Bishop Hill has a cohort, Josh, that has turned Climategate and the blogospheric response into a running series of cartoons.
During his blogging sabbatical while he turned his attention to mining (not the data kind), I think Steve missed this one, so I’ll present it here.
Some others of interest are:
Not sure, but I think this one is supposed to be Tamino.
And of course, VS and his unit root groupies from the now famous Bart thread:
See more here at cartoonsbyjosh.com
Climate Audit 
22 Comments
We’ve got cartoons. We’ve got haiku. We’ve got math/physics discussions lofty enough to rival the flight of Icarus. The Greatest Show on Earth.
By the way, what was that sideshow in DC last week about, anyway?
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“We’ve got cartoons. We’ve got haiku. We’ve got math/physics discussions lofty enough to rival the flight of Icarus. The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Best of all, we’ve got Kim 😉
I’ve heard this… “laugh (at the climatologists), it drives them crazy” works too… 🙂
If only he has used his science and math for good and niceness, instead of evil and badness.
P.S. is that your shoe ringing?
Josh’s cartoons are great. If you enjoy puerile British humour, as I do, then The Daily Mash provides a few laughs.
The trouble is that Mr McIntyre is so concerned with the statistics and his squash results that he can’t see the heat of the global warming occurring in his own room
🙂
I hope this is not too off topic, but I think it is humorous.
On the BBC last night The Wonders of the Solar System the presenter Professor Brian Cox said and I paraphrase that major volcanic activity took place on the earth and venus and the only reason earth is not like venus is because the “rain “washed the CO2” out of the atnosphere?
What’s the point there?
Venus and Earth have pretty much the same surface radiation flue, since Venus has a higher albedo to offset it’s closeness to the sun. Yet Venus is something like 400K hotter, as a direct result of CO2-driven warming going to extremes.
On Earth, there is a long term balance between CO2 drawdown from the weathering of fresh silicate rocks (ultimately from plate tectonic movement and volcanoes) and CO2 emissions from volcanoes. In the broadest possible sense, if temperatures get too high, CO2 drawdown increases, lowering atmospheric CO2 and cooling the planet, wheras if temperatures drop too far, there is less weathering and atmospheric CO2 tends to increase. Hence we have maintained liquid oceans for billions of years, even though the sun has gotten roughly 20% warmer.
In about 500 million years, this effect will finish as CO2 levels hit near-zero. At some point thereafter, we will hit a runaway effect whereby the oceans gradually evaporate into the atmosphere, raising surface temperatures more and more until carbonate rocks become unstable. At that point we will become another Venus and all life on Earth will go extinct.
This is, as I say, at least 500,000,000 years away, so best not panic right now.
@ Andrew
I wanted someone to comment as to whether the statement made was valid not that I was making a point so sorry.
My understanding has always been that the distance of the earth from the sun was one of the prime movers of our climate.
On the 10,000-100,000 year timescale, milancovitch effects can dominate, yes. I don’t think that Earth-Sun distance has changed much even over geological time, although I could be wrong.
According to Dr Lindzen at MIT, Venus is the way it is due to sulfuric acids clouds.
“Venus and Earth have pretty much the same surface radiation flue, ”
Surface? I believe it’s fairly dim under 90 atms of CO2, so would say the amount solar radiation that hits Venus is less than on Earth.
On Earth at 90 atm of ocean depth [about 3000′] the sun light doesn’t reach that far- the sunlight doesn’t even get down a thousand feet.
We know that sunlight does reach the surface of Venus because of the Russian probe that was sent there. But I believe the light is quite diffused- similar to during a day with heavy cloud cover- you couldn’t see the sun- though the part sky where the sun was could be brighter. So I don’t think solar panels on the surface of Venus would generate much energy.
Or our atmosphere on a clear day it blocks about 30% of the solar flux, so if Earth had many times more atmosphere a very significant amount of solar energy would not reach the surface and if there was so much atmosphere that the difference between day and night was a different shade of pitch black with surface solar flux was near zero, I wouldn’t predict that temperature would be cold as a result of this.
I based the calculation purely on Albedo and distance:
Venus has an albedo of ~0.7 and a distance of 1.1 (x10^8) km
Earth has an Albedo if ~0.35 and a distance of 1.5 (x10^8) km
Radiation flux is proportional to the inverse square of distance, so we have
Venus absorbed flux: (1.0-0.7) * 1/(1.1^2) = 0.25
Earth absorbed Flux: (1.0-0.35) * 1(1.5^2) = 0.28
Essentially identical for the purposes of this calculation.
Andrew,
As a first attempt, this is fine. This calculation does not take into account the different orbital period, rotation rate, and thus; the length of the day for the two planets. Given the high aerosol content of the Venusian atmosphere, I would think that scattering would matter as well. Of course, you should take into consideration the difference in surface pressure and composition in addition to the differences in atmospheric composition. Water, being much more common on Earth than Venus makes an important difference. Carbon dioxide, being much less common on Earth than Venus also makes a difference.
I will stop here.
I’m not completely sure what difference rotation rate would make on average temperatures; it is true that Earth has water vapour wheras Venus does not, but that would tend to make earth relatively warmer.
Not sure what conclusion you were aiming at?
Thanks, Anthony!
However, Steve’s expression is way too grim in the top cartoon. While it’s true he’s dead serious about digging down to the truth, he’s also having a blast exposing pretentious missteps!
Steve
a bit OT but found this interesting
James Lovelock: Humans are too stupid to prevent climate change
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock-climate-change
Lovelock did acknowledge that sceptics are necessary.
Lovelock says the events of the recent months have seen him warming to the efforts of the “good” climate sceptics: “What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: ‘Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?’ If you don’t have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. You need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic.”
Lovelock, who 40 years ago originated the idea that the planet is a giant, self-regulating organism – the so-called Gaia theory – added that he has little sympathy for the climate scientists caught up in the UEA email scandal. He said he had not read the original emails – “I felt reluctant to pry” – but that their reported content had left him feeling “utterly disgusted”.
“Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science,” he said. “I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.”
I bet Josh could do a great cartoon on NASA’s disappearing graph:
Press Release
http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaunder/id35.html
Green Economy offers up new employmentopportunities.
POSITIONS VACANT.
Advertising: Spin Doctors.
Agriculture: Cherry Pickers.
Security: GateKeepers.
completely OT but where has the famous ice thread gone because I have this for the incorrigable Phil and De witt Payne LOL
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Let us recall last year….and the year before etc…
“We’ve got cartoons. We’ve got haiku. We’ve got math/physics discussions lofty enough to rival the flight of Icarus. The Greatest Show on Earth. haha nice
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