Murry Salby is unhelpful

In reply to my email, Murry Salby writes:

Thanks for your interest in the presentation at the Sydney Institute.
If not torrential (in some cases invidious), the expressions of interest
have at least been overpowering. Although I would like to respond individually,
the volume of inquiries makes that unfeasible.

Several requested illustrations that were displayed during the presentation.
Many of those illustrations were included in the broadcast which was
subsequently aired. Others are under publication embargo.
When that restriction is lifted, they will be made available.

Thanks again for your interest and good wishes.
And to those of more eccentric expression: Good luck with that.
The observed behavior is what it is.

So the only way to see the slides is to watch the broadcast here at 6:30 am, 11:28 am, or 4:25 pm on Saturday 13 Aug (Sydney time).

Update The broadcast only shows the first few slides. It misses the most important ones. The slides that were shown are here

Comments

#1 frank -- Decoding SwiftHack
August 12, 2011

If Salby were to speak out in favour of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, the inactivists will be up in arms demanding all the raw data that he’s ever received from anyone for any purpose under any license, and all the program code they’ve ever written or received, and all the e-mails he’s received and sent starting from decades ago.

And they’ll give the excuse that ‘no, really, this is not a witch-hunt, this is just a plea for scientific openness, and is that so unreasonable, siree?’

Of course, now that Salby is speaking out against the theory of anthropogenic global warming, the inactivists’ passion for scientific openness’ suddenly vanishes in a jiffy.

– frank
#2 M
August 12, 2011

“The observed behavior is what it is.”

The observed behavior is what it is, but it is a pity that Salby doesn’t have the basic knowledge required to understand what the observations are telling us.
#3 toto
August 12, 2011

If he really did what people say he did (find high correlation between first differences in CO2 and in temps, and conclude that the entire rise in CO2 is caused by temp variation – overlooking the possibility of a slow, regular CO2 source that would be invisible to such an analysis), then he’s in for a bit of embarrassment.
#4 Mike
August 12, 2011

Why not ask Colin Prentice what he thinks of Murry Salby’s work? He’s at the same institution and has serious qualifications re atmospheric CO2.

http://www.bio.mq.edu.au/about/staff/person.htm?id=cprentic
#5 Matty
August 12, 2011

Oh my god… I just watched the thing. It is as ridiculous as I thought. There were so many flaws in his analysis, I don’t even know where to start. If just for a moment, we would accept, that CO2 is currently mainly temperature driven (and he shows the MWP and LIA to support this): Why on earth would the CO2 vary just a tiny bit (around +/- 10ppm at max) between the MWP and LIA, and suddenly in the 20th century it shoots right through the roof (+120ppm). If this would be temperature driven, we would have to see a temperature increase several magnitudes higher than the difference between the MWP and LIA, which means an increase in global temperature by several degrees alone in the second half of the 20th century. We did not observe such a thing. All his claims do in no way match anything, we can see out there. It is just absolutely astonishing, how one can make such plain false claims that contradict reality in such obvious ways and yet thinking at the same time, that he has found something remarkably. It is so grotesque that a sane person can bearly wrap it’s mind around such great stupidity…
#6 Ark
August 12, 2011

Has the Oz done its take on Salby’s work yet? I smell number 68 just around the corner…
#7 Mikem
August 12, 2011

@1, Frank, you neglected one vital thing:

They’ll not only demand all the raw data and code, but they’ll demand to be shown what to do with it and how to analyse it.

And if these so-called “scientists” do not give them a Bachelors, Masters, and Doctorate in 6 easy lessons, it will be evidence of the systematic suppression of the truth by scientists.
#8 bill
August 12, 2011

The observed behavior is what it is.

Self-referential, surely?
#9 bob
August 12, 2011

“Why on earth would the CO2 vary just a tiny bit (around +/- 10ppm at max) between the MWP and LIA, and suddenly in the 20th century it shoots right through the roof (+120ppm). If this would be temperature driven, we would have to see a temperature increase several magnitudes higher than the difference between the MWP and LIA”

Ah but Matty, they will just argue that the CO2 rise lags temperature rise by…800 years as in the ice core record. So the CO2 rise today is being caused by the warming in the MWP.

In fact I’ve actually witnessed deniers resorting to such an excuse
#10 Dikran Marsupial
August 13, 2011

The slide that says the growth rate is the sum of the sources minus the sum of the sinks leaves an open goal for the most straightforard refutation of his argument. Expanding a little we have

dC = E_a + E_n – U_n

where dC is the growth rate, E_a is anthropogenic emissions, E_n is natural emissions and U_n is natural uptake. Rearranging we have

dC – E_a = E_n – U_n

We can calculate dC – E_a from the Mauna Loa record and estimates of anthropogenic emissions (IIRC both of which are reliable according to Salby’s podcast), and has been consistently negative for the last fifty years. Thus for the same period we know that U_n > E_n, i.e. the natural environment has been a net sink and has been actively opposing the rise in atmospheric CO2 not causing it.

Salby has agreed to all of the components that refute his argument; it is a shame that he didn’t put them together correctly before going public.

Sorry Murray, the observed behaviour is indeed what it is! ;o)
#11 Dikran Marsupial
August 13, 2011

BTW I got the same email from Salby when I asked him which journal the paper had been submitted to. I suspect it is E&E, I’d be amazed if a climate journal accepted a paper drawing such obviously incorrect conclusions.

Anyone know the journal in which Salby’s paper has been submitted?
#12 Matty
August 13, 2011

@bob
“Ah but Matty, they will just argue that the CO2 rise lags temperature rise by…800 years as in the ice core record. So the CO2 rise today is being caused by the warming in the MWP.”

Well, at least we could then both agree, that Murry Salby is talking pure crap, because he says, that the CO2 is driven by current climate variations like El Nino etc.

And second: The same logic applies, when you say, that the current CO2 rise results from the warming in the MWP. We know from various proxies, that the Holocene optimum was much warmer than the MWP. CO2-Levels shortly after the Holocene optimum must then have been also much higher, but they were not. In fact, they were nowhere near such levels and also just around 280/290ppm. So, this doesn’t make sense either and we are back where we were before: Current CO2 levels are primarily caused by human fossil fuel emissions and all the evidence agrees with this.
#13 frank -- Decoding SwiftHack
August 13, 2011

Mikem;

> They [inactivists]‘ll not only demand all the raw data and code, but they’ll demand to be shown what to do with it and how to analyse it.

Ah yes indeed. And then they’ll ignore all the instructions, do nothing about the raw data and code, and proceed to ask for … more data! Plus, they’ll ask to receive a Nobel Prize in Everything. And so on it goes, all in the name of ‘scientific openness’.

But, again, now that Salby is disputing the anthropogenic global warming theory, suddenly the inactivists’ fervent passion for ‘scientific openness’ disappears in a puff.

Perhaps their campaign of ‘scientific openness’ against Michael Mann, Phil Jones, James Hansen, etc. is indeed a witch-hunt after all?

– frank
#14 chek
August 13, 2011

Gee, whatever could have raised the spectre of a political witch-hunt, Frank?

The fact that not a single one of the self-appointed “auditors” or their reverential flocks have asked for the data’n'code of Salby’s epoch-making discovery?

If that doesn’t finally expose them as the partisan, hack, corporate propaganda conduits that they actually are to their passive, repeating followers, you might easily conclude that nothing ever will to that kind.
#15 Ian Enting
August 14, 2011

“I know very well what the temptations of the devil are and one of the greatest is to give a man the idea that he can compose and publish a book and thereby win as much fame as fortune ..”

Cervantes (quoted in review of “How I became a famous novelist” – Age 6/8/11)
#16 Ian Enting
August 14, 2011

On 15:
OPPS: wrong thread. This was my thoughts on turning Oz war on science into a book.
Meant to post it on Oz war on science part 68.
#17 harry
August 16, 2011

“publication embargo” seems pretty clear.
#18 Geoff Larsen
August 18, 2011

Dirkran Marsupial @ 10.

“Un > E_n, i.e. the natural environment has been a net sink and has been actively opposing the rise in atmospheric CO2 not causing it”.

This doesn’t preclude that natural emissions may be increasing. Let me put some hypothetical numbers into your equation over a few years to demonstrate how. Units in ppm.

dC = Ea + En – U_n
Year 1: 2 = 4 +154 – 156
Year 2: 2 = 4 +158 – 160
Year 3: 2 = 4 +162 – 164 Etc

Here natural emissions are increasing at 4 ppm/yr, the same as the yearly anthropogenic emission. Each year half the sum of these emission increments are taken up by an increment in natural uptake.

I guess we will just have to wait till the paper comes out next year. And yes, with all data & code.
#19 Wow
August 18, 2011

“This doesn’t preclude that natural emissions may be increasing.”

But it DOES mean that natural absorption is even higher and that the NET emission is not increasing and is, rather, negative.

I.e. a sink rather than a source.

Given so many times the claim that a cold body (the air) cannot warm a hotter body (the ground) because of the second law of thermodynamics fail to take into account that the second law talks of NET flow, it’s rather dumb to make the same mistake here too.
#20 Ian Enting
August 18, 2011

Geoff @ 18.
yes, and Salby also seems to be saying that these large fluxes can change independently to give dc =1 or dc = 3 (and that C13 indicate
that this is land processes).
SO WHAT?
This is not new. Other threads note the Francey et al 1995 Nature
paper as one of the first to look at this. (also one by Dave Keeling
at the same time). Lots of later papers with spatial detail.
#21 john
August 18, 2011

Salby is obviously a light weight when it comes to the atmosphere and climate knowledge anyway.

http://books.google.com/books?id=EDClFW7JWrQC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Table of contents:
http://books.google.com/books?id=EDClFW7JWrQC&pg=PR8&lpg=PR1
#22 Hank Roberts
August 18, 2011

C’mon, “john” — faux naivete ill becomes you.

It’s because of Salby’s long publication record in the field that people were amazed by his speech and readers are so eager to see his actual paper — whenever it comes out.

The man says he has overthrown his own field of expertise.

That’s why people find this remarkable.
#23 Hank Roberts
August 18, 2011

But note, he’s also being criticized for his discovery published this year about the ozone hole. Look into his work.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22Murry+Salby%22&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2011&as_vis=0
#24 Ian Enting
August 19, 2011

I have updated my comments on this stuff at
[http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~enting/echo.pdf](http://www.ms.unimelb.edu.au/~enting/echo.pdf).

The summary of my views on Salby are probably as far as I can go on the basis of the podcast. I hope to do a bit more on the background, to make it as useful as possible when Salby’s actual paper appears.
#25 Denis Ables
December 31, 2011

With regard to measurements on the level of CO2 in the more distant past, Zbigniew Jaworowski commentary on CO2 measurements – basically, “claiming that glaciological studies are not able to provide a reliable reconstruction of CO2 concentrations in the ancient atmosphere. This is because the ice cores do not fulfill essential closed system criteria. One of them is a lack of liquid water in ice, which could dramatically change the chemical composition [of] the air bubbles trapped between the ice crystals. This criterion is not met as even the coldest Antarctic ice contains liquid water. More than 20 physico-chemical processes, mostly related to the presence of liquid water, contribute to the alteration of the original chemical composition of the air inclusions in polar ice.”
#26 frank -- Decoding SwiftHack
December 31, 2011

What’s with denialist trolls and their inability to actually discuss the topic at hand — in this case, Murry Salby’s evidence-free theories?

And to reiterate what I said above:

> now that Salby is disputing the anthropogenic global warming theory, suddenly the inactivists’ fervent passion for ‘scientific openness’ disappears in a puff.

> Perhaps their campaign of ‘scientific openness’ against Michael Mann, Phil Jones, James Hansen, etc. is indeed a witch-hunt after all?

– frank
#27 Bernard J.
December 31, 2011

[Denis Ables](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2011/08/murry_salby_is_unhelpful.php#comment-6204375).

Thank you for your implicit confession that you are both scientifically illiterate, and unable to UTFSE.

Permit me to assist you in garning at least a basic understanding:

http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/jaworowski.html

http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/index.php?s=Jaworowski

http://init.planet3.org/2010/07/jaworowski-refutation.html

http://suvratk.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-should-i-convince-friends-about.html

Finally, look carefully at [the trajectory of CO₂ concentration as determined by ice core analyses](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg). Consider what would be the case if Zbigniew Jaworowski’s nonsensical claims were true… do you understand what would happen to the green line in the linked graph if such were the case?

Seriously, Denis Able, answer this question. I (and I am sure everyone else who might be reading this thread) want to know if you know the answer. If necessary I will educate you down the track, but right now I want to see if you are able to defend Jaworowski.

I will take a lack of any further posting by you to be an explicit acknowledgement by you that Jaworowski’s blathering nonsense is utterly indefensible.