Ian Plimer goes back to basics to methodically debunk a hoax

12 Responses to Ian Plimer goes back to basics to methodically debunk a hoax

1. Jannie says:

   13 November, 2022 at 3:20 am

   Plimer states that:

   No one has ever proven that human emissions of carbon dioxide drive global warming. For more than two decades I have been asking scientists for this proof. If proven, it would also have to be shown that natural carbon dioxide emissions, 97% of the annual total, don’t drive global warming.

   If Plimer is correct (as seems to be conceded) that 97% or emissions are natural, then there is no argument.

   Most Climate (propaganda) sites avoid or overlook the matter of natural carbon emissions, and only discuss human emissions. That makes me a bit suspicious of their motivation.

   Skeptical Science is a site that seems to deal with scientific data, but is actually CAGW alarmist site. On this question it concedes that globally “our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year”, but argues (incomprehensibly) that the rate of natural emissions is stable over centuries and 1000s of years, and the planet can only absorb 60% of the extra 29 gig caused by humans. (Here)

   Given that the variation in natural emissions caused by say, a bad year for volcanoes, then it suggests Plimer is on to something.

   But the main reason I don’t believe the CAGW propaganda is their unwillingness to debate the issue, their use of false and dishonest arguments, and their ideological (or religious) approach to the question.
2. Boambee John says:

   13 November, 2022 at 6:40 am

   This seems to be a good thread to again ask Non Mentis about fossil and ruinables electricity generation, check the Teheran thread for his earlier obfuscations. Below are the final points I raised there, still unanswered.

   “I was well aware of the availability of spare [coal fired] capacity, that is standard for essential services. I thought (silly me) that a self anointed guru of electric power would know what degree of redundancy was maintained. Obviously, such messy detail is beneath the attention of one so august as you. (That’s sarcasm, your limited knowledge is well known.)

   Now tell us, given the known limits to the capacity factors of wind and solar, what level of redundancy will be necessary to provide reliable, continuous, electricity in a fully ruinable generation system? Note that, if you are not scared of black outs because solar and wind are weather dependent, you are stupid. If you are scared, then you will need to have way too many of them. The capacity factor of solar is around 20%, and wind around 40%.

   Increasing solar reaches a point of diminishing returns, because they are useless at night and on cloudy days. Wind will need at least 150%redundancy, even ignoring the issue of wind droughts. Connecting broad acre ruinable generators to users will, according to the government, require more than 10,000 km of transmission lines, at a cost expected to be almost $80 billion. How will that capital cost affect the cost of ruinables? I note that you ignored that element of my questions. Too embarrassing for you, or beyond the wit of a pre-school failure?

   As for your “theory of second best”, you also avoided saying why such cheap power needs a subsidy at all. Can’t you read? Neither did you say why fossil fuels need to be penalised by a price on carbon, if they are already both expensive and unreliable.

   Fail, try again, more diligence needed.”
3. Bruce of Newcastle says:

   13 November, 2022 at 6:56 am

   From what I see pretty much all of the global temperature change last century have been due to cloud cover changes: less global cloud cover = more warming, because of the albedo effect. Some warming has clearly come from land use changes including urbanization as we went from 2 billion to 8 billion global population.

   I’m agnostic about CO2 having an effect because its equilibrium climate sensitivity measured empirically looks to be well below the Arrhenius number. I get about 0.7 C/doubling using the 250 year long HadCET dataset. It could be lower than that. But at 0.7 C/doubling of pCO2 the gas is already totally harmless since there’s not enough extractable carbon in the Earth’s crust to get more than about 2 C of warming, and that would take thousands of years to get to – by which time we’ll be into the next ice age. So it’s a moot point whether it has a low, very low or zero effect since in all those cases it’d be harmless.

   Other greenhouse gases have the same limited effect because the water cycle counteracts them, as it does with CO2.
4. Buccaneer says:

   13 November, 2022 at 7:04 am

   The inconvenient question for the proponents of ‘renewable’ wind and solar is why is the greater amount of land required to accommodate wind and solar less important habitat to preserve than the habitat that might be used to provide actual renewable energy for more and bigger dams?
5. Eyrie says:

   13 November, 2022 at 7:34 am

   BoN, look up Idso Eight Natural Experiments. Doubling CO2 likely will result in about 0.4 deg C warming. Essentially within measurement error band.
6. Charles says:

   13 November, 2022 at 7:50 am

   From my reading Jannie is correct (as is Ian Plimer), natural emissions of CO2 (96-97%) vastly outweigh those emitted by humankind. It must also be taken into account that those ‘human’ emissions also include CO2 from bushfires and geothermal activity, so our likely output is probably only about 1-2% of the CO2 in the atmosphere.

   These figures have been published in all the IPCC COP reports since 2002 and they have been consistent (i.e. not changing their proportions) for the last 40-50 years since they started measuring the isotopes on CO2 molecules in the atmosphere.

   In respects of the other big myth that man-made CO2 molecules have a life in the atmosphere of 100’s or even up to 1000 years, that is completely laughable, and you have to wonder how stupid people have to be to come up with a claim like that which is so easily falsifiable. If that were really the case then the amount of ‘human’ emissions of CO2 would be in greater proportion than the 3-4% they have been for the last few decades.

   Additionally, greenhouse owners frequently pump man-made CO2 into their growing houses up to around 800-1000 ppm in order to improve their productivity. That man-made CO2 gets used in about 2 weeks, so I’m inclined to think anthropogenic CO2 can be absorbed into plants, or oceans or whatever just the same as ‘natural’ CO2 does.

   CO2 cannot change the climate, there simply isn’t enough of it. Water vapour (measured as relative humidity) is the most significant greenhouse agent and is present in the atmosphere at around 40,000 ppm depending on the altitude and the temperature. CO2 is around 416 ppm, about 1% of water vapour. They both have similar absorption bands of radiation so the whole of CO2 in the atmosphere can’t change anything compared to water vapour, nor can the measly 3-4% of the anthropogenic portion.

   It’s not a scientific question, it’s just a mathematical one, you only need to be numerate to understand it.
7. Boambee John says:

   13 November, 2022 at 7:54 am

   Charles

   The requirement for numeracy eliminates most alarmists from adding value to the discussion. See also Non Mentis, to whom numbers are alien creatures.
8. Bruce of Newcastle says:

   13 November, 2022 at 8:05 am

   Doubling CO2 likely will result in about 0.4 deg C warming.

   Eyrie – Anything under one is harmless so it isn’t worth arguing about specific numbers lower than that.
9. Mantaray says:

   13 November, 2022 at 8:33 am

   I’ll explain it one more time…..

   In Oz the CSIRO is probably the hottest of hot-beds for climate-catastrophe porn, and it get’s hundreds of millions to promote it. Thus, the GBR will soon die, despite no tourism operation or recreational snorkeller / diver seeing any sign of it’s impending death,;while up there (here! in the tropics it’s gonna by cyclonic hell and inundations from rising seas etc, no-one sees any sign of a slow down in expensive waterfront property developments for the fearful. There will never be enough rain (or else far too much) and snow is practically a thing of the past in the Oz Alps. It’s gonna be hot baby hot.Meanwhile….

   Apart from the anecdotal…I know three retired CSIRO boffins now living oceanside in the danger zonger , after buying expensive digs right in harm’s way….there is also the matter of the CSIRO having it’s very own Ski Club at Jindabyne and Perisher. Despite snow soon to be non-existent, the demand for memberships was/is so high that the wait list to join is years long and very pricey. The winter seasons are ALWAYS booked out…..

   And then, once a year at the AGM, the committee gives a report to the assorted climate scientists and former climate scientists who “own” the club, in which they present the financials. and the outlook, Which this year, as every other year, is “we see no adverse events to affect future operations”…. (=no lack of snow)…and which is then unanimously accepted.

   This shows the difference between making nebulous statements vs making legally binding (per ASIC regulation of incorporated bodies) forecasts of the weather. And every CSIRO scientist understands the difference very well. No dissenting votes WHATSOEVER!

   BTW: I’ve run day and three-day charter boat trips to the GBR for decades. Never seen any really adverse comments in any of the trip-books regarding the reef, just as I’ve not encountered any diminishment in reef quality personally either.. However, if JCU or CSIRO or someone else, would offer me a million bucks a year indefinitely to find damage, I’d be a bit of a an F’wit not to “discover” just enough to keep the million annual bucks coming, wouldn’t I now? Well?
10. Petros says:

    13 November, 2022 at 8:54 am

    One would hope that you resist such temptations, Mantaray.
11. Buccaneer says:

    13 November, 2022 at 1:26 pm

    You wouldnt be a f wit Manta, you’d be practicing observations the way science was intended to operate. You would be less wealthy though.
12. Terry says:

    13 November, 2022 at 1:56 pm

    ‘Doubling CO2 likely will result in about 0.4 deg C warming.’

    Or less. The nature of greenhouse gas forcing seems to be logarithmic in effect.
    Here’s a paper dealing with the top 5 “greenhouse gases” (earth’s atmosphere is actually nothing like a greenhouse, but anyway…): Water(H2O), Carbon Dioxide(CO2), Ozone(O3), Methane(CH4), and Nitrous Oxide(N2O).
    Wijngaarden, Happer (4 Jun 2020)

    Presentation on the Paper
    It is well worth watching the entire video (41 mins).