructive long-wall coal mining. Or we can choose the alternative path of clean energies and energy efficiency.
I won’t bother with this idiotic characterization of fuel sources. I’ll concentrate on his sudden advocacy of “clean energies” (whatever that means) and “energy efficiency“. You might say, “sudden? He’s always been a nutter.” And, you’d be correct, he’s always been a nutter, but this is inconsistent with what he’s stated in the past. I’ll get to that in a minute. He continues with some delusional banter……
The climate science is crystal clear. We cannot go down the path of the dirty fuels without guaranteeing that the climate system passes tipping points, leaving our children and grandchildren a situation out of their control, a situation of our making. Unstable ice sheets will lead to continually rising seas and devastation of coastal cities worldwide. A large fraction of Earth’s species will be driven to extinction by the combination of shifting climate zones and other stresses. Summer heat waves, scorching droughts, and intense wildfires will become more frequent and extreme. At other times and places, the warmer water bodies and increased evaporation will power stronger storms, heavier rains, greater floods.
That’s what I love about climate science. It isn’t really science in the context of traditional science. Traditional science heavily relies on weird stuff we call empirical evidence, proofs, and testable hypotheses. Climate science isn’t encumbered by such restraints. In the paragraph above, Homer Hansen used emphatic words like “guaranteeing”, “will lead to”, “will be driven”, “will become”…… fascinating. Empirical evidence suggests the negative to everything he stated. Sea level rise is decreasing in rate. There is no trend in droughts and heat waves, or floods. The US just had the lowest amount of wild fires since 1989. I felt obliged to quickly address that nonsense Homer Hansen was spewing, but, that’s not really what holds my interest in his recent inanity. It isn’t really interesting that climate alarmists exaggerate, lie, and mislead people with emphatic statements when the evidence is contrary to their assertions. They’ve been doing this for decades now. Here’s where it gets interesting for me……
The economics is crystal clear. We are all better off if fossil fuels are made to pay their honest costs to society. We must collect a gradually rising fee from fossil fuel companies at the source, the domestic mine or port of entry, distributing the funds to the public on a per capita basis. This approach will provide the business community and entrepreneurs the incentives to develop clean energy and energy-efficient products, and the public will have the resources to make changes.
This approach is transparent, built on conservative principles. Not one dime to the government.
The alternative is to slake fossil fuel addiction, forcing the public to continue to subsidize fossil fuels. And hammer the public with more pollution. The public must pay the medical costs for all pollution effects. The public will pay costs caused by climate change. Fossil fuel moguls get richer, we get poorer. Our children are screwed. Our well-oiled coal-fired government pretends to not understand.
Joe Nocera is polite, but he does not understand basic economics.
Good heavens! Now the delusional Homer Hansen thinks he understands economics? Conservative principles? Oh, my. Sure, Homer, create a balance sheet of the good fossil fuels do for society and then subtract any true harm they do to society and we’ll see where that lands. I’m betting, if we applied Homer’s nonsense, we’d end up owing the fossil fuel companies. Try to run a hospital without fossil fuels. Try to run a government without them. Or an economy. It can’t and won’t happen.
Homer Hansen, like the rest of the delusional maniacs we call climate alarmists live in a fairly land equivalent to having the superstitious beliefs in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and wishing the rest of us to drink the Kool-aid.
Why did I make those last words so large? Because those are Homer Hansen’s words in response to advocates of alternative energy sources. What? Is it suddenly better when we add a tax to the only viable sources of energy we have in some crazy wealth redistribution scheme? Idiot.
In July, 2011 Homer Hansen said this…… in a letter titled “Baby Lauren and the Kool-Aid“
The bigger problem is that people who accept the reality of climate change are not proposing actions that would work.
The Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy
The insightful cynic will note: “Now I understand all the fossil fuel ads with windmills and solar panels – fossil fuel moguls know that renewables are no threat to the fossil fuel business.” The tragedy is that many environmentalists line up on the side of the fossil fuel industry, advocating
renewables as if they, plus energy efficiency, would solve the global climate change matter.Can renewable energies provide all of society’s energy needs in the foreseeable future? It is conceivable in a few places, such as New Zealand and Norway. But suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole
is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.This Easter Bunny fable is the basis of ‘policy’ thinking of many liberal politicians. Yet when such people are elected to the executive branch and must make real world decisions, they end up approving expanded off-shore drilling and allowing continued mountaintop removal, long-wall coal mining, hydro-fracking, etc. – maybe even a tar sands pipeline. Why the inconsistency?
Because they realize that renewable energies are grossly inadequate for our energy needs now and in the foreseeable future and they have no real plan.
For the record, even his idiotic wealth redistribution scheme is equivalent to such superstitious beliefs.
This approach is transparent, built on conservative principles. Not one dime to the government.
Really? Who’s going to administer the scheme? A form of government if not the present government itself. By definition, Homer Hansen advocates the money going through government. Who’s going to pay the administrators? Not one dime? If you believe that, then you can also believe in the Tooth Fairy. Would someone please tell Homer Hansen that advocating an additional bureaucracy and taxes are contrary to conservative principles? How long will we be burdened with these psuedo-intellectual pinheads? They don’t know what they’re talking about when discussing their alleged field of expertise, and they know less when they venture out to other areas. Do they live their entire lives just making crap up? Homer, put down that crap!!! It’s not good to smoke it!!!
suyts space 
Snicker………
“This approach is transparent, built on conservative principles. Not one dime to the government.”
SOP. After “progressive socialist” fell out of favor they renamed themselves to liberals; now they’re renaming themselves to conservatives.
Of course redistributing money to the poor will mean that the poor can buy fuel with it. Guess it’s not about the climate in the first place.
Hansen used to be pro nuclear, now he’s pro redistribution. Maybe he has a different sponsor now. Feels like Soros.
“Feels like Soros.” —— It sure does.
OT
Originally Posted by lynnvinc
One of the issues is that the particulate matter is also being emitted with the CO2, however it only stays in the atmosphere a short time, while CO2 stays for a very long time, a portion of it can stay there for up to 100,000 years.
MY ANSWER:
Could you provide the “Law of Physics” that supports your claim?
CO2 s composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom.
Molar mass of CO2 is 44.00964 ± 0.00003 g/mol
It’s Molar Mass weigh does not change.
Molar mass of CH4 [ Methane ] = 16.04246 g/mol
Which is heaver?
The atmosphere is blind to methane or CO2 – It’s effects are equally applied.
Gravity is blind to methane or CO2 – It’s effects are equally applied.
Methane being the lighter – would resist gravity longer.
Methane’s Lifetime in Atmosphere 6-12 years.
DID I MISS SOMETHING?
The nutters have no idea how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere. They’re all over the board on that one. Maybe one of our resident chemists can chime in on this. There are molecular and chemical interactions up there which I’m not entirely familiar with.
It goes up as CO2 – It returns as CO2?
I believe that’s the prevalent thought. But, I’m not convinced we know all there is to know about it. But, that isn’t always the case for methane……
“Methane also reacts with natural chlorine gas in the atmosphere to produce chloromethane and hydrochloric acid (HCl). This process is known as free radical halogenations. CH4 + Cl2 → CH3Cl + HCl”
Of course the ocean is credited with dissolution.
CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O ⇌ Ca2+ + 2 HCO 3
But, again, chemistry and molecular biology aren’t my strong suits.
Both carbon dioxide and methane are products of biologically useful chemistry. There are major sources and sinks for both of them, even non-biological. Cripes. Teh Stupid is strong with this one :). Heck, we don’t know all there is to know about human biochemistry, let alone the rest of nature. The non-biological parts are well known and reproducible, to an extent, in the laboratory.
If you really want to have fun. ask one of these nutters how fossilization’s mechanisms work. You’ll get a lot of guesses, but few testable processes. (I wish I had more time at my disposal to run more of these rabbits down)
A fair amount of the carbon dioxide partitions into cloud water droplets and comes back as ‘acid’ rain.
cdquarles says:
February 21, 2013 at 1:26 pm
A fair amount of the carbon dioxide partitions into cloud water droplets and comes back as ‘acid’ rain.
xxxxxxxxxx
Is it still CO2?
To resist gravity longer than say unmodified Methane – Something would have to make CO2 lighter.
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
Kim, about residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere,
Courtney:
“The total CO2 flow into the atmosphere is at least 156.5 GtC/year
with 150 GtC/year of this being from natural origin and 6.5 GtC/year
from human origin. So, on the average, 3/156.5 = 2% of all emissions accumulate.
…
[amount of Carbon: in petagramm]
the atmosphere 760 PgC (increasing at a rate of about 3 PgC p.a.)
(s.o.:yearly exchange is 156 PgC – complete turnaround in 7 yrs)
the ocean surface layers 800 PgC
the deep ocean 38,000 PgC (not including sediments, i think, Dirk)
plants and soils 2,000 PgC
http://nasascience.nasa.gov/earth-science/oceanography/ocean-earth-system/ocean-carbon-cycle
The diagram shows the amounts of carbon in the parts of the carbon cycle to be
IPCC:
“Gross fluxes generally have uncertainties of more than ±20% but fractional amounts
have been retained to achieve overall balance”.
When a person tries to tell you that CO2 stays in the air for 1,000 or 100,000 years he’s a complete idiot. An individual molecule might actually manage that but it’s irrelevant. The turnaround per year is a seventh of what’s there.
Oh, bad editing. I added the IPCC quote because they show themselves to be completely irresponsible pseudo scientists. They don’t know the exact fluxes yet they maintain that human emissions are what’s accumulating in the atmosphere. We can’t even say that, given the uncertainties of the fluxes. Yes, CO2 accumulates, but the differential of the seasonal adjusted CO2 concentrations correlates exactly with SST, NOT with industry emissions! So where’s the real causation?
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/derivative/mean:24/plot/hadcrut4sh/from:1959/scale:0.3/offset:0.08
(The isotope ratio C12/C13 is not proof of human emissions either:
Roy Spencer:
“1. The interannual relationship between SST and dCO2/dt is more than enough to explain the long term increase in CO2 since 1958. I’m not claiming that ALL of the Mauna Loa increase is all natural…some of it HAS to be anthropogenic…. but this evidence suggests that SST-related effects could be a big part of the CO2 increase.
2. NEW RESULTS: I’ve been analyzing the C13/C12 ratio data from Mauna Loa. Just as others have found, the decrease in that ratio with time (over the 1990-2005 period anyway) is almost exactly what is expected from the depleted C13 source of fossil fuels. But guess what? If you detrend the data, then the annual cycle and interannual variability shows the EXACT SAME SIGNATURE. So, how can decreasing C13/C12 ratio be the signal of HUMAN emissions, when the NATURAL emissions have the same signal???
-Roy”
That isotope argument is one of the silliest ones the nutters ever came up with.
Dirk, I have a bit of a quibble. All of it is natural in origin. The human part is natural too, just done my human action versus other biological or simple inorganic chemical reactions.
Argh. *by human action 😦
We agree, I write “human emissions” due to sheer laziness.
As for the short lifetime of Methane in the atmosphere: Different from CO2, it gets destroyed through oxidization, for instance when meeting Ozone. CO2 is already oxidized so can’t be transformed into a lower energy molecule. Otherwise we could use it as fuel as we do with Methane.
More about “Does temperature drive CO2 or does CO2 drive temperature”?
Motl argues that 1 degree warming shifts the equilibrium CO2 concentration (with regard to ocean outgassing) up by 10 ppm;:
BUT it needs 100 ppm CO2 to drive temperature up by one degree! (Celsius)
Meaning that the influence of temperatures on CO2 conc. is 10 times bigger than the reverse!
http://motls.blogspot.de/2012/07/land-biospheres-absorption-of-co2.html
@Kim, yes, it is carbon dioxide (hydrated) until the dissociation reaction occurs.
Thank you ALL 🙂
Sooo…if it stays CO2 in atmosphere … It’s weight [ Molar mass of CO2 is 44.00964 ± 0.00003 g/mol ] would remain the same?
As for “residence time” [ Meaning full life cycle of CO2, to me ] Has anyone actually “TAGGED” one CO2?
When residence times are mentioned it is generally the halflife or the e-folding time; the time it takes to drop by a factor of e (euler’s number, 2.734… or something like that). Assuming no new CO2 enters the atmosphere of course. Halflife is the time it takes to drop by a factor of 2.
Even the IPCC scientists do not talk about individual molecules. As I said, it’s meaningless.
Gotcha Thank you so very much 🙂
As for the weight, yes of course it stays the same. Why don’t heavier molecules drop to the ground? For smaller objects the viscosity of air becomes larger. A consequence of the model laws: Weight of an object drops with the third power of the diameter, surface area only with the second power. Meaning that there’s more surface for a unit of weight as the object gets smaller.
Small objects like dustgrains do not drop as fast as a rock even though subject to the same gravity.
Single molecules are therefore not affected by gravity to any measurable amount AS LONG AS they constantly collide with neighbours.
So CO2 is well mixed up to the stratosphere (Yes I know it’s a bit lumpy, and NASA photographed it, but the variaion is only on the order of a few percent).
AHA! 🙂
Also there is the diffusion velocity, which varies by molecular weight. Molecular hydrogen moves the fastest. At the top of the atmosphere, the hydrogen can escape relatively easily either as diatomic molecules or bare atoms (includes the ionized versions). That said, the Earth gains mass from the solar wind as well as loses some to it. The earth also gains mass from passing comets and asteroids (some of these collide, which results in loss of mass from time to time). The amounts, though, are relatively small for the typical time spans we are familiar with.
cdquarles says:
February 22, 2013 at 2:16 pm
Also there is the diffusion velocity, which varies by molecular weight. Molecular hydrogen moves the ……………..
xxx
Thank you!
Next Question 🙂
Unless CO2 bounces like a basketball – It goes to a “sink”?
Unless CO2 is “trapped” in a medium such as Ice…It’s broken down [ Like photosynthesis – plant farts ]?
Well, it can be dissolved in water, forming carbonic acid with a H2O molecule.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid
Photosynthesis consumes it. It is also consumed in weathering in a process called carbonation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering
So yes, it forms the basis of other chemicals. Nature doesn’t do a lot of “sequestration”.
Until recently, the world of science was near-unanimous that CO2 couldn’t stay in the atmosphere for more than about five to 10 years because of the oceans’ near-limitless ability to absorb CO2.
“This time period has been established by measurements based on natural carbon-14 and also from readings of carbon-14 from nuclear weapons testing, it has been established by radon-222 measurements, it has been established by measurements of the solubility of atmospheric gases in the oceans, it has been established by comparing the isotope mass balance, it has been established through other mechanisms, too, and over many decades, and by many scientists in many disciplines,” says Prof. Segalstad, whose work has often relied upon such measurements.
Then, with the advent of IPCC-influenced science, the length of time that carbon stays in the atmosphere became controversial. Climate change scientists began creating carbon cycle models to explain what they thought must be an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These computer models calculated a long life for carbon dioxide.
Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims.
Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html
THIS SEEMS TO SUPPORT MY POST ABOVE?
More than you ever wanted to know about the flakey shakey pseudoscience of the likes of Segalstad.
And very well told.
keywords Isotopes Dr. Curry Dr. Murry Salby isotope ratio SST mauna Loa
VIDEO
linked to from here
150Gt natural CO2 emissions, 150 Gt absortption, 5 Gt human emissions,
… in truth, only the human emissions are known. The rest is vaporware.
(And given China’s forged economic statistics we don’t even know the human emissions too exactly.)
Ignore my keywords, somehow I always think of him as Dr. Curry so I added that keyword to the list; he’s Murry Salby.
Oh damn I misunderstood what Segalstad says, and confused his name with one of the Realclimate guys. I take everything back. Should read more carefully.
WHEW! ha ha ha ha 🙂
MORE:
http://newsbusters.org/node/13971
HA ha ha ha 🙂
The same place that I discussed my kim2ooo says:
February 21, 2013 at 10:50 am post above
I got this:
Originally Posted by wittgenstein
“The Vatican and, significantly, U.S. bishops clearly say they support the scientific consensus on climate change,”
MY ANSWER
Is consensus important to you?
Because CLEARLY The Vatican and, significantly, U.S. bishops support the consensus that says they want you to be Catholic – Are you gonna?
BTW I showed him there is no Scientific Consensus – AND they do not support the hypothesis of CAGW.
The vatican has always supported warmism. They are the biggest landowner on the planet and profit in two ways:
– Kyoto CDM credits for “sequestering” carbon by plant growth. Australia uses the same trick; they prohibit farmers from clearing bushes on their land; thus claiming that this “native vegetation” sequesters carbon and claim virtual CO2 reductions this way. (leading to farmer bankruptcies and suicides)
-The vatican profits from rent payments by windfarm operators. As you need LOTS of wind turbines, the vatican is all for it – similar to German landowners, they are the old aristocrat families and profit massively from the 20 bn EUR subsidies a year going to PV and wind (most of that sitting on land they own).