10 thoughts on “Retired NASA Scientists Enter Climate Change Fray”

  1. No, I’m right in what I’m intending to say. I’m just not the most eloquent of typists, sorry about that.
    Assuming a maximum CO2 of 2,000 ppm before we run out of fossil fuels, we have at most 3 doublings to worry about (250ppm->500ppm->1000ppm->2000ppm).
    Warming = 3*M*0.7C = M*2.1C
    As M is almost certainly less than 1, we have less than 2C of warming to be concerned with. Probably less than 1.5C.

    Ferd, that only applies if quantity of H2O was constant. Also, as O2 is replaced by CO2, there will be no change in partial pressures.
    Tom, that is a large part of the reason why we can be so certain that the multiplier is less than 1, because the warming mechanism is weakened so due to increased opacity..

  2. Moreover, I believe that the absorption spectra of water vapor and carbon dioxide largely overlap.

  3. Ben, I think you might be double-accounting; seems to be happening quite a lot lately.

    Doubling CO2 means x.xC increase; doubling again means another x.xC increase.

    The forcing due to CO2 is logarithmic (log2), but that means the same amount of warming each time you double the CO2.

  4. Carbon dioxide does increase heat retained. That’s basic physics (upwelling infrared radiation is absorbed by all the gases in the atmosphere and re-emitted in a half-up half-down fashion. Replacing O2 with CO2 increases this absorption). Going based on a no-multiplier scenario, doubling CO2 will lead to 0.7C of temperature rise. However, due to the effect of other gases and the cycles of the planet, we can expect a significant reduction in that amount (the precise amount is uncertain, but we can say with reasonable confidence that it is a reduction). Perhaps 0.4C per doubling. As we can only have 2-3 doublings before running out of fossil fuels, that means less than 1.5C of warming, which cannot cause catastrophic (or really, significant enough to be conclusively attributable) change climate.

  5. Seems like they used weasel words like “significant” warming. That implies man is causing some warming so where is their proof?

  6. Howdy o-l
    I was referring to part of the article I didn’t copy and quote, in which there’s a reference to debating whether cigarettes cause cancer. Perhaps a better analogy would be cholesterol and atherosclerosis, but that wasn’t in the article.
    If there’s anything to CAGW, and you know me for a denier, then SUV emissions in North America might contribute to flooding in Bangladesh. Grass burning in Asia seems to send ash all the way to us.

  7. MT – let’s keep cigarettes out of the picture shall we. The only meaningful comparison is that we all agree that cigarettes smoked in the US don’t cause cancer in Bangladesh, just like SUVs don’t flood countries half a world away.

  8. “This came after other panelists assured the audience that virtually all peer-reviewed scientific studies support that humans cause climate change…”
    But this statement is false-to-fact. There are mixed outcomes in the peer-reviewed literature, as reported here and on WUWT among other places. For that matter, cigarettes don’t cause cancer, although they seem to contribute to cancer.

  9. ‘Retired’ is the key. They don’t have a job to lose if they speak out their minds.

    Come to think I cannot recall of anybody from NASA or anywhere who after getting to their pension age decided to start campaigning with Gore and McKibben. But there are many examples of people going the other way.

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