PDO explains twentieth century warming?

[MSimon]

They claim the IPCC forecasts are only very weakly physics-based. If so i would agree with G&A, but I believe this not to be so.

http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/070 ... 1161v3.pdf

A thorough discussion of the planetary heat transfer problem in the framework of theoretical physics and engineering thermodynamics leads to the following results:

1. There are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effect, which explains the relevant physical phenomena. The terms \greenhouse effect" and \greenhouse gases" are deliberate misnomers.

2. There are no calculations to determinate an average surface temperature of a planet
with or without an atmosphere,
with or without rotation,
with or without infrared light absorbing gases.
The frequently mentioned difference of 33 degC for the fictitious greenhouse effect of the atmosphere is therefore a meaningless number.

3. Any radiation balance for the average radiant flux is completely irrelevant for the determination of the ground level air temperatures and thus for the average value as well.

4. Average temperature values cannot be identified with the fourth root of average values of the absolute temperature's fourth power.

5. Radiation and heat flows do not determine the temperature distributions and their average values.

6. Re-emission is not reflection and can in no way heat up the ground-level air against the actual heat flow without mechanical work.

7. The temperature rises in the climate model computations are made plausible by a perpetuum mobile of the second kind. This is possible by setting the thermal conductivity in the atmospheric models to zero, an unphysical assumption. It would be no longer a perpetuum mobile of the second kind, if the \average" fictitious radiation balance,
which has no physical justification anyway, was given up.

8. After Schack 1972 water vapor is responsible for most of the absorption of the infrared radiation in the Earth's atmosphere. The wavelength of the part of radiation, which is absorbed by carbon dioxide is only a small part of the full infrared spectrum and does not change considerably by raising its partial pressure.

9. Infrared absorption does not imply \backwarming". Rather it may lead to a drop of the temperature of the illuminated surface.

10. In radiation transport models with the assumption of local thermal equilibrium, it is assumed that the absorbed radiation is transformed into the thermal movement of all gas molecules. There is no increased selective re-emission of infrared radiation at the low temperatures of the Earth's atmosphere.

11. In climate models, planetary or astrophysical mechanisms are not accounted for properly. The time dependency of the gravity acceleration by the Moon and the Sun (high tide and low tide) and the local geographic situation, which is important for the local climate, cannot be taken into account.

12. Detection and attribution studies, predictions from computer models in chaotic systems, and the concept of scenario analysis lie outside the framework of exact sciences, in particular theoretical physics.

13. The choice of an appropriate discretization method and the definition of appropriate dynamical constraints (flux control) having become a part of computer modeling is nothing but another form of data curve fitting. The mathematical physicist v. Neumann once said to his young collaborators: \If you allow me four free parameters I can build a
mathematical model that describes exactly everything that an elephant can do. If you allow me a fifth free parameter, the model I build will forecast that the elephant will fly." (cf. Ref. [185].)

14. Higher derivative operators (e.g. the Laplacian) can never be represented on grids with wide meshes. Therefore a description of heat conduction in global computer models is impossible. The heat conduction equation is not and cannot properly be represented on grids with wide meshes.

15. Computer models of higher dimensional chaotic systems, best described by non-linear partial differential equations (i.e. Navier-Stokes equations), fundamental differ from calculations where perturbation theory is applicable and successive improvements of the predictions - by raising the computing power - are possible. At best, these computer models may be regarded as a heuristic game.

16. Climatology misinterprets unpredictability of chaos known as butterfly phenomenon as another threat to the health of the Earth.

The items bolded are ones that directly address your question AND that I agree with.

[IntLibber]

We all agree that CO2 affects temperature via GH (though less than same amount of H2O).

We all agree that higher temperature => more H2O vapour => possible amplification factor.

Clouds increase planetary albedo, though the degree to which it is effective depends upon the altitude of the clouds. Higher the clouds, the more effective they are at reflecting sunlight.

Also, more H20 vapor in the winter means more snow cover = higher albedo = more cooling.

We all agree that CO2 in atmosphere is now at unprecedented (last 10,000,000 yesrs) levels and set to increase.

Yet global temperatures today are still nowhere near previous peaks in the current interglacial period.

The issue is not "does AGW exist" but "what precisely is the amplitude of AGW".

No, that does not follow.

If there are medium-term cooling effects that last 50 years that is great - but as speculative as skeptics claim the IPCC predictions are.

Other than Mann's discredited hockey stick, almost all other data covers ONLY the past 30 years.

There is still cause for grave concern in the longer-term. The CO2 we have put up there does not go away and its effect will be permanent. the more CO2 the more effect.

Wrong again. CO2 is converted to wood and other land based organics (and from there into coal), to algal methane hydrates at sea bottoms (and from there into oil and LNG), and into corals and from there into limestone.

The limestone that makes up much of our continental bedrock was created from the premordial atmosphere that was 52 times as dense as the present day.

Releasing CO2 bound in fossil fuels is, over the long term, contributing to a long term trend toward permanent Ice House conditions on Earth, because by burning those fossil fuels, they then have an opportunity to become bound in limestone via coral processes.

That said, CO2 releases in the atmosphere become rebound in one or more ways within a century.

Now, one thing all the disasturbationists wont admit is that the CO2 emissions of North Americans are entirely offset by the vast amount of increase in forest growth on this continent over the same period. This was a major sticking point behind why the US refused to ratify Kyoto, as the other nations refused to allow reforestation offsets (because then we wouldn't be blamed and forced to pay for everything).

I would have thought a rational approach is to do the science as well as possible with an open mind, keep on extending and challenging it, be clear about the uncertainties. The CO2 amplification factor is amenable to scientific analysis. All the other potentially unknown feedbacks, both positive and negative, are equally amenable.

Some AGW scientists have come to admit that as much as 45% of observed warming is directly related to the various solar cycles (including the 1500 year long term cycle responsible for the LIA). There remains little consensus over whether extreme solar minimums like Maunder and Dalton are responsible for tipping into cooler equilibria while repeated solar maxima like those seen in the 20th century are responsible for tipping to the warmer equilibria.

So, if I view the IPCC case as unproven (and since I have not waded through all their analysis and compared it with other explanations I am not in a position to judge this myself) I am still left with a plausible case for real alarm at the extent to which we have modified the ecosystem.

I am sure that AGW skeptics value a clement climate as much as advocates, and equally share this concern. The issue then is a scientific debate of who is right and who wrong in quantifying the forcast predictions and uncertainties.

Personally I consider a warmer climate to be more beneficient toward the human race. Most of the current interglacial has been significantly warmer than the present (despite Mann's claims) according to ice core data, and it is now proven there is no threat of collapse of the antarctic ice caps.

If we do see partial collapse of Greenlands Ice Cap, it will be compensated by the continued filling of the Caspian basin.

The warming of canadian and siberian tundra, and the filling of the caspian basin, will do wonders to expand the arable land for feeding human kind, increased rainfalls will improve mankinds access to potable drinking water globally, and overall will decrease needs for energy for warming our facilities.

I would much prefer a warmer planet to a cooler one.

[tomclarke]

Intlibber,

You argue;
(1) warming will not happen
(2) If it does then no matter

I will leave (1) for further discussion/evidence. But (2) has issues you have not mentioned.

Whether or not warmer world would be better eventually - the change will be amazingly disruptive. Imagine 20% of nations currently on earth becoming inhabitable. The mass migrations required, and reeducation etc etc would strain any system and probably lead to war for locally scarce resources.

Also, experimenting with the world's climate is perhaps a bit risky. We just don't know whether changes from equilibrium of last 10K years will lead to positive or negative feedbacks. Both have been proposed. If positive no reason to think things should stay comfortable.

You suggest that increased CO2 level will have half-life of 50 years or so, with CO2 being deposited as carbonates in sea, as soil-based carbon on land. What evidence if there for this, and is this definitely known, or just a hopeful guess? Why did it not happen during times long past when CO2 was much higher? There are clear mechanisms for both types of sequestration, but there are also corresponding opposite mechanisms, and it is far from clear either where lies the equilibrium or what is the likely equilibration time?

Clouds do increase planetary albedo, but also block radiation from earth out to space. The overall effect is complex. But all this affects amplification factor, not sign of change in temperature with more CO2. You can argue for les than unity amplification factor in which case AGW worries decrease, and Simon's worries of solar minimum induced ice age increase. I don't see how you get a negative amplification factor.

Best wishes, Tom

[MSimon]

Tom,

Mass migrations would be very disruptive over a short period. But suppose they happen over a 100 year period and require movements of 1,000 miles. That is 10 miles a year. Hardly a catastrophe.

In addition most of the warming is expected in the temperate and arctic zones, very little in the tropical zone. Again - hardly a catastrophe.

Currently the oceans are rising at a rate of under 2 mm a year (recently reduced - but I'm going to discount that) about 8 inches a century. Even if the rate went to 3X that it is not the end of the world.

[icarus]

Grazing herds on the plains depositing dung is the best natural way of sequestering carbon. It is continuous ("sustainable" whatever the hell that means) whereas a forest of trees is a one time deal that may go up in smoke and back into the sky in one foul puff anyway. The faster the grass grows, the faster the animals eat, produce meat and deposit all that oh-so-precious carbon back into the soil.

In the ancient geological record, the advent of grazing herds is consistent with a drastic drop in atmospheric CO2.

[IntLibber]

Grazing herds on the plains depositing dung is the best natural way of sequestering carbon. It is continuous ("sustainable" whatever the hell that means) whereas a forest of trees is a one time deal that may go up in smoke and back into the sky in one foul puff anyway. The faster the grass grows, the faster the animals eat, produce meat and deposit all that oh-so-precious carbon back into the soil.

In the ancient geological record, the advent of grazing herds is consistent with a drastic drop in atmospheric CO2.

Very good point. There is also oceanic sequestration. One can easily show how CFC's, generally not big on the AGW agenda, are largely responsible for the jump in atmospheric CO2 for one reason:

CFCs expanding polar ozone holes greatly increased the amount of UV reaching ocean surfaces. The UV greatly impacted the amount of plankton growing. Vast reductions in plankton not only negatively impacted global fisheries, but reduced the amount of CO2 being sequestered to oceanic abyssals and from thence to methane hydrate deposits. Once current atmospheric chlorine levels return nearer to pre-refrigeration-technology levels, oceanic CO2 sequestration should return to normal and atmospheric CO2 levels will drop.

Some have proposed seeding oceans with rust to boost plankton growth, but the AGW proponents oppose such geoengineering proposals (same reason environmentalists oppose nuclear power and anti-nukers oppose Yucca Mt and breeder reactors: they'd have to go get real jobs)

[IntLibber]

Intlibber,

You argue;
(1) warming will not happen
(2) If it does then no matter

I will leave (1) for further discussion/evidence. But (2) has issues you have not mentioned.

Whether or not warmer world would be better eventually - the change will be amazingly disruptive. Imagine 20% of nations currently on earth becoming inhabitable. The mass migrations required, and reeducation etc etc would strain any system and probably lead to war for locally scarce resources.

Studies have shown that the Sahara was a lush savannah during the early interglacial period (9,000 BC-5,000 BC), when global temperatures were higher than at present. Current studies predict a significant increase in rainfall in the sahara in the event of global warming (which would of course cool the sahara, the warmest place on earth). In fact the sahara was only locked as a total desert since about 500 BC, which was when there was the end of the drop in temps. Climate since then has been significantly cooler on average.

Also, experimenting with the world's climate is perhaps a bit risky. We just don't know whether changes from equilibrium of last 10K years will lead to positive or negative feedbacks. Both have been proposed. If positive no reason to think things should stay comfortable.

As I said, I'm not proposing anything that we haven't seen since the start of the present interglacial. Are you aware that hippopotami once lived in the Thames, about 5500 BC? Climate was much warmer then.

You suggest that increased CO2 level will have half-life of 50 years or so, with CO2 being deposited as carbonates in sea, as soil-based carbon on land. What evidence if there for this, and is this definitely known, or just a hopeful guess? Why did it not happen during times long past when CO2 was much higher? There are clear mechanisms for both types of sequestration, but there are also corresponding opposite mechanisms, and it is far from clear either where lies the equilibrium or what is the likely equilibration time?

What makes you think it hasnt happened in the past? As I said, we have a LOT of limestone around the planet, and ALL of it was once CO2 in our atmosphere. Our oil deposits are created from metamorphosed methane hydrate, which is itself created from dead plankton settling at ocean bottom. And finally, the amount of forest in North America has doubled over the 20th century, just one of those inconvenient truths...

Clouds do increase planetary albedo, but also block radiation from earth out to space. The overall effect is complex. But all this affects amplification factor, not sign of change in temperature with more CO2. You can argue for les than unity amplification factor in which case AGW worries decrease, and Simon's worries of solar minimum induced ice age increase. I don't see how you get a negative amplification factor.

CO2 itself follows a diminishing returns curve, did you know? every additional amount has less positive impact on warming than the last. At present atmospheric pressure, we are at a point where additional CO2 doesnt add much more warming at all. Contrary to the disasturbationists, the only way we will see a 'tipping point' type runaway greenhouse like Venus is if we figure out a way to burn limestone as a fuel. We do not have sufficient atmosphere at the present time for a runaway greenhouse effect. Venus' atmosphere is 92 times more dense than ours. Our original anoxic hot-house atmosphere was 52 times denser than at present. Jurassic amospheric pressure is estimated to have been about 1.25 atmospheres, though some estimates put it as high as 7.0 at one point due to vulcanism and heavy tectonic activity at a time when the moon orbited at a much lower altitude. The difference between then and now was all CO2. http://lunarorigin.com/life-on-earth/th ... -dinosaurs

And yes, low altitude clouds reflect heat back to the surface, but the heat comes from the sun in the first place. High altitude clouds exist in the cold stratosphere, above where CO2's greenhouse effects happen. Thus heat that hits those clouds are not going to be reflected back to earth.

Solar minima like the present increases cosmic rays hitting the stratosphere, which increases high altitude cloud formation, ergo that increases albedo and cooling effects.

[tomclarke]

Intlibber -

I don't wish to disagree with your statements - I trust that you have done good research. I do find the conclusions unwarranted. The comparison with Venus is disingenuous since we only need a +10 degree global temp rise to make life very uncomfortable/perhaps impossible. Venus is + 300 degree. there can be (and are) many different feedbacks of different magnitudes.

The fact that temperature now is not so bad is not cause for complacency. there are long time constants built into the system (oceans). There is a long time constant to any adjustment to a less fossil fuel based economy.

Speculation about pros and cons, or history, of local temperature changes is not relevant to global change. though widespread local changes (also expected if climate changes globally) will make adjustment more difficult.

You are saying - but quoting no research for the conclusion - that putting all available fossil carbon into the atmosphere as CO2 will not have a significant warming effect.

The nub of the matter is this. Do we risk significant global climate change by putting large qtys of fossilised carbon back into the atmosphere? If the science is uncertain to what extent should we be cautious? This is after all not a local experiment which we can recover from. Sudden and permanent changes to climate are certainly in theory possible (methyl hydrates etc).

It may be none of these feedbacks will be problematic. It may be that the H2O amplification factor is small. In which case we need not worry. But since we can make a decent case for these factors being problematic where is the science that seriously evaulates them and comes to comforting conclusions?

We have one group of bloggers saying it is a problem, another group of bloggers saying there is no problem. A (consensus) group of climate scientists perhaps all wrong saying there is a problem, but actively publishing research and debating the issue with all who challenge their findings. From this process can come a fair evaluation of risk and if the current evaluation is wrong there is a mechanism for the truth to come out through scientific debate.

If there is no problem it can be argued and the research reviewed, examined, disseminated - but blogs asserting no problem do not convince me!

Taking a more historical view we can see that now the human population on earth is having a significant global impact on the environment. We have seen historically how local pollution, resource scarcity, etc has destroyed civilisations in the past. It is characteristic of humans that they expand to the limits, past them and civilisation collapses.

Two things are different now.
On the positive side, we have better science, more ability to predict and preempt these problems, more ability to change our behaviour. As simon would assert, and I would only hope, we have now through much faster than before technological change the tools to find new solutions to whatever problems crop up as they impact us.

On the negative side the experiment now is global so any problems resulting will be global and mistakes more costly. And the belief that "now things will be different" is very common in human endevour but seldom true. Look at communism as classic 20th Century example.

Best wishes, Tom

[tomclarke]

Simon -

You have read Smith's direct and clearly written response
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/080 ... 4324v1.pdf

to the thesis proposed by Gerlich which you posted eariler on this thread:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/070 ... 1161v3.pdf

I take it?

I realise you probably don't agree with most of Gerlich's argument. But the fact that the main argument is flawed does not give me confidence in the rest!

Best wishes, Tom

[tomclarke]

Intlibber -

Looking at long-term effects of CO2 change on climate is v complex - but here is an interesting summary of the uncertainties, and the posts afterwards are well worth fully reading to become informed. (See no 12 from Arthur Smith for a nice discussion of the subtleties involved in disambiguating forcings and feedbacks!).

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... arget-co2/

best wishes, Tom

[tomclarke]

Extracted from:
http://climatedenial.org/

A review of an anti-climate change polemic.

Just to show that the motives of those strongly against climate change can easily be questioned - perhaps more easily than those of the pro-change "cosy consensus".

September 16, 2008
COOKING THE BOOKS: How to write a contrarian polemic on climate change.
George Marshall @ 2:18 pm

Review of The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (and those who are too fearful to do so), Lawrence Solomon, Richard Vigilante Books, 2008

There’s a flood of cookbooks in the UK, (and climate change denial books too) so let’s start with a recipe for writing a popular book undermining climate science. Fancy a go?- this is what you do…

First of all, from all the thousands of papers published every year on climate change, cherry-pick a few isolated pieces of work that draw different conclusions from those presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Then, highlight the CV’s of their authors in glowing and virtuous terms. Just think of those paragraph-long descriptions of ingredients you get in pretentious restaurants: point out that these are not just carefully picked cherries; they are sun-dried organic fair trade cherries di Modena.

Then claim that the goal of your book is not to settle the science but merely to show that the debate is active. By this sleight of hand, you can claim that scientific process depends on constant challenge without allowing any debate about the studies you cite. This then allows you to draw superficial similarities between positions that contradict each other. Modena cherries in a Bolivian Chilli and Wild Alaskan Salmon confit? So what if they don’t go together, you can say, they’re top ingredients and they’re all red too.

Finally, so that you can adopt a populist questing tone, make it clear that you have no expertise in any of these areas and are just another perplexed joe public seeking the truth. “Ok”, you can admit coyly, “I can’t cook to save my life, but I’m a free thinker. After all, only conformists say that banana doesn’t go with cheese.”

And there you go: a nice recipe for any number of articles, think tank reports, leaders in the Sunday Telegraph, talks to the Adam Smith Institute, presentations to congress, Channel Four documentaries, or, as I hold it in front of me, a cooked book like ‘Deniers’.

I must admit that Lawrence Solomon is awfully good at this stuff. Like all the best climate skeptics he is a great communicator. His prose is tight and readable. He is ironic and amusing. His own credentials are impressive: whereas Bjorn Lomborg used to boast that he was once a Greenpeace activist (in fact he was just a member) ; Solomon is the acting head of a well-regarded environmental organisation.

But there is something curious going on, and it takes a while to spot it. The book purports to show that leading scientists, taking major personal risks, are prepared to ‘deny’ the stated consensus on climate change. The lengthy byline (added, one suspects, by some keen publicity person) is “the world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution and fraud”

And yet it slowly dawns on the reader that few of these ‘world renowned scientists’ disagree in any way that climate change is happening, is serious, and is primarily caused by human emissions. They are well funded career scientists who are not standing up for anything much other than a nice round of applause from the other hysterics.

The first witness for the prosecution is Dr. Richard Tol, a critic of the Stern Report, who, as the book admits, is in every other way “a central figure in the global warming establishment”. Then we hear from Dr Christopher Landsea who argues that hurricanes are not increasing due to climate change. He is also a contributing author to the second UN IPCC report and agrees fully with its main conclusions. The book tells us that Dr Edward Wegman, who challenges the statistical basis of the famous ‘hockey stick’ climate graph, “does not dispute that man made global warming was occurring’.

So, Solomon’s key witnesses are actually leading scientists who accept the core consensus but have some important and relevant reservations about the causes and impacts. By page 45 Solomon has admitted as much: “I noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers”.

Solomon allows himself to make this self-deprecating admission because, whilst he wishes to lionize the careers of his ‘world renowned experts’, he is also prepared to be condescending about their judgment.

He argues that they are suffering from a delusion that the whole theory stands firm despite the evidence of that own specialist work. “Affirmers in general. Deniers in particular” crows Solomon. “Like other smart people, scientists accept the conventional wisdom in areas they know little about…We know from our daily lives that the consensus can be spectacularly wrong.” According to Solomon they are in denial about their denial and he is going to drag them out of the closet.

Solomon’s cavalier strategy of ‘outing’ climate deniers has already become spectacularly unstuck. In January 2007 he dedicated his regular Denier column in the Canadian National Post, which forms the basis for this book, to Dr Nigel Weiss. Weiss, he said “believes that the science is anything but settled except for one virtual certainty: the world is about to enter a cooling period”.

Dr Weiss responded immediately and did not mince his words link…“The article by Lawrence Solomon, which portrays me as a denier of global warming, is a slanderous fabrication. I have always maintained that the current episode of warming that we are experiencing is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and that global temperatures will rise much further unless steps are taken to halt the burning of fossil fuel”. Unusually the rebuttle was accompanied by an official press release from the University of Cambridge.

Whilst the National Post issued a groveling apology, Solomon was not going to let his search for truth be derailed by accusations of slanderous fabrication. Astonishingly, the article still appears on his website without any qualification link. It has now spread all over the internet and has been repeated in the form of a faked interview in another book “Scared to Death” by skeptics and media pundits Christopher Booker and Richard North.

So let’s do some real ‘outing’. Solomon is not really an independent searcher after truth- he is a frontline communicator for a large and influential denial industry that aims to prevent political action and undermine public concern about climate change.

Start with the scientists in Denial. With each chapter, the legitimate questioning scientists I have just mentioned give way to the professional skeptics. There is Professor Richard Lindzen, who, according to the investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan, consults to oil and coal interests for $2,500 a day and whose trip to testify before a Senate committee on climate change was paid for by Western Fuels.

Lindzen, along with three of the other ‘world-renowned scientists’ in Denial, found time in their busy research schedule to appear in ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, a notorious British documentary that was denounced by the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, the Royal Society. One of the contributers threatened to sue the director for gross misrepresentation.

Six of the stars of Denial were among the the ‘A’ list of professional contrarians, lobbyists and conspiracy theorists who spoke at the New York International Conference on Climate Change in March this year. The sponsor was the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank which has received $781,000 in grants fron Exxon Mobil since 2000 for its campaign against the Kyoto Protocol.

Even if we assume that he started with pure intentions, Solomon has now fallen in with some very unsavoury people. In April this year his column for the National Post defends Fred Singer who, as usual, he calls ‘one of the world’s renowned scientists’. Singer has not had a peer reviewed paper published in 20 years and is linked to a string of oil and coal industry lobby groups. He has long operated as a hired gun for the tobacco industry giving ‘expert’ testimony that side stream smoke is not dangerous.

In June 2008 Solomon’s column praises a ludicrous and widely condemned paper on the beneficial effects of heightened carbon dioxide by the Oregan Insititute of Science and Medecine. The OISM, which has no affiliations to any recognised scientific body, is a far right fringe body that markets a home-schooling kit for “parents concerned about socialism in the public schools”.

And in April we find Solomon launching his book at an event organised by some of the most notorious anti-environmental campaigners in Washington. In his speech he congratulates his hosts; Myron Ebell, the Cooler Heads Coalition and the Competititve Enterprise Insitute (CEI) for “for the integrity and tenacity that he and they have shown during this entire global warming debate”.

For an environmental campaigner he has fallen into the worst crowd imaginable. It would be like Barack Obama speaking at a Ku Klux Klan meeting and praising them for their contribution to racial tolerance. Myron Ebell led aggressive lobby campaigns though a think tank called Frontiers of Freedom to gut the US Endangered Species Act. Ebell and the CEI ran a public campaign against higher fuel efficiency standards in cars arguing, among other things, that it would lead to more accidents. The Cooler Heads Coalition, formed by CEI, opposes any political action on climate change and brings together a host of libertarian and far right interest groups such as Americans for the Preservation of Liberty, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and Defenders of Property Rights.

Solomon gives them respect and credibility. They give him status in return, calling him ‘one of Canada’s leading environmentalists’ and an ‘internationally renowned environmentalist’. Maybe this expains how an environmental campaigner can become best buddies with the professional lobbyists who despise his own movement. Environmental campaigners are poorly paid and often vilified with few plaudits or rewards. On the other hand skeptics live in a self-congratulating world in which there are no also-rans. Everyone is a winner. Everyone is famous or world renowned. Anyone who is assertive and skilled with polemic can be a star.

If you are middle aged activist and wondering what you have really achieved in your life it must be very seductive. And dangerous.

Sources: www.sourcewatch.org, www.theheatisonline.org, www.realclimate.org, www.desmogblog.com

This review first appeared in a slightly different, referenced and edited form on the website China Dialogue.

Comments (3)

[alexjrgreen]

Studies have shown that the Sahara was a lush savannah during the early interglacial period (9,000 BC-5,000 BC), when global temperatures were higher than at present. Current studies predict a significant increase in rainfall in the sahara in the event of global warming (which would of course cool the sahara, the warmest place on earth). In fact the sahara was only locked as a total desert since about 500 BC, which was when there was the end of the drop in temps. Climate since then has been significantly cooler on average.

The mountains in Africa were also covered in glaciers. The meltwater flowed north into the Mediterranean in several places, still visible on radar.

Today there are hardly any glaciers left in Africa, so although a rise in global temperatures might cause rainfall in the Sahara to increase, don't expect it to go back to being "lush".

[MSimon]

tom,

Water changes everything if it can exist as a solid, liquid, and gas. On a planet. You get things like the "heat pipe" effect which allows for a lot of heat transport with minimal delta T (other than lapse rate).

Then you get ice crystals and clouds at the cool end of the heat pipe. etc.

And as to funding sources - I assume most of those on the government teat are warm biased because that is where most of the money goes. That is only now beginning to change. And why would government have a CO2 bias? Taxes.

So I try to ignore claimed funding biases and look at the science.

[MSimon]

Hansen's Bias:

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/200 ... ansen.html

Enron commissioned its own internal study of global warming science. It turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists that Enron was trying to shut up. After considering all of the inconsistencies in climate science, the report concluded: “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.”

One of Enron’s major consultants in that study was NASA scientist James Hansen, who started the whole global warming mess in 1988 with his bombastic congressional testimony. Recently he published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicting exactly the same inconsequential amount of warming in the next 50 years as the scientists that Enron wanted to gag.

Now what was Hansen trying to do for Enron? Get carbon trading going before the company's other misadventures destroyed it.

[tomclarke]

Simon -

Re Funding.

I would agree with you - ignore accusations of bias, look at the science. You can get bad results when money is all one way, e.g. drug tests, but with enough effort on one question the truth will out (if it exists).

The reason for thinking that anti-AGW research will have got enough funding is that the US government under Bush was for many years adamantly opposed to any action to control GW - and stated that there was no evidence for it. That stance may have changed (why?) but during those years they would have been looking hard for any evidence against AGW.

Re Hansen. What is this concentration on one person? As you say, it is the science that matters.

re Heat pipes & H20

We are agreed that the mechansim of heat transport vertically in the atmosphere is complex and important. It deserves study. It is being studied.

Here is a short history of attempts to model GW, which BTW shows that "it all started with Hansen" is perhaps a US-centric view. It nicely makes the point I have been emphasising about complexity, and how what matters is the overall result of the calculation, and that calculations are not believable until they include enough of the relevant physical effects.

Extracts I think particularly relevant to our discussion in bold.

extracted from realclimate:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... /#more-595

I often get emails from scientifically trained people who are looking for a straightforward calculation of the global warming that greenhouse gas emissions will bring. What are the physics equations and data on gases that predict just how far the temperature will rise? A natural question, when public expositions of the greenhouse effect usually present it as a matter of elementary physics. These people, typically senior engineers, get suspicious when experts seem to evade their question. Some try to work out the answer themselves (Lord Monckton for example) and complain that the experts dismiss their beautiful logic.

The engineers' demand that the case for dangerous global warming be proved with a page or so of equations does sound reasonable, and it has a long history. The history reveals how the nature of the climate system inevitably betrays a lover of simple answers.


The simplest approach to calculating the Earth's surface temperature would be to treat the atmosphere as a single uniform slab, like a pane of glass suspended above the surface (much as we see in elementary explanations of the "greenhouse" effect). But the equations do not yield a number for global warming that is even remotely plausible. You can't work with an average, squashing together the way heat radiation goes through the dense, warm, humid lower atmosphere with the way it goes through the thin, cold, dry upper atmosphere. Already in the 19th century, physicists moved on to a "one-dimensional" model. That is, they pretended that the atmosphere was the same everywhere around the planet, and studied how radiation was transmitted or absorbed as it went up or down through a column of air stretching from ground level to the top of the atmosphere. This is the study of "radiative transfer," an elegant and difficult branch of theory. You would figure how sunlight passed through each layer of the atmosphere to the surface, and how the heat energy that was radiated back up from the surface heated up each layer, and was shuttled back and forth among the layers, or escaped into space.

When students learn physics, they are taught about many simple systems that bow to the power of a few laws, yielding wonderfully precise answers: a page or so of equations and you're done. Teachers rarely point out that these systems are plucked from a far larger set of systems that are mostly nowhere near so tractable. The one-dimensional atmospheric model can't be solved with a page of mathematics. You have to divide the column of air into a set of levels, get out your pencil or computer, and calculate what happens at each level. Worse, carbon dioxide and water vapor (the two main greenhouse gases) absorb and scatter differently at different wavelengths. So you have to make the same long set of calculations repeatedly, once for each section of the radiation spectrum.

It was not until the 1950s that scientists had both good data on the absorption of infrared radiation, and digital computers that could speed through the multitudinous calculations. Gilbert N. Plass used the data and computers to demonstrate that adding carbon dioxide to a column of air would raise the surface temperature. But nobody believed the precise number he calculated (2.5ºC of warming if the level of CO2 doubled). Critics pointed out that he had ignored a number of crucial effects. First of all, if global temperature started to rise, the atmosphere would contain more water vapor. Its own greenhouse effect would make for more warming. On the other hand, with more water vapor wouldn't there be more clouds? And wouldn't those shade the planet and make for less warming? Neither Plass nor anyone before him had tried to calculate changes in cloudiness. (For details and references see this history site.)

Fritz Möller followed up with a pioneering computation that took into account the increase of absolute humidity with temperature. Oops… his results showed a monstrous feedback. As the humidity rose, the water vapor would add its greenhouse effect, and the temperature might soar. The model could give an almost arbitrarily high temperature! This weird result stimulated Syukuro Manabe to develop a more realistic one-dimensional model. He included in his column of air the way convective updrafts carry heat up from the surface, a basic process that nearly every earlier calculation had failed to take into account. It was no wonder Möller's surface had heated up without limit: his model had not used the fact that hot air would rise. Manabe also worked up a rough calculation for the effects of clouds. By 1967, in collaboration with Richard Wetherald, he was ready to see what might result from raising the level of CO2. Their model predicted that if the amount of CO2 doubled, global temperature would rise roughly two degrees C. This was probably the first paper to convince many scientists that they needed to think seriously about greenhouse warming. The computation was, so to speak, a "proof of principle."

But it would do little good to present a copy of the Manabe-Wetherald paper to a senior engineer who demands a proof that global warming is a problem. The paper gives only a sketch of complex and lengthy computations that take place, so to speak, offstage. And nobody at the time or since would trust the paper's numbers as a precise prediction. There were still too many important factors that the model did not include. For example, it was only in the 1970s that scientists realized they had to take into account how smoke, dust and other aerosols from human activity interact with radiation, and how the aerosols affect cloudiness as well. And so on and so forth.
The greenhouse problem was not the first time climatologists hit this wall. Consider, for example, attempts to calculate the trade winds, a simple and important feature of the atmosphere. For generations, theorists wrote down the basic equations for fluid flow and heat transfer on the surface of a rotating sphere, aiming to produce a precise description of our planet's structure of convective cells and winds in a few lines of equations… or a few pages… or a few dozen pages. They always failed. It was only with the advent of powerful digital computers in the 1960s that people were able to solve the problem through millions of numerical computations. If someone asks for an "explanation" of the trade winds, we can wave our hands and talk about tropical heating, the rotation of the earth and baroclinic instability. But if we are pressed for details with actual numbers, we can do no more than dump a truckload of printouts showing all the arithmetic computations.

I'm not saying we don't understand the greenhouse effect. We understand the basic physics just fine, and can explain it in a minute to a curious non-scientist. (Like this: greenhouse gases let sunlight through to the Earth's surface, which gets warm; the surface sends infrared radiation back up, which is absorbed by the gases at various levels and warms up the air; the air radiates some of this energy back to the surface, keeping it warmer than it would be without the gases.) For a scientist, you can give a technical explanation in a few paragraphs. But if you want to get reliable numbers - if you want to know whether raising the level of greenhouse gases will bring a trivial warming or a catastrophe - you have to figure in humidity, convection, aerosol pollution, and a pile of other features of the climate system, all fitted together in lengthy computer runs.
Physics is rich in phenomena that are simple in appearance but cannot be calculated in simple terms. Global warming is like that. People may yearn for a short, clear way to predict how much warming we are likely to face. Alas, no such simple calculation exists. The actual temperature rise is an emergent property resulting from interactions among hundreds of factors. People who refuse to acknowledge that complexity should not be surprised when their demands for an easy calculation go unanswered.