Other voices on climate change

The evidence continues to mount that the IPCC models are too sensitive, and therefore produce too much
global warming. If climate sensitivity is indeed considerably less than the IPCC claims it to be,
then increasing CO2 alone can not explain recent global warming. The evidence presented here
suggests that most of that warming might well have been caused by cloud changes associated with
a natural mode of climate variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

The IPCC has simply assumed that mechanisms of climate change like that
addressed here do not exist. But that assumption is quite arbitrary and, as shown here, very likely wrong.
My use of only PDO-forced variations in the Earth’s radiative energy budget to explain two-thirds of
the global warming trend is no less biased than the IPCC’s use of carbon dioxide to explain global warming
without accounting for natural climate variability.

To read the full article, click here.

The following comment by Ross McKitrick, co-author with Christopher Essex of Taken by Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy, and Politics of Global Warming, appeared originally at Climate Audit at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4064. The Ann Henderson article appeared at http://climatesci.org/2008/10/02/an-essay-the-ipcc-report-what-the-lead-authors-really-think.

“Roger Pielke Sr has an essay online from Anne Henderson-Sellers who surveyed the IPCC lead authors shortly after completion of the AR4. There are lots of interesting quotes about their private doubts about the quality of models, their ironclad convictions abut what the right answers are, the sense that what they really need to do is improve their political advocacy, and so forth. But what caught my attention was this paragraph:

In some places there is an (unhealthy?) fear of mis- (or out of context) quoting by global warming “deniers”. We are hesitant to stress comments such as “the Fourth Assessment Report missed doing this owing essentially to the timelines that were arranged.” Another interesting example of this fear is that the original suggestion was to entitle the Sydney workshop, “What did the IPCC get wrong?” This proposal was quickly squashed in the corridors of the World Meteorological Organisation lest the anti-greenhouse lobby picked it up and repeated it as criticism of the IPCC.

“The attitude of Mann and Schmidt infects the whole IPCC organization. They can’t admit any errors or problems with their work lest their critics find out (as if we didn’t already know). So they cover it up, stick to the script and even squash the idea of asking what they got wrong. I suppose there are other organizations that operate this way, just none that one would trust.”

Newspaper articles are claiming “record warmth” for the Arctic. But is it true? No, says Anthony Watts on his blog, quoting several authorities. In fact, the ice cover is increasing and already 31% greater than 2007. These claims of record warmth are being called “pseudoscience” by reputable climate scientists. For example, biologist Ernst-Georg Beck notes:

“The annual report issued by researchers at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other experts is the latest to paint a dire picture of the impact of climate change in the Arctic. [...] The real averaged temperatures of the whole Arctic circle (70-90 N) can be found in the same data base used by NOAA (CRU, Phil Jones): The graph shows a strong Arctic warming during 1918 and 1960, stronger than today with a rise of about + 4°C up to 1938. Referencing only a rise since 1960 we got the illusion of a dramatic rise in modern times.

“Conclusion: The news item:” Arctic air temperatures climb to record levels” is selective science and wrong because the Arctic Ocean (covering an area of more than 50% of the Arctic circle) has been left unconsidered. The NOAA study summarizes: “5°C record levels in temperature in autumn”, presents the averaged temperatures only on land stations and discusses melting sea ice as a cause! This is pseudoscience. In contrast the current Arctic warming mimics the 1920s-1940s event, as a recent study from the Ohio State University reveals. The scientists recognized from using weather station records, maps and photos from the past century that temperatures in Greenland had warmed in the 1920s at rates equivalent to the recent past.”

To read Watts’ article, click here.

Globally, more than one third of the nineteen subpopulations of polar bears are increasing or stable, while the remaining third have insufficient data available; its status in the central Arctic Basin, the largest of the nineteen designated regions, is completely unknown.

Polar bears routinely hunt on new ice < 30 cm thick and are quite capable of utilizing thick first year ice (> 120 cm thick or more.) for over-wintering and denning. They do not require thick multi-year ice.

The polar bear survived two major warming periods over the last 11,000 years, the first of which saw temperatures rise rapidly to at least 2.5 C higher than present and there is no evidence that Arctic sea ice disappeared entirely during those times or that any ice-dependent species became extinct.

The computer model results, presented in 2007, which forecast dramatic declines in polar bear numbers based primarily on predicted reductions in seasonal sea ice thickness and extent, have not yet been tested against even a single years worth of independent data.

To read the full article by Dr. Susan Crockford, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Victoria, online and in PDF, click here.

The most obvious point about global warming is that the planet is heating up. It has warmed about 1C (1.8F) over the past century, and is predicted by the United Nations’ climate panel (IPCC) to warm between 1.6-3.8C (2.9-6.8F) during this century, mainly owing to increased CO2. An average of all 38 available standard runs from the IPCC shows that models expect a temperature increase in this decade of about 0.2C.

But this is not at all what we have seen. And this is true for all surface temperature measures, and even more so for both satellite measures. Temperatures in this decade have not been worse than expected; in fact, they have not even been increasing. They have actually decreased by between 0.01 and 0.1C per decade. On the most important indicator of global warming, temperature development, we ought to hear that the data are actually much better than expected.

For the complete article, which first appeared in The Guardian, by the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, click here.

Editorial by Christopher Monckton appearing in the SEPP (Science and Environmental Project) newsletter #8, Oct. 11, 2008

The 1 F rise in surface temperatures in the last 30 years of the 20th century is by no means unprecedented or inexplicable. There was a similar 1 F rise in temperatures in the 1920s and 1930s, and that was well before anyone could claim CO2 was to blame.

There are numerous papers in the peer-reviewed literature (e.g. Usoskin et al., 2003; Hathaway et al., 2004; Solanki et al.., 2005) that demonstrate that th Sun’s activity over the 70-year period centered on the early 1960s was greater than at almost any previous similar period throughout the past 11,400 years. Akasofu (2008) points out that global mean surface temperatures have been rising at a rate of approximately 1 F per century for 300 years. The considerable drop in temperatures in the past seven years (equivalent to 0.7 F per decade) has obliterated any imagined anthropogenic signal.

Soon (2008) has shown that, if one allows for a lag of a decade or two caused by the uptake and release of heat by the oceans, the temperature trends of the past 30 years can be respectably explained by changes in solar activity. The 300-year warming that stopped in 1998 was the result of the steady increase in solar activity since the end of the 70-year sunspot-free Maunder Minimum in 1700; the cooling since then reflects the decline in solar activity since its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, combined with the unusually-prolonged sunspotless solar minimum of the past two and a half years.

Taking the period since 1700 as a whole, it is virtually impossible to detect any anthropogenic signal. Additional atmospheric CO2 can be expected, on balance, to cause some warming: but it is now obvious that the degree of warming to be expected is considerably less than that which is imagined by the IPCC.

“If CO2 is of such critical importance to climate change why was there a large temperature rise prior to the early 1940s when 80 percent of the human produced carbon dioxide was produced after World War II? 2. When CO2 levels finally began to increase dramatically in the postwar years why was there a concomitant interval of about 30 years of cooling? One would think that if CO2 had such critical control over climate that the relative abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere would be in lock step with global temperature. Many researchers realize the difficulties that are presented by trying to make CO2 the key factor in climate change. As a result there has been renewed research, much of it in the past year or so, into the idea that there really is a connection between variability in solar output and global temperature.

Sunspots, CO2 and temperature

“The media, special interest groups, and even some government produced literature all report that CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas. The number one greenhouse gas is actually water vapor. It’s something like 98 percent, by volume, of all greenhouse gases. I like the way that my colleague, Jan Veizer at the University of Ottawa, a world-renowned expert on the carbon cycle, lists the relative importance of greenhouse gases when he speaks on the topic. He points out that the number one greenhouse gas is water vapor, the number two greenhouse gas is water vapor, the number three greenhouse gas is water vapor, the number four greenhouse gas is water vapor and CO2 is a distant fifth. Of course, this list is somewhat facetious as there is only one type of water vapor. However, he lists the relative importance of greenhouse gases this was to indicate just how insignificant the tiny carbon dioxide cycle is to the water vapor cycle that it piggybacks on. To give you an example of this comparison lets consider the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In the 19th century, when the world was relatively unindustrialized the level of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at around 285 ppm. By 2003 the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, primarily the result of industrialization and land use changes, stood at 376 ppm. The resultant influence on climate has been minimal. Computer models say that this increase in CO2 should have heated the Earth up significantly by this stage. However, very little warming that can be attributed to CO2 has actually occurred.”

To read the rest of this talk by Dr. Tim Patterson, a paleo-climatologist at Carleton University who argues that changes in the sun’s output, not CO2, drive the climate, click here.

“We’re hearing far too often that the “science” is “settled”, and that it is mankind’s contribution to the natural CO2 in the atmosphere has been the principal cause of an increasing “Greenhouse Effect”, which is the root “cause” of global warming.  We’re also hearing that “all the world’s scientists now agree on this settled science”, and it is now time to quickly and most radically alter our culture, and prevent a looming global catastrophe.  And last, but not least, we’re seeing a sort of mass hysteria sweeping our culture which is really quite disturbing.  Historians ponder how the entire nation of Germany could possibly have goose-stepped into place in such a short time, and we have similar unrest. Have we become a nation of overnight loonies?”

For the rest of this article by physicist James Peden, click here.

In a commentary to the article, Peden notes:

“Which brings us to the real core of the Great Hoax: All of the doom-and-gloom scenarios of today are being produced by climate models, not climate science. Climate modeling is not climate science, it is computerized Tinker-Toys with which one can construct any outcome he choses. In the case of the current batch of climate modelers, they simply ignore factors in their models which would imply cooling forces also at work in the algorithms. Thus, they always arrive at excessive warming predictions which unfortunately never come to pass in time. But they are insulated from criticism, for on the day a particular model prediction is made, it cannot be refuted until a considerable amount of time has passed and the model has been proven to be a poor one. At that point, they respond with a simple “Our models are now much better” -and proceed with a new prediction which invariably turns out to be wrong… and so it goes, ad infinitum.”

You can read the full comment by clicking here.

Anthony Watts’ excellent site posted this, but it’s worth repeating here. Eloise is (purportedly and I assume really) a 14-year-old Australian girl who is disgusted with the Anthropogenic Global Warming propaganda, and specifically (with some hints from her father) that AGW is being offered as a fact, not a theory, and an unproved theory at that. She writes:

“Well, today in Year 9 Religion we were discussing Justice. First we talked about ridiculous fuel prices and why. Of course when my lovely teacher asked if there were any other injustices in the world I stuck my hand up pointing out AGW. I told my class about Al Gore and how he’s a hypocrite and scaremongers people with his manipulative ways and how it is unjust that he be allowed to preach to people that AGW is a fact, without addressing the “Inconvenient Truth” that AGW is naught but an unproven theory.

“Then we did a vote on who thought AGW was real (man-made) and who thought it was a myth (natural). About 9 voted for myth and 4 for reality. The rest of my class was undecided. I brought up the Carbon Trading scheme about how Gore is head of the company and therefore has the biggest commission.

“Also the Polar Bears, who can forget about Santa’s neighbours? I pointed out that the polar bears are
in fact not dying and that they are increasing in number. That just because someone says they are, it doesn’t have to be true. Even if AGW was real and the polar ice caps were really melting the polar bears can easily swim for up to 50 miles which they do anyway, to hunt for food.

“Its really annoying that people won’t be open minded. In all reality if someone came up to me tomorrow saying that AGW was real and that we needed to act now, and they actually produced facts that were reliable
and with backup, I would change my mind. The way our brains should work, we should always ask questions. We should always ask why, and how and if the answers aren’t up to scratch we have the right to be skeptical.

“All I ask is to ask questions, don’t let me tell you what to think, look up a bunch of reliable links on the internet and judge for yourself.”

It’s hard to say whether this is a “real” site or not — could it be an adult posing as a kid?– but it makes good points. You can find Eloise’s website at http://kidsagainstagw.com.

Anthony Watts’ post is at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/10/kids-against-anthropongenic-global-warming/#comments.

Roger Pielke, Jr., has posted an interesting article on the odds, as expressed by the IPCC, that humanity, natural variation, of a combination of the two is responsible for global warming. Needless to say, the IPCC’s position on this is, in his view, confused and contradictory. He writes:

“The IPCC offers a number of statements expressing its confidence in the likelihood of various claims based on very explicit guidance that it prepared for conveying uncertainties to its readers. These statements are the subject of much confusion and debate. This post discusses the IPCC statements on attribution of  increasing global temperatures to various causes, as reported in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report from 2007.

“First, let’s consider three possibilities:

A) Natural forces alone account for the observed warming.
B) Natural and human forces together account for the observed warming.
C) Human forces alone account for the observed warming.

“Not only are these three possibilities mutually exclusive, meaning that only one of them can be true, but logically one of them must be true, since they cover the range of possibilities. Thus if I were to ask you to express your confidence in the likelihood of each statement being correct, to be logically sound, then your expressed probabilities would need to add to 100%. …

“So here are the conclusions that the logical structure of the likelihood findings of the IPCC lead to:

1) The IPCC finds between a 5% and 10% likelihood that the observed warming is due to natural forces alone.
2) The IPCC finds a 5% to 10% chance that greenhouse gases are responsible for a minority of the temperature increase, leaving other human and natural forces to explain the balance.

“Now let me say that these results are surprising to me. Given the venom that characterizes debates over climate change, and the assumption by many that C) above is the only acceptable view, I wonder if the IPCC simply constructed logically unsound statements, or if in fact uncertainties are as large as they imply. None of this changes my views on any of the policy options on mitigation or adaptation that I have advocated, as 90% to 95% likelihoods are plenty strong. But they do raise questions about strong claims to certainty and the demonization of skeptical points of view.”

For the full text, click here.