Katharine Hayhoe gave a presentation to the Republicans for Environmental Protection on March 9, and you should stop everything else you’re doing in your multitasking saturated life, and download it now. You can thank me later.
From the REP site:
Katharine Hayhoe, a research associate professor at Texas Tech University and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave a presentation on climate science to REP members via conference call on March 9, 2010. REP members from across the U.S. participated in this call. Katharine previously spoke to REP members at our annual conference in San Antonio, in September 2007.
Download a [24MB] PDF of Katharine’s March 9, 2010 presentation.
Listen to [29MB] MP3 recording of the March 9, 2010 conference call. Presentation begins approximately 2 minutes into the 1 hour and 23-minute recording.
Dr. Hayhoe goes through the basics of what’s happening and how we know it’s caused by people.
Trust me on this one, if you’ve seen half as many presentations on climate change as I have (and believe me, that’s a lot), you’ll still want to see this one for your own benefit, as well as recommend it to others. Dr. Hayhoe makes excellent use of graphics, easily among the best I’ve ever seen, so even beyond the information content this one serves as an excellent example of how scientists can and should talk to non-scientists.
Note that the recording linked above is from a conference call, and the sound quality isn’t the best.
Have to agree with you there.
Since Joe posted the Oxfam Women’s link on his site, I am convinced that ’1/2′ the population is missing from this debate. The ‘gentle’ precise way Katharine presents the argument is the way to go.
As a mother which gives her special qualities in convincing many that there is an emergency to react to.
The Republican’s for Environmental Protection??? It’s not April 1st yet, Lou!
stoner: Now, now, be nice. It took a lot of will power for me not to make a bad joke about that aspect of the story (even though I had a hunch one of you guys would leap in and fill that role nicely).
But it really is an oustanding CC presentation.
I actually believed this crap at one point. After a recent discussion about this in which I expressed my previous belief that increasing CO2 from its present level would cause global warming – I set out to make a device that would demonstrate this. My idea was to have a web enabled experiment. One could go to a web page and use a mouse click to run a test that would demonstrate the CO2 effect. The device would consist of a pipe with an IR source at one end and a thermopile with a 4260 NM filter at the other (CO2 absorbs IR energy only at wavelegnths that match its molecular resonance points). Normally, the device would be purged with a small flow of N2 from a bottle/regulator setup. The thermopile would recieve full illumination under these conditions and this level would be set as 100%. Initiation of the test would close the valve that admitted the N2 and energize a small aquarium pump that would admit air. CO2 in the air would reduce the energy reaching the thermopile, the level would drop, and that would dramatically illustrate the problem – or so I initially thought.
I initially figured on using a 10 foot legnth of pipe to get sufficient absorption at one of these frequencies to make the attenuation of IR measurable. I found a graph (I wish I could attach pictures) that showed that a 100 mm optical path legnth and a CO2 concentration of 350 ppm will reduce transmission to 65%. Now – consider the fact that there are 1000 of these 100 mm path legnths in the first 100 meters of atmosphere and each of these attenuates the radiation passed by the previous 100 mm by 65%. Ok – if you use the y ^ x button of my principal research tool, a TI-36X calculator, and raise 0.65 to a power of 1000, you get zero. The remaining transmittance is so small that it is beyond the maximum exponent of the calculator. Lets take 10 meters at 350 ppm, the atmospheric concentration of CO2. The result can then be expressed by the calculator and is 1.96 x 10 to the -19. The first 10 meters of the atmosphere at a CO2 concentration of 350 ppm almost totally absorbs all infrared radiation that can be absorbed by CO2. If it already absorbs it all it is apparent that doubling the concentration has no measurable additional effect – thus I proved the converse of my initial postulate. The globe might be getting warmer, and it is certainly true that CO2 is very effective at absorbing IR at it’s characterisitic wavelegnths, but the simple numbers show that CO2 is not making the globe warmer. If we were talking about the first 100PPM of CO2 – the “inconvenient truth” people may have a point. Going from 400 to 600 they do not, the CO2 effect is saturated. One can also look at historical charts of CO2 vs temperature and observe that the temperature often rises before the CO2 on upticks and that there are counter trends lasting hundreds of years. It could be that the planet warms, there is more life, and CO2 increases in response.
Global warming is weapons grade bull pucky.
Vernon:
Please, by all means, prove wrong the thousands of climate scientists, approximately 95% of the entire field (quoting that number from faulty memory) who are convinced that we’re warming the atmosphere. PLEASE. This is an immense, worldwide problem, and I would like nothing better than to find out that the entire field of climate science got it wrong and one guy proved it wrong with a gizmo he built and some logic.
Your Nobel Prize is waiting, as are many editors and publishers of peer-reviewed journals who would love to see your work. If scientists are anywhere near as driven by fame and fortune as many deniers suggest, then they should already be beating a path to your door to help you get published, etc.
Sorry, that’s as long as I can be nice. You’re deluded, you’re arrogant, and you sound like a textbook example of the Dunning–Kruger effect. Take your denier tripe about temps rising ahead of CO2 and other nonsense and go haunt some other corner of the Internet.
Vernon: you need to dig a little deeper to understand the issue of CO2 absoption. I suggest reading this before you pronounce your (rude) conclusions:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/
That is interesting Fredb and it at least addresses the actual mechanism rather than just showing pictures of melting ice. The “Angstrom” section of your link shows that CO2 absorbs over a wide spectrum of wavelegnths where the graph I saw offered a model in which IR is absorbed only in three narrow bands at 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers, transmission is unaffected outside those bands and is no more than any other gas. Energy at the resonant frequency of the molecule is absorbed – energy more than a few nano meters from resonance is not. The data I read was not political. It was background information on the design of a ventilation control system in which the fan would speed up if the exhaled CO2 in the building exceeded 500PPM.
And Lou – I think that your reference to Dunning Kruger is an ad hominum arguement that belongs in the ad hominum arguement corner of the internet. I believe this site is about climate change caused by the heating effect of IR absorption by CO2. At one point, just a few hundred years ago, 95% of scientists thought the earth was flat.
One must give considerable weight to Fredb’s link and my simple experiment could be wrong. One thing is certain – humanity is not going to stop extracting carbon until there is no more left. If we invent some exotic biofuel tomorrow and start replacing oil – that will just make oil cheaper and allow a peasant somewhere to buy a motorbike and a tractor. Fossil fuel will be extracted in a short geological time and conservation, the slight extension of that time, will not change the peak value of anthropological CO2. We would have to just stop using the stuff and that ain’t hapnin’. The bright side is the processes that produced fossil fuel would have sequestered more of the CO2 and, coupled with a decline in volcanic activity, it is likely that CO2 would have eventually fallen below the point where photosynthesis can function. Humanity can be thought of as a kind of carbon dispersing earthworm that extended viablity of carbon based life for a few million years. The ocean might get hot, the sea level might rise, the Carboniferous coal swamps and two foot span flies might return – but life will go on longer than it would have without us. That is a good thing.
The post that fredb linked is spot on. To elaborate a bit, the point is that the extra CO2 affects radiation from the top of the atmosphere, not direct radiation from the ground level, as the standard greenhouse cartoons seem to indicate. Climate scientists have of course known this for a long time. It complicates the calculation of the warming effect from increased CO2, but by no means does it invalidate the whole idea that there is such an effect.
> you should stop everything else you’re doing in your multitasking saturated life, and download it now. You can thank me later.
Lou, I am now thanking you. That’s a stunner.
I think she should make this presentation PDF into a booklet, or set of slides? powerpoints? however talks are done these days – and make that available too. It would help some of us step out of our comfort zones and start public speaking.
Vernon:
You’ve had your last moment of free time on this site. Any further posts from you will be deleted.
I am out of patience with people who think they know better than literally thousands of scientists and continue to push long-debunked idea. You’re wasting my time and that of everyone who reads this site, and you’re contributing to the delay that is only going to make our eventual action on climate change all the more difficult and expensive. I take great offense to that, no matter how politely you do it.
Lou,
Good call on Vern. He was saying that emitting megatons of CO2 per year was somehow vital to the survival of the planet. If that’s not rationalization, I don’t know what is.
To my main question: Before I go bug Dr. Hayhoe, have you seen anything before like the maps on slide 53-55 (weeks (total or continuous?–not sure) over 100F per location plotted on a map of the lower 48)? I am interested in the timescale. I wonder what the map would look like for only 30 years from now, under business-as-usual. I want something I can take to the bank, and show the real danger in a way people can relate to. Those slides have also gotten me thinking about my own personal contingency plans.
I suppose the data in slides 53-54 could also be total-continuous, as in total 7-day contiguous spans over 100F, whether contiguous as a whole or not. Boy, I’d prefer a map that minimized discussion of discrete math :p
Bryan:
I’ve seen such formulations before and a few maps that presented such data, but at the moment I’m at a loss to remember where. I’ll try to look into it. If I find anything, I’ll post about it.
My guess is that by saying “X weeks/year above 100 degrees” she (or the original source) means “X weeks/year, by the year 2100, where the average daily high temp for each week is over 100″.
Bryan:
I found something similar on those temp graphs, which might be useful.
The US Global Change Research Program published a report in 2009, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States [page with links to entire report or portions] that includes maps showing days over 100F/year on page 90. (That’s the “Human Health” part of the report, which you can download by itself from the above link instead of the whole 13MB publication.)
@vernon,
silly (thought) experiments like that have been done and refuted ad nauseam.
It seems like physicists of the basic kind make numerous errors in devising their
‘experiments’.
Please consider the broadening of the absorption lines in high altitudes in the first place.
Then go on.
Then, e.g. consider, that near-ground atmospheric chemistry and physics are TOTALLY different
from the high altitude case.
Think ozone.
Do You really think that atmospheric physicists are so silly not to consider such first order effects?
Your approach is akin to physicists of the ‘perpetuum mobile’ brand.
Poor America.
Texan science.
No wonder Ms Hayhoe would welcome bodyguards.
‘God’ help US (and the rest of the world).
I hope that Obama gets with it and gets women and presenters with the talent like Dr Hayhoe to do some talking on behalf of this. The government (who get it) has a responsibility to let people know whats happening. Its not just up to the scientist. Look at that advert in the UK with the kid and the drowning ?? polar bear. That needs to start happening.
This needs to be Ytubed…
Lou,
I saw this over at ClimateSight but your name was mentioned as promoting it. I agree that these type of visuals are required to get folks to understand. I just made this my Facebook Global Warming Fact of the Day. I also will be printing many of these slides to use in our building’s display case.
Scott
BTW, I have a .PDF file from a presentation I gave last December titled: Global Warming: Separating fact from Fiction that debunks some of the more popular myths. Yoy are all welcome to use it. It is a nice quick-hitter to send to skeptical friends.
Katharine Hayhoe has a Web version of her slides that is much more “download friendly” here:
http://temagami.tosm.ttu.edu/khayhoe/climate_slides/index.htm
this article is exactly what I was searching for! I found this page bookmarked by a friend. I’ll also share it. thanks!