Coyote Blog

The table of contents for the rest of this paper, . 4A Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is here.  Free pdf of this Climate Skepticism paper is here and print version is sold at cost here

As stated in the introduction, the purpose of this paper has
not been to provide a balanced portrayal of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory; its purpose instead is to
provide a comprehensive overview of skeptic's concerns with AGW theory.
However, the issues raised here are not necessarily new, and AGW supporters
have attempted to address many of them. 

The New
Scientist, a fairly strong and reliable voice for advocacy of anthropogenic
global warming theory, recently published its response to what it calls 26
myths about global warming, many of these "myths" being correlated loosely with
skeptics concerns about AGW theory as outlined in this paper.  Walking
through their points seems a reasonable way to entertain a rebuttal to the
skeptic's position.  Each of these has a link to the New Scientist article
in question.  I have tried to summarize the position with a quote, shown
in italics.  My response to each then follows.

Before I get into these 20 myths, note that many of the key
skeptic's questions are neatly avoided.   While the magazine gives
itself certain softball questions, it does not attempt to take on skeptics
questions such as:

• Isn't warming from CO2 a diminishing return, such that each 10ppm of CO2
  has less warming effect than the last 10 ppm?
• Isn't warming from CO2 asymptotic, such that total warming from CO2 is
  capped?
• Isn't 2/3 or more of the future warming in IPCC forecasts due to
  positive feedback effects that tend to be rare in stable systems and that even
  the IPCC admits are poorly understood?
• Aren't there a lot of problems with ground-based temperature measurements?
• Aren't the historical proxies for temperature diverging from
  measurements, such that the IPCC actually dropped many of the recent proxy
  measurements to hide this result?

There are many others, but we can get at them tangentially
through dealing with the 20 "myths" below

"¢ Human
CO₂ emissions are too tiny to matter

So what's going on? It is true that human
emissions of CO₂ are small compared with natural sources. But the
fact that CO₂ levels have remained steady until very recently shows
that natural emissions are usually balanced by natural absorptions. Now
slightly more CO₂ must be entering the atmosphere than is being
soaked up by carbon "sinks".

Though I do know that some skeptics will claim that man can't be changing
world CO2 levels, I don't believe I even tried to make that claim in this paper.

The more salient point in
asking whether human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter is to ask whether the
change in composition of the atmosphere of 0.009% by human activities is
substantial enough to affect world climate in any important way, particularly
when the portion being increased, CO2, is a relatively weak greenhouse gas vs.
other portions.

"¢ We
can't do anything about climate change

It is true that the action taken
so far, such as the Kyoto Protocol, will only have a marginal effect. The
protocol's authors have always described it as a first step. But even before it
came into effect in 2005, the protocol has triggered some profound thinking
among governments, corporations and citizens about their carbon footprint and
how to reduce it. Industrialized countries such as the UK are planning for
emissions reductions of 60% or more by mid-century.

This is a bit of a straw man.  Certainly to the extent
that man is causing climate change, men with enough will can do something about
it.  The question is whether the costs justify the avoided change "“ this
is a question that I have addressed sufficiently and won't revisit here.
However, I would like to comment on this:

We may find that once the
process has begun, the world loses its addiction to carbon fuels surprisingly quickly.
Natural scientists fear "tipping points" in the climate system. But there are
also tipping points in social, economic and political systems. Once under way,
things can happen fast"¦

This is a statement to which I both agree and disagree.  I am a technological
optimist, and so generally accept that world-changing technologies will
continue to spring from man's mind, and that the introduction of these changes
can be fast and their impact dramatic.  The only reason that I am a tad
skeptical about this statement is that the vast majority of strong AGW
adherents are technology pessimists, so it would be uncharacteristic for them
to take such a position.  Absent unimagined new technologies, change of
the type AGW supporters are hoping for is actually not a positive
feedback process as implied in this statement. Why is it that climate
scientists see so many positive feedback processes, when these are actually so
rare? In fact, most investment decisions, for example investments to reduce CO2
emissions, follow a diminishing return relationship.  Early investors
capture the low-hanging fruit, while each successive wave of investment offers
a lower return (here, in CO2 reduction) for each incremental dollar invested.

"¢ The
'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong

Most researchers would agree that while the
original hockey stick can "“ and has "“ been improved in a number of ways, it was
not far off the mark. Most later temperature reconstructions fall within the
error bars of the original hockey stick. Some show far more variability leading
up to the 20^th century than the hockey stick, but none suggest that
it has been warmer at any time in the past 1000 years than in the last part of
the 20^th century.

No one statement by AGW supporters would do more to build my confidence in
their findings than to actually have someone say "the Mann hockey stick was a
deeply flawed analysis, and we have taken great pains to make sure the flaws identified
in Mann are not present in other historical reconstructions."  However,
when I see the statement above, I am left to wonder if any of the flaws in Mann
have actually been corrected in other works, or if systematic errors still
exist.  Since AGW supporters refuse to acknowledge flaws in Mann, it is
almost certain that these flaws still exist in the other analyses (therefore
making it unsurprising that new analyses show roughly the same results).
Remember that Mann was replaced by Biffra as lead author of this section of the
Fourth IPCC report, and it was Biffra who dropped 20-30 years of recent data
from his historical reconstruction when it did not show the result that he
wanted it to.

"¢ Chaotic
systems are not predictable

Getting reasonably accurate
predictions is a matter of choosing the right timescale: days in the case of
weather, decades in the case of climate.

Climate scientists sometimes
refer to the effects of chaos as intrinsic or unforced variability: the
unpredictable changes that arise from the dynamic interactions between the
oceans and atmosphere rather than being a result of "forcings" such
as changes in solar irradiance or greenhouse gases.

The crucial point is that
unforced variability occurs within a relatively narrow range. It is constrained
by the major factors influencing climate: it might make some winters bit a
warmer, for instance, but it cannot make winters warmer than summers

There are systems people who would both agree and disagree
with this statement.  The real study of chaotic systems is barely older
than the study of global warming, and most mathematicians would say that the
issue of long-term predictability of macro trends in chaotic systems is not
settled science.

However, one issue the statement overlooks is that even if
chaotic systems have some long-term order, at least when "viewed from a
distance," this does not mean that the drivers of those long-term trends can be
discerned by those of us standing in the chaos.  So while it may be
theoretically possible to predict long-scale climate changes, it may still be
impossible to discern the true drivers of these climate systems amidst the
chaos, making the long-term prediction problem moot.

Remember, no one has a thermometer that provides two readings "“ temperature
due to "natural" causes and temperature due to man-made forcings. 
The only argument one can make outside of a laboratory is to try to correlate
temperature changes to certain other variables, like CO2 level.  But in a
chaotic system, when thousands of variables may matter, and there are all kinds
of cross-dependencies between variables, definitively showing direct
correlation, much less causation, is very hard, possibly impossible. 
Remember, outside lab experiments, climate scientists main argument that CO2 is
causing current warming is "We have checked everything else it possibly could
be, and it wasn't those things, so it must be CO2."  In a chaotic system,
such a statement borders on hubris.

"¢ We
can't trust computer models of climate

Climate is average weather, and it can vary unpredictably
only within the limits set by major influences like the Sun and levels of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We might not be able to say whether it will
rain at noon in a week's time, but we can be confident that the summers will be
hotter than winters for as long as the Earth's axis remains tilted.

The validity of models can be tested against
climate history. If they can predict the past (which the best models are pretty
good at) they are probably on the right track for predicting the future "“ and
indeed have successfully done so.

I hope that if you have learned anything from this paper, you already know
how to refute the statement above.  Climate models match history because
they have been tuned and tweaked and overridden to do so.  The fact that
they then can reproduce history is meaningless.  Even more, you should run
away quickly from anyone who makes this statement, because they are either
ignorant of what they are talking about or they are trying to sell you the
Brooklyn Bridge.

Finally, the claim is sometimes
made that if computer models were any good, people would be using them to
predict the stock market. Well, they are!

A lot of trading in the
financial markets is already carried out by computers. Many base their
decisions on fairly simple algorithms designed to exploit tiny profit margins,
but others rely on more sophisticated long-term models.

Sorry, but this is a facile and ignorant mis-interpretation of what
financial models are doing.  Yes, people are running long-term financial
models as part of a trading strategy, but these models feed into very
short-term trading decisions.  If you looked at the output from these long-term
models, you would see that they are changing constantly as new data flows
in.  There is an old joke about two campers who see a bear growling at
them.  One of them starts putting his tennis shoes on.  The other one
says to him "Why are you putting your shoes on?  You can't outrun that
bear."   His friend replied "I don't have to outrun the bear.  I
just have to outrun you."  Traders' long-term models work the same.
They don't actually expect them to be right, they just want them to be better,
based on current conditions, than other traders' models, then they can make
money.

"¢ They
predicted global cooling in the 1970s

Indeed they did"¦. However, Schneider soon
realised he had overestimated the cooling effect of aerosol pollution and
underestimated the effect of CO₂, meaning warming was more likely
than cooling in the long run"¦.

The calls for action to prevent further
human-induced global warming, by contrast, are based on an enormous body of
research by thousands of scientists over more than a century that has been
subjected to intense "“ and sometimes ferocious "“ scrutiny. According to the
latest IPCC report, it is more than
90% certain that the world is already warming as a result of human activity

We have already dealt with aerosols, and unlike many skeptics I have not
really held the 1970's global cooling panic against the climate
community.  The last paragraph is just circular.  Saying the IPCC is
90% sure does not answer the arguments about what skeptics feel the IPCC is
ignoring.

"¢ It's
been far warmer in the past, what's the big deal?

First of all, it is worth bearing in mind that
any data on global temperatures before about 150 years ago is an estimate, a
reconstruction based on second-hand evidence such as ice cores and isotopic
ratios. The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its
interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair
amount of guesswork.

This is hilarious.  What happened to their confidence in Mann and
1000-year temperature reconstructions just a few myths back?  But to
continue, the answer is basically yes, but:

The important question is what
is causing the current, rapid warming? We cannot dismiss it as natural
variation just because the planet has been warmer at various times in the past.
Many studies suggest it can only be explained by taking into account human
activity.

Nor does the fact that it has
been warmer in the past mean that future warming is nothing to worry about. The
sea level has been tens of metres higher during past warm periods, enough to
submerge most major cities around the world.

Here is why it matters "“ beyond the laboratory evidence of the greenhouse
effect, which tells us merely that there is an affect and not how strong it is,
the main evidence cited by AGW supporters for current warming being man-made is
to try to show that current warming is somehow unprecedented, and therefore
unlikely to be natural.  So it is odd here that AGW supporters simply
shrug their shoulders here and say that it is not important that current
warming be unprecedented.

"¢ It's
too cold where I live - warming will be great

This does not sound too bad, and for many people
it won't be. Wealthy individuals and countries will be able to adapt to most
short-term changes, whether it means buying an air conditioner or switching to
crops better suited to the changing climate. Rainfall will fall in
mid-latitudes but rise in high latitudes, and initially agricultural yields
will probably.  Some regions will suffer, though. Africa could be hardest
hit, with yields predicted to halve in some countries as early as 2020.

As global temperature climbs to 3°C above
present levels - which is likely
to happen before the end of this century if greenhouse emissions continue
unabated - the consequences will become increasingly severe. More than a third
of species face extinction. Agricultural yields will start to fall in many
parts of the world. Millions of people will be at risk from coastal flooding.
Heatwaves, droughts, floods and wildfires will take an ever greater toll.

I hope readers will accept that I am not exaggerating or constructing straw
men when I talk about the dire predictions by AGW supporters.  There is
nothing here that we have not dealt with earlier, except perhaps the
rainfall.  Of late, AGW supporters seem to have shifted to rainfall
(rather than sea level rise) as their lead scary topic.  Note, however,
that even the IPCC admits that it and all of its modelers really do not
understand (even a little bit) the effect of global warming on rainfall and
drought.  Logic says that with more water evaporated, while global warming
may cause now local draughts, overall rainfall should increase.  I would
bet any amount of money that lower economic growth due to aggressive CO2 abatement
will have a far more deleterious effect on worldwide agricultural yields than
global warming.

"¢ Global
warming is down to the Sun, not humans

So what role, if any, have solar fluctuations
had in recent temperature changes? While we can work out how Earth's orbit has
changed going back many millions of years, we have no first-hand record of the
changes in solar output associated with sunspots before the 20^th century.

It is true that sunspot records go back to the
17^th century, but sunspots actually block the Sun's radiation. It is
the smaller bright spots (faculae) that increase the Sun's output and these
were not recorded until more recently. The correlation between sunspots and
bright faculae is not perfect, so estimates of solar activity based on sunspot
records may be out by as much as 30%.

The other method of working out past solar
activity is to measure levels of carbon-14 and beryllium-10 in tree rings and
ice cores. These isotopes are formed when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, and
higher sunspot activity is associated with increases in the solar wind that
deflect more galactic cosmic rays away from Earth. Yet again, though, the
correlation is not perfect. What is more, recent evidence suggests that the
deposition of beryllium-10 can
be affected by climate changes, making it even less reliable as a measure
of past solar activity.

This is again a pretty hilarious statement.  One could easily argue
that temperature and CO2 proxies have at least as much
uncertainty.  One wonders why AGW advocates do not seem as concerned about
the errors in the proxies they hold dear.  But anyway, to continue:

But even if solar forcing in the past was more
important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no
correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40
years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny (pdf document).

Direct measurements of solar output since 1978
show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .

Similarly, there is no trend in direct
measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the
period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed
dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of
solar activity.

This is another you-study-my-study pissing match.  I am happy to admit
that our knowledge of the sun's changing impact on climate is poor, and that it
is hard to separate out this one effect in a chaotic system.  I refuse to
fall into the same scientific hubris as AGW supporters.  However, those
who think the sun has some contribution to warming are buttressed by the
knowledge that they are working with the main driver of climate, rather than a
secondary variable.

"¢ It's
all down to cosmic rays

There is no convincing evidence
that cosmic rays are a major factor determining cloud cover. The ionising of
air by cosmic rays will impart an electric charge to aerosols, which in theory
could encourage them to clump together to form particles large enough for cloud
droplets to form around, called "cloud condensation nuclei".

But cloud physicists say it has
yet to be shown that such clumping occurs. And even if it does, it seems
far-fetched to expect any great effect on the amount of clouds in the atmosphere.
Most of the atmosphere, even relatively clean marine air, has plenty of cloud
condensation nuclei already.

A series of attempts by
Svensmark to show an effect have come unstuck. Initially, Svensmark claimed
there was a correlation between cosmic ray intensity and satellite measurements
of total cloud cover since the 1980s "“ yet a correlation does not prove cause
and effect. It could equally well reflect changes in solar irradiance, which
inversely correlate with cosmic ray intensity.

I am starting to notice a trend here of making statements about competing
that could be applied equally well to AGW theory.  And what about all
those points they made above, reminding us over and over that CO2 greenhouse
theory works in the lab.  Now the lab is not good enough?

However, I would accept that the cosmic ray theory is pretty undeveloped and
not acceptably proven.  It has had a number of fits and starts.  Just
like CO2 greenhouse theory, the cosmic ray effect on climate can be reproduced
in the lab, but it is really hard to parse out its effects in the chaotic
climate.

"¢ CO₂
isn't the most important greenhouse gas

At some of these overlaps, the
atmosphere already absorbs 100% of radiation, meaning that adding more
greenhouse gases cannot increase absorption at these specific frequencies. For
other frequencies, only a small proportion is currently absorbed, so higher
levels of greenhouse gases do make a difference.

This means that when it comes to
the greenhouse effect, two plus two does not equal four.

Wow!  An AGW supporter actually said this in public.  This is to
our point that there is a diminishing return from incremental CO2 in the
atmosphere.  Of course, they say this in the context of trying to show why
water isn't as important as it might seem, but still, it's there

But the overall quantities of these other gases
are tiny. Even allowing for the relative strength of the effects, CO₂
is still responsible for two-thirds
of the additional warming caused by all the greenhouse gases emitted as a
result of human activity.

Water vapour will play a huge role in the
centuries to come, though. Climate models, backed by satellite
measurements, suggest that the amount of water vapour in the upper
troposphere (about 5 to 10 kilometres up) will double by the end of this
century as temperatures rise.

This will result in roughly twice as much
warming than if water vapour remained constant. Changes in clouds could lead to
even greater amplification of the warming or reduce it "“ there is great uncertainty
about this. What is certain is that, in the jargon of climate science, water
vapour is a feedback, but not a forcing.

Again, I am not getting into this, we covered it plenty in the paper.
When they say "CO2 is still responsible for two-thirds of the additional
warming" (and remember this is an output of their models, not any other
analysis)  what they really mean is that "our models that were programmed
to have CO2 drive the climate show that CO2 drives the climate."
Note that in a three paragraph answer about the effect of water vapor as
a climate feedback, only three words "“ "or reduce it" "“ acknowledge that it
might actually have a negative feedback effect, despite the fact that even the
IPCC includes cloud cover as a negative feedback.  They just don't want to
admit a negative feedback might even exist.

"¢ The
lower atmosphere is cooling, not warming

One study in Science
revealed errors in the way satellite data had been collected and interpreted.
For instance, the orbit of satellites gradually slows, which has to be taken
into account because it affects the time of day at which temperature recording
are taken. This problem was always recognised, but the corrections were given
the wrong sign (negative instead positive and vice versa).

A second study, also
in Science, looked at the weather balloon data. Measurements of the air
temperature during the day can be skewed if the instruments are heated by
sunlight. Over the years the makers of weather balloons had come up with better
methods of preventing or correcting for this effect, but because no one had
taken these improvements into account, the more accurate measurements appeared
to show daytime temperatures getting cooler.

The corrected temperature records show that
tropospheric temperatures are indeed rising at roughly the same rate as surface
temperatures. Or, as a 2006 report by the US Climate Change Science Program (pdf) puts
it: "For recent decades, all current atmospheric data sets now show
global-average warming that is similar to the surface warming." This one
appears settled.

There is still some ambiguity in the tropics,
where most measurements show the surface warming faster than the upper
troposphere, whereas the models predict faster warming of the atmosphere.
However, this is a minor discrepancy compared with cooling of the entire
troposphere and could just be due to the errors of margin inherent in both the
observations and the models.

First, observe absolutely ruthless efforts to apply corrections and
adjustments to any measurement that does not fit their theory, while blithely
accepting the surface temperature measurements that we showed can be really
unreliable.  Given the choice of focusing on managing satellite
temperatures up or surface temperature down, you can see which they
chose.   Second, note that this is another narrow one study
conclusion.  AGW supporters frequently cite single studies (conducted by
AGW supporters) that overturn skeptics arguments as having "settled" the
issue.  There are still many reasons to think that troposphere temperature
increases are less than surface increases.  Finally, even temperature
increases that were the same between the surface and the troposphere would be a
real problem for AGW theory.  The authors here act like this
surface-troposphere issue is a minor deal, but in fact if AGW theory is right,
the troposphere has to warm more, because that is where the extra heat
is being absorbed.  This is not at all settled. 

"¢ Antarctica
is getting cooler, not warmer, disproving global warming

It is clear that the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts
out from the mainland of Antarctica towards South America, has warmed
significantly. The continent's interior was thought to have warmed too, but in
2002 a new analysis of
records from 1966 to 2000 concluded that it has cooled overall"¦.

Climate models do not predict an evenly spread
warming of the whole planet: changes in wind patterns and ocean currents can
change the distribution of heat, leading to some parts warming much faster than
average, while others cool at first.

Agreed

"¢ The
oceans are cooling

Now the authors of the 2006 study have submitted a
correction (pdf format). It turns out that a fault in the software on some
of the floats led to some temperature measurements being associated with the
wrong depth.

Meanwhile, work by other teams suggests that the
past warmth of the oceans has been overestimated. The problem was due to
expendable sensors that are thrown overboard and take measurements as they
sink.

I never had heard the claim that the oceans were cooling, so it does not
surprise me that they are not.  However, it is again interesting the
amount of due diligence that AGW supporter put in to the correction of any
temperature measurement the might refute global warming, while blithely
accepting the atrocious condition and biases in ground-based temperature
measurement because, well, because these instruments are telling the story they
want to hear.

"¢ The
cooling after 1940 shows CO₂ does not cause warming

The mid-century cooling appears to have been
largely due to a high concentration of sulphate aerosols in the atmosphere,
emitted by industrial activities and volcanic
eruptions. Sulphate aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate because
they scatter light from the Sun, reflecting its
energy back out into space.

The rise in sulphate aerosols was largely due to
the increase in industrial activities at the end of the second world war. In
addition, the large eruption of Mount Agung in 1963 produced aerosols which cooled the
lower atmosphere by about 0.5°C, while solar activity levelled off after
increasing at the beginning of the century

I think I was pretty fair in discussing the aerosol cooling hypothesis in
this paper, though many would disagree with the above statement's certainty.

Climate models that take into account only
natural factors, such as solar activity and volcanic eruptions, do not
reproduce 20th century temperatures very well. If, however, the models include
human emissions, including greenhouse gases and aerosols, they accurately reproduce
the 1940 to 1970 dip in temperatures.

I hope readers who have made it this far can supply the refutation of this
point:  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Climate models initially matched
history poorly.  Today they match well because they have been tweaked and
adjusted and forced to match.  They match because they are programmed to
match.  And, as we discussed, they match only because they make
ridiculously low assumptions for natural forcings, and assume all natural
forcings causing temperatures to rise in the first half of the century
magically reversed in 1950, though there is no good evidence for it. 

"¢ It
was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England

In the southern hemisphere, the picture is even
more mixed, with evidence of both warm and cool periods around this time. The
Medieval Warm Period may have been partly a regional phenomenon, with the
extremes reflecting a redistribution of heat around the planet rather than a
big overall rise in the average global temperature.

What is clear, both from the temperature
reconstructions and from independent evidence "“ such as the extent of the
recent melting of mountain glaciers "“ is that the planet has been warmer in the
past few decades than at any time during the medieval period. In fact, the
world may not have been so warm for 6000 or even 125,000 years (see Climate myths: It has been warmer in the past,
what's the big deal?).

What really matters, though, is not how warm it
is now, but how warm it is going to get in the future. Even the temperature
reconstructions that show the greatest variations in the past 1000 years suggest
up until the 1980s, average temperature changes remained within a narrow band
spanning 1ºC at most. Now we are climbing out of that band, and the latest IPCC report (pdf format) predicts a further rise of
0.5ºC by 2030 and a whopping 6.4ºC by 2100 in the worst case scenario.

We have covered this pretty well in this paper, so again I won't go back
into it, except to highlight a couple of things we can learn from this
statement.  First, note the hubris again "“ it is warmer today than in the
last 125,000 years.  I sure wish there was a way to bet on this "“ I would
have only a one in 125,000 chance of being wrong in betting against this
statement.  Second, note the use of the worst case scenarios.  For
2100, we don't get the best case or even the average case, we get the worst
case.  Can you name another branch of science where people do this?
Can you imagine, say, a group out to measure the speed of light.  They are
going to get some middle figure with an error band of some range.
Wouldn't you expect them to day that they found the speed of light to be
so-and-so, plus or minus an error of such-and-such size?  If they were
climate scientists, they would instead announce that they have found the speed
of light could be as large as Z, that being the highest possible figure in
their error band.

"¢ We
are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age

Yet while there is some evidence of cold
intervals in parts of the southern hemisphere during this time, they do not appear to
coincide with those in the northern hemisphere. Such findings suggest the Little
Ice Age may have been more of a regional phenomenon than a global one.

Solar radiation was probably lower at times
during this period, especially during a dip in solar activity called the
Maunder minimum around 1700, but models and temperature reconstructions suggest
this would have reduced average global temperatures by 0.4ºC at most.

The larger falls in temperature in Europe and
North American may have been due to changes in atmospheric circulation over the
North Atlantic, or in the Gulf Stream, or both, reducing heat transport from
the tropics (see Climate
change sceptics lose vital argument).

The warming after the so-called Little Ice Age
may reflect both an increase in solar activity and a redistribution of heat
around the planet. In particular, the increase in global temperature in the
first half of the 20^th century may have been largely due to an increase
in solar activity. The continued warming in recent decades, however, cannot be
explained by increases in solar radiation alone

Remember the graphs we showed earlier "“ the arctic proxies look like the
current warming is a straight linear increase from the 1700s to today.  In
fact, in the IPCC spaghetti graph showing all those historic reconstructions,
they all show a natural warming from the 18^th and 19^th
century through the 20^th.  Again, AGW supporters really need to
explain why they are so confident that this natural warming trend stopped in
1945 or so, exactly and coincidently at the exact same moment that man-made
forcings caused the world to continue to warm, coincidently at about the same
rate it was warming naturally earlier in the century.

"¢ Warming
will cause an ice age in Europe

Few scientists think there will
be a rapid shutdown of circulation. Most ocean models predict no more than a
slowdown, probably towards the end of the century. This could slow or even
reverse some of the warming due to human emissions of greenhouse gases, which
might even be welcome in an overheated Europe, but the continent is not likely
to get colder than it is at present.

A slowdown in circulation would
affect many parts of the world by disrupting global rainfall patterns. But
these effects will be insignificant compared with the much greater changes
global warming will cause

I already mentioned that this had been refuted pretty well

"¢ Ice
cores show CO₂ increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving
the link to global warming

It takes about 5000 years for an
ice age to end and, after the initial 800 year lag, temperature and CO₂
concentrations in the atmosphere rise together for a further 4200 years.

What seems to have happened at
the end of the recent ice ages is that some factor "“ most probably orbital
changes "“ caused a rise in temperature. This led to an increase in CO₂,
resulting in further warming that caused more CO₂ to be released and
so on: a positive feedback that amplified a small change in temperature. At
some point, the shrinking of the ice sheets further amplified the warming.

Models suggest that rising
greenhouse gases, including CO₂, explains about 40% of the warming
as the ice ages ended. The figure is uncertain because it depends on how the
extent of ice coverage changed over time, and there is no way to pin this down
precisely.

I was extremely happy to see that they at least tried to
address the issue I raised, ie is it really realistic to have a process
dominated by positive feedback, and if so, why doesn't it run away.  Their
answer:

Finally, if higher temperatures lead
to more CO₂ and more CO₂ leads to higher temperatures,
why doesn't this positive feedback lead to a runaway greenhouse effect? There
are various limiting factors that kick in, the most important being that
infrared radiation emitted by Earth increases exponentially with temperature,
so as long as some infrared can escape from the atmosphere, at some point heat
loss catches up with heat retention.

Which might make sense EXCEPT that they are claiming that
today's temperature and level of CO2 are higher than these historical levels,
so we are already higher than the level where they claim "heat loss catches up
with heat retention."  So either their answer is right, and there is a
strong compensating process which is not built into their models, or they are
wrong and they still need to explain what keeps a positive feedback dominated
process from running away.

"¢ Ice
cores show CO₂ rising as temperatures fell

There are some mismatches though. Besides lags
at the end of ice ages, cores taken from the ice overlying the famous
lake below Vostok in Antarctica seemed to show that about 120,000 years
ago, the temperature plummeted sharply while CO₂ levels remained high
for many thousands of years.

The question is whether this is real or just a
reflection of the problems with working out the age of the trapped air and with
deuterium as a temperature indicator. Many researchers are working on ways to
independently date the air and the ice, and to improve temperature
reconstructions based on relative deuterium content. One involves working out
what is called the deuterium excess by comparing the relative amounts of
deuterium and oxygen-18 in the ice.

The deuterium excess reflects the temperature at
the sea surface where the water that later fell as snow evaporated, rather than
the surface temperature where the snow fell. It helps to reveal whether
variations in the relative deuterium content of the ice are a result of water
coming from a different source region rather than changes in local temperature.

In 2001, researchers used the deuterium excess to correct for some of the
problems with the temperature record of the Vostok ice core. Their results produce
a much closer fit between temperature and CO₂ levels and reduces the
mismatch around 120,000 years ago to a few thousand years.

I did not really raise this issue, as even the most enthusiastic AGW
supporter does not tend to claim that CO2 drives all historic temperature
changes.  However, again, note the pattern "“ any historic data that does
not fit with AGW data typically is scrutinized and "corrected." 
Articles discussing flaws in methodology in gathering such data are quickly published.
Contrast this with the difficulty scientists have in questioning any data that
supports AGW theory.  As we saw earlier, the New Scientist still can't
bring itself to utter the words "the Mann hockey stick was flawed."
Neither could the IPCC, they just sort of dropped it, or buried it in the midst
of 12 others, without even saying why the analysis that was the centerpiece of
their last report was strangely missing.

"¢ Mars
and Pluto are warming too

The Sun's energy output has not increased since
direct measurements began in 1978. If increased solar output really was
responsible, we should be seeing warming on all the planets and their moons,
not just Mars and Pluto.

Our solar system has eight planets, three dwarf
planets and quite a few moons with at least a rudimentary atmosphere, and thus
a climate of sorts. Their climates will be affected by local factors such as
orbital variations, changes in reflectance (albedo) and even volcanic
eruptions, so it would not be surprising if several planets and moons turn out
to be warming at any one time.

I agree we have a lot to learn about this, and nothing at all is
settled.  However, we now have evidence from at least 5 other terrestrial bodies
that are warming at the same time the Earth is warming.  Why do AGW
supporters resist at least investigating further?

"¢ Many
leading scientists question climate change

Climate change sceptics sometimes claim that
many leading scientists question climate change. Well, it all depends on what
you mean by "many" and "leading". For instance, in April
2006, 60 "leading scientists" signed a letter urging Canada's
new prime minister to review his country's commitment to the Kyoto protocol.

This appears to be the biggest recent list of
sceptics. Yet many, if not most, of the 60 signatories are not actively engaged
in studying climate change: some are not scientists at all and at least 15 are
retired.

Compare that with the dozens of statements on
climate change from various scientific organisations around the world
representing tens of thousands of scientists, the consensus position
represented by the IPCC reports and the 11,000 signatories to a petition condemning the Bush administration's
stance on climate science.

I have carefully avoided the game of dueling scientific numbers.  As to
the claim that the skeptic list "are not actively engaged in studying
climate change: some are not scientists at all and at least 15 are retired" I
would be thrilled if AGW supporters held to this standard in making their own
numbers.  But, they manage to abandon this standard by the next paragraph,
when they claim the pro-AGW numbers, like the 11,000, are open to the same
criticism (since there are only 500-600 true climate scientists in the world,
vs. physicist, meteorologists, etc). 

"¢ It's
all a conspiracy

Now that there is a consensus, those whose
findings challenge the orthodoxy are always going have a tougher time
convincing their peers, as in any field of science. For this reason, there will
inevitably be pressure on scientists who challenge the consensus. But findings
or ideas that clash with the idea of human-induced global warming have not been
suppressed or ignored "“ far from it.

Journalists do have an interest in promoting
themselves (and their books), while their employers want to boost their
audience and sell advertising. Publicity helps with all these aims, but you get
far more publicity by challenging the mainstream view than by promoting it.
Which helps explain why so many sections of the media continue to publish or
broadcast the claims of deniers, regardless of their merit.

The notion of a "conspiracy" of course, is a useful straw man, implying
devious villains in the SPECTRE conference room planning the overthrow of the
world.   I won't argue the point again, except to encourage you to
watch the news with a critical eye, and decide for yourself.  However, just
to get you started, ask yourself if these events are signs of healthy, unbiased
science:

· A
group of AGW supporters are trying to get the British government to use force
to block the publication of a skeptical movie (the Global Warming Swindle)

· AGW
supporters in California have included skeptical scientists such as MIT's Dr.
Richard Lindzen as defendants in a law suit, asking that damages be paid by
people and companies whose public speech doesn't conform to AGW theory

· Many
AGW skeptics have been unable to get scientists who have published publicly
funded research to reveal their data and methodology for critique.
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests have become a necessary tool of
climate skeptics.

· When
a group began photographing temperature measurement points to document the
shortcomings in historical surface temperature measurements, the NOAA pulled
the locations of its measurement stations off the Internet so that these US
citizens could no longer take pictures of and critique US government
installations.

· Scientists
who question AGW theory are equated by AGW supporters with Holocaust deniers.

"¢ Hurricane
Katrina was caused by global warming

More data is needed settle the issue. Some are
looking to natural records of past
hurricane activity in stalagmites, lake deposits and coral rubble. Others
are re-analysing existing databases. In February 2007, one such re-analysis
concluded that over the past two decades, hurricane intensity has increased
in the Atlantic but not in other parts of the world (pdf format).

Yet another complicating factor is that changes
in climate can also change the paths that tropical cyclones tend to take,
determining whether they remain over oceans or strike land.

What every one agrees on is that over the past
few decades there has been a huge rise in the number of people being killed or
injured by hurricanes, and in damage to infrastructure, and this trend looks
set to continue. The main reason for this, however, is that more and more
people are living and building in hurricane zones.

Most of these three paragraphs is entirely correct "“ there is no evidence
that hurricane numbers or intensity are effected by global warming, and if they
are, whether they are increased or decreased.  However, Hurricane Katrina
was most certainly NOT caused by global warming.  Why can't they just say
that?   It may have been made stronger or weaker.  Its course
may have been altered.   But it was not created by warming.  By
the way, the year after Katrina saw a much smaller than average Atlantic
hurricane season.

"¢ Higher
CO₂ levels will boost plant growth and food production

But it is extremely difficult to generalise
about the overall impact on plant growth. Numerous groups around the world have
been conducting experiments in which plots of land
are supplied with enhanced CO₂, while comparable nearby plots remain
at normal levels.

While these experiments typically have found
initial elevations in the rate of plant growth, these have tended to level off
within a few years. In most cases this has been found to be the result of some
other limiting factor, such as the availability of nitrogen or water.

So the answer is yes, but there is a diminishing return at some point.
Isn't that the same as can be said for the CO2 greenhouse effect?

Predicting the world's overall changes in food
production in response to elevated CO₂ is virtually impossible.
Global production is expected to rise until the increase in local average
temperatures exceeds 3°C, but then start to fall. In tropical and dry regions
increases of just 1 to 2°C are expected to lead to falls in production. In
marginal lands where water is the greatest constraint, which includes much of
the developing world but also regions such as the western US, the losses may
greatly exceed the gains.

Have you noticed yet that things that might hurt the AGW-interventionist's
case always seem "impossible to predict" while the climate is well within our
prediction capabilities?

As for food crops, the factors are more complex.
The crops most widely used in the world for food in many cases depend on
particular combinations of soil type, climate, moisture, weather patterns and
the infrastructure of equipment, experience and distribution systems. If the
climate warms so much that crops no longer thrive in their traditional settings,
farming of some crops may be able to shift to adjacent areas, but others may
not. Rich farmers and countries will be able to adapt more easily than poorer
ones.

I love the rich-poor language.  The leftish New Scientist simply can't
help itself.  But I will accept this statement, and go further:  This
is the reason that aggressive actions to reduce CO2 that reduce economic
growth, particularly in the developing world, may not make sense.  To the
extent that some climate change will occur no matter what, or is already
programmed by our past actions, then a richer world can deal with it better
than a poorer one.

"¢ Polar
bear numbers are increasing

Yet recently there have been
claims that polar bear populations are increasing. So what's going on? There
are thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears in 19 population groups
around the Arctic. While polar bear numbers are increasing in two of these
populations, two others are definitely in decline. We don't really know how the
rest of the populations are faring, so the truth is that no one can say for
sure how overall numbers are changing.

Again, I love this.  We can know the global temperature
increase over a century to a tenth of a degree but it is impossible to count
polar bears.

A comprehensive review (pdf) by the US Fish and Wildlife Service
concluded that shrinking sea ice is the primary cause for the decline seen in
these populations, and it recently proposed listing
polar bears as threatened (pdf) under the Endangered Species Act. The
International Conservation Union projects the bears' numbers will drop by 30% by 2050
(pdf) due to continued loss of Arctic sea ice.

Note that down 30% (which coming from an environmental
advocacy ground has got to be considered the most extreme possible estimate) is
not "extinct."  The article fails to address at all the issue that polar
bears have survived through eras when Arctic sea ice melted completely in the
summers.  And there are many reasons for threats to polar bear numbers "“
most experts would say that hunting and threats to habitat are much more
important factors than global temperatures.

The table of contents for the rest of this paper, . 4A Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is here.  Free pdf of this Climate Skepticism paper is here and print version is sold at cost here

The open comment thread for this paper can be found here. 

For those interested in my A Skeptical Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming, I greatly encourage you to download it for free.  However, I do know that some folks have written about a print version.  I have a print version of my global warming book available now at LuLu.com.  It is $16.98 -- that is my cost -- and I warn you that LuLu's shipping options are not very cheap.  I will try to find a less expensive print option, but no one beats LuLu for getting a book set up quickly and easily for print-to-order.

By the way, for those who have sent me emails with comments or errata, thanks for the help! In particular, my BBC/Channel 4 mixup is fixed.

Update:  The HTML version of this global warming paper is here

I am releasing version 1.0 of my Skeptical Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming.  You may download the pdf (about 2.7 mb) from the link above or by clicking on the cover photo below.  In the next few days, I will also be posting an online HTML version as well as offering a printed version at cost.

Update:  The HTML version is here, and the book can be purchased at cost through this link

The purpose of this paper is to provide a layman's critique
of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory, and in particular to
challenge the fairly widespread notion that the science and projected
consequences of AGW currently justify massive spending and government
intervention into the world's economies. This paper will show that despite good evidence that global temperatures
are rising and that CO2 can act as a greenhouse gas and help to warm the Earth,
we are a long way from attributing all or much of current warming to man-made
CO2. We are even further away from being
able to accurately project man's impact on future climate, and it is a very
debatable question whether interventions today to reduce CO2 emissions will substantially
improve the world 50 or 100 years from now. 

I am not a trained expert on the climate. I studied physics at Princeton University before switching my
major to mechanical engineering, where I specialized in control theory and
feedback loops, a topic that will be important when we get into the details of
climate change modeling. For over ten
years, my business specialty was market prediction and sales forecasting using
modeling approaches similar to (if far less complex than) those used in climate.

My goal for this paper is not to materially
advance climate science. However, I have
found that the global warming skeptic's case is seldom reported well or in any
depth, and I wanted to have a try at producing a fair reporting of the
skeptic's position.  I have been unhappy
with several of the recent documentaries outlining the skeptic's case, either
because they skipped over a number of critical issues, or because they
over-sold alternate warming hypotheses that are not yet well understood.  To the inevitable charge that as a
non-practitioner, I am not qualified to write this paper --I believe that I am
able to present the current state of the science, with a particular emphasis on
the skeptic's case, at least as well as a good reporter might, and far better
than most reporters actually portray the state of the science. Through this paper I will try to cite sources
as often as possible and provide links for those who are reading this online,
this report is best read as journalism, not as a scientific, meticulously
footnoted paper.

An outline of the paper is as follows:

Forward: What Are My Goals For This Paper

Chapter
1: Management Summary

Chapter
2: Is It OK to be a Skeptic?

Charges
of Bias

The
Climate Trojan Horse

The
Need to Exaggerate

Chapter
3: The Basics of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) Theory

Chapter
4: The historical evidence

The
long view (650,000 years)

The medium view (1000 years)

The
short view (100 years)

Sulfates,
Aerosols, and Dimming

The
Troposphere Dilemma and Urban heat islands

Using
Computer Models to Explain the Past

Chapter
5: The computer models and predicting
the future

The
Dangers in Modeling Complex Systems

Do
Model Outputs Constitute Scientific Proof?

Econometrics and CO2 Forecasts

Climate
Sensitivity and the Role of Positive Feedbacks

Climate
Models had to be aggressively tweaked to match history

Chapter
6: Alternate explanations and models

Solar
Irradiance

Cosmic
Rays

Man's
Land Use

Chapter
7: The effects of global warming

Why
only bad stuff?

Ice
melting / ocean rising

Hurricanes
& Tornados

Temperature
Extremes

Extinction
and Disease

Collapse
of the Gulf Stream and Freezing of Europe

Non-warming
Effects of CO2

Chapter
8:  Kyoto and Policy Alternatives

Kyoto

Cost
of the Solutions vs. the Benefits: Why
Warmer but Richer may be Better than Colder and Poorer

Chapter
9: Rebuttals by AGW Supporters

Please feel free to download and share.  If you find errors, omissions, mistakes, gaps or anything else you would like to comment on, please email me at the address on the cover.  In particular, I have tried to be careful with copyrighted material, but if I have used any of your material without your consent, let me know ASAP and I will remove it.

. 68

A while back, I discussed an effort by Anthony Watts to create a pictorial data base of the US Historical Climate Network, the 1000 or so temperature and weather sensors whose data are used in historical climate numbers, including IPCC and NOAA and GISS global warming data bases. 

Already, this effort has identified numerous egregious installations that call into question the quality of historical temperature measurement.  Note here and here and here and here.  The whole data base is at SurfaceStations.org and my humble contributions are here and here.  Was 2006 the second warmest of all time, or did 2006 have the most hot exhaust blowing on measurement instruments?

Roger Pielke, a climate scientist in Colorado, reports on an odd response by the NOAA to this effort:

Recently, Anthony Watts has established a website [www.surfacestations.org] to record these photographs. He has worked to assure that the photographs are obtained appropriately.

As a result of this effort, NOAA has removed location information
from their website as to where they are located. This information has
been available there for years.

There are a few USHCN stations at people's homes, so in some cases there may be privacy concerns, but most all of the ones I have seen are at public locations, from fire houses to ranger stations to water plants.  Pielke offers up a logical solution for where there are privacy issues:

"over 4 years ago there was a big push in the Cooperative Observer
program to make sure that all 7000+ sites across the country were
photodocumented. All 120 Data Acquisition Programs were equipped with
high quality digital cameras. Most took photos. However, at the higher
levels where they were developing the upload and archive system for the
photos the issue of observer privacy was raised and as best we can tell
the result was that those photos were not archived and certainly are
not available."

This is a very disturbing development, as individuals in NOAA's
leadership have used their authority to prevent the scientific
community and the public access to critical information that is being
used as part of establishing climate and energy policy in the United
States.

The solution to this issue is, of course, straightforward. Either
make the photographs where datasets are being used in research (i.e.
the HCN sites), available, or permit others to take them. Privacy
rules, such as not publishing the names and addresses of the observers,
should be made, however, the photographs themselves, viewing the site,
and views in the four orthogonal directions must be public. Volunteers
who are HCN Cooperative Observers need to either grant this permission
or not volunteer.

If you observe the state of climate science at all, you will know that any measurement (e.g. satellite or radiosonde temperature measurements) that conflict even the slightest with the main story line of anthropogenic global warming are subjected to intense and withering scrutiny.  Even the tiniest source of error or methodological sloppiness in these conflicting data sets cause global warming zealots to throw out the data as flawed.  It is instructive that perhaps the sloppiest data set of all is the surface climate measurement system they use primarily to support their case, and it is one they show absolutely no interest in scrutinizing, or letting anyone else scrutinize.

Anthony Watts and Steven McIntyre make an interesting observation, using an example temperature measurement point in the US and Global Historical Climate Network (the network that most historic global warming estimates are made from).

Over time, temperature measurement points, even those nominally in the same town, tend to change.  The measurement technology changes (from bulbs to electronics) the location can move across town, and towns with their heat islands can encroach.  As a result, scientists try to make guesstimate corrections to the historical data to take these events into account. 

Taking just one example measurement point, at Petaluma CA, Watts and McIntyre show how two different adjustment approaches by scientists at this location change the historic warming measured by over 1.5 degrees C.  Note that this "noise" is more than twice the value of the estimated "signal" -- the estimated 0.6 degrees C global warming over the last century.

More on signal to noise ratios in global warming measurement.

Ross McKitrick has suggested a variation on a carbon tax that in effect challenges both Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) believers and skeptics to put their money where their mouth is.  I, for one, would accept this challenge.  He proposes a carbon tax on a sliding scale:

Suppose each country implements something called the T3 tax, whose U.S.
dollar rate is set equal to 20 times the three-year moving average of
the RSS and UAH estimates of the mean tropical tropospheric temperature
anomaly, assessed per tonne of carbon dioxide, updated annually. Based
on current data, the tax would be US$4.70 per ton, which is about the
median mainstream carbon-dioxide-damage estimate from a major survey
published in 2005 by economist Richard Tol.

He chooses the "tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly" because that is effectively the canary in the underground mine.  According to AGW theory, the troposphere (the lowest 10km of atmosphere) will be warmed more than the earth's surface.  McKitrick also says that AGW models show the tropics will be warmed more than high latitudes. 

This tax rate is low, and would yield very little emissions
abatement. Global-warming skeptics and opponents of
greenhouse-abatement policy will like that. But would global-warming
activists? They should -- because according to them, the tax will climb
rapidly in the years ahead.

The IPCC predicts a warming rate in
the tropical troposphere of about double that at the surface, implying
about 0.2C to 1.2C per decade in the tropical troposphere under
greenhouse-forcing scenarios. That implies the tax will climb by $4 to
$24 per tonne per decade, a much more aggressive schedule of emission
fee increases than most current proposals. At the upper end of warming
forecasts, the tax could reach $200 per tonne of CO2 by 2100, forcing
major carbon-emission reductions and a global shift to non-carbon
energy sources.

Global-warming activists would like this. But so
would skeptics, because they believe the models are exaggerating the
warming forecasts. After all, the averaged UAH/ RSS tropical
troposphere series went up only about 0.08C over the past decade, and
has been going down since 2002. Some solar scientists even expect
pronounced cooling to begin in a decade. If they are right, the T3 tax
will fall below zero within two decades, turning into a subsidy for
carbon emissions.

At this point the global-warming alarmists would leap up to slam the
proposal. But not so fast, Mr. Gore: The tax would only become a carbon
subsidy if all the climate models are wrong, if greenhouse gases are
not warming the atmosphere, and if the sun actually controls the
climate. Alarmists sneeringly denounce such claims as "denialism," so
they can hardly reject the policy on the belief that they are true.

Under
the T3 tax, the regulator gets to call everyone's bluff at once,
without gambling in advance on who is right. If the tax goes up, it
ought to have. If it doesn't go up, it shouldn't have. Either way we
get a sensible outcome.

I think many skeptics would jump at such a proposal (as long as there is some control on AGW supporters "restating" and "correcting" the satellite readings -- there is nothing AGW scientists are better at than "correcting" historical numbers that don't fit their story line).  One reason is that we skeptics know one of the AGW dirty little secrets:   In fact, against all predictions of the theory, the troposphere has been warming less than the surface.  Also, while I get conflicting inputs on whether the tropics or the northern latitudes should warm more, but if McKitrick is correct, the fact that the tropics have been warming less than higher norther latitudes (but more than southern latitudes) is also an inconsistency.  In case you don't keep a full set of tropospheric temperature histories sitting on your desk, here are several from Global Warming at a Glance.

Warming for the lower troposphere in the tropics, note the 0.2C anomaly (click any image for larger version):

Here is the lower troposphere for the Northern Hemisphere above the tropics which is warming more than the tropics, with a 0.3 degree anomaly

And here is a comparison of Global lower troposphere temperatures (in blue) vs. one compilation  by the GIS of measured surface temperatures in red.  Note the divergence, which is exactly opposite of what AGW theory says has to happen, given the surface temps have a 0.5 to 0.6 degree anomaly  Note that this may be because of some serious biases to ground based temperature measurement, but then that would mean that global warming is over-stated.

Look for my upcoming "Skeptical Layman's Primer to Anthropogenic Global Warming" or email me for a pre-release beta copy.

There is a burgeoning grass roots movement (described here, in part) to better document key temperature measurement stations both to better correct past measurements as well as to better understand the quality of the measurements we are getting.

Steve McIntyre has had some back and forth conversations with Eli Rabbett about temperature measurement points, each accusing the other of cherry-picking their examples of bad and good installations.  McIntyre therefore digs into one of the example temperature measurement points Rabbett offers as a cherry-picked example of a good measurement point.  For this cherry-picked good example of a historical temperature measurement point, here are the adjustments that are made to this site's measurements before it is crunched up into the official historic global warming numbers:

Corrections have been made for:
- relocation combined with a transition of large open hut to a wooden Stevenson screen (September 1950) [ed:  This correction was about 1°C]
- relocation of the Stevenson screen (August 1951).
- lowering of Stevenson screen from 2.2 m to 1.5 m (June 1961).
- transition of artificial ventilated Stevenson screen to the current KNMI round-plated screen (June 1993).
- warming trend of 0.11°C per century caused by urban warming.

Note that these corrections, which are by their nature guesstimates, add up to well over 1 degree C, and therefore are larger in magnitude than the global warming that scientists are trying to measure.  In other words, the noise is larger than the signal.

Postscript:  0.11C per century is arguably way too low an estimate for urban warming.

Since many advocates of anthropomorphic global warming theory have declared the twenty-year-old science to be "settled," then there must not be very much controversy or disagreement in the peer review reader comments to the UN's Fourth IPCC report.  Except, no one seems willing to publicize these comments.  Even US government organizations paid for by taxpayers.  Steve McIntyre is again having to resort to filing FOIA's to get the details of climate research.

Update: It appears that Congress is taking a similar approach to climate research when it comes to openness about earmarks.

But maybe not the way you think. 

Via Anthony Watts, Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor sends in a picture of one of the official temperature measuring sites that feed into the databases that are used to track global temperature. 

Here is the official temperature plot from "rural" Forest Grove.  Note the "global warming" that really takes effect around 1984.

Of course, this change might (just call me a holocaust-denying skeptic) be due instead to the fact that the adjacent building installed an air conditioner about 1984 that vented hot air on the thermometer.  If you have never seen one, the vented white box on about 4 foot legs and the small white cylinder on the metal pole next to it are the weather station station. 

Of course, setting the measurement station on a pad of hot asphalt and next to a reflective building are also best practices for getting a thermometer to read high.  The aptly name Mr. Watts has been running a great series on temperature measurement issues in his blog - just keep scrolling.

Update: Andrew Watts found the location on Google maps when I could not, probably because I was looking for a semi-rural area outside of town.  But apparently, this is one of the fastest growing communities in Oregon, and, like with many measurement spots over the last 100 years, a hotter urban environment has enveloped the measurement point.  The location is on the left, and I zoomed straight out on the right, so the location is still in the center.

In 1900, this thermometer was measuring the temperature of miles and miles of pasture.  Today, it is measuring the temperature of acres of asphalt in the middle of a growing city.

Jim Goodridge, via Anthony Watts, has a 102 year temperature change plot for California.  These temperatures are without all the black-box corrections made by climate scientists - just straight out is the temperature going up or down.  Check out the map of California.  Skeptics often argue that some of the global warming we measure may actually just be the urban heating effect from asphalt and concrete and buildings and machinery impinging on measurement sites.  See if you can see the pattern.

All these years of writing about climate change, and I always have claimed that I was not in the pay of any interested industry groups.  Well, I guess I lied.  It appears "Big Recreation" is lobbying against greenhouse gas controls.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said: 

"The
recreation industry's true threats come not from climate change --
which has always changed and will always change -- but from the
so-called global warming "˜solutions' being proposed by government
policymakers. Misguided efforts to "˜solve' global warming threaten to
damage the travel and recreation industry and consequently threaten the
American dream."

This is probably true, though the ski resort guys don't agree.

For those who don't know, several years ago I quit both boneheaded Fortune 50 life and boneheaded startup life to run my own recreation business, where I am trying to push a vision of, and make a little money from, privatization of public recreation.  I am actually fairly well insulated from gas price shocks, though by accident rather than thought-out-in-advance strategy.  We have mainly taken over government recreation facilities where the customer base is local weekend traffic (rather than say cross-the-country-to-see-old-faithful travelers).   This is really by accident, because these facilities took less investment than the big national attractions.  As it turns out, when gas prices go up, we actually do a bit better, because people still want to camp and use their RV, but they do it 100 miles from home rather than 1000.

By the way, I am working on a skeptics primer to anthropogenic global warming, which is why blogging has been light.  If you'd be willing to read and comment on a pre-release version, email me and I will put you on the list for a pdf which will be coming in a week or so.  In the mean time, some of my previous work is here

Today, Greenpeace attacked ExxonMobil for exercising its free speech rights.  In particular, it criticized Exxon-Mobil for spending $2 million funding about 40 groups it calls "global warming skeptics."  For perspective (missing from this article), pro-anthropomorphic global warming research receives over $2 billion in the US alone (and that is just government money, it does not include private money), making Exxon's funding less than 0.1% of that provided to groups with opposing viewpoints. 

How settled can the science be if the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) believers feel horribly threatened by a group they outspend more than 1000:1?  This is like Hillary Clinton complaining that Mike Gravel is being allowed to spend too much money.  The AGW folks have consistently lost debates where they went head to head against credible skeptics.  If you don't want to argue the issues, you resort to ad hominem attacks.

By the way, shame on Exxon-Mobil for getting all defensive about their spending.  They should have said "sure we are skeptics, and we think there are a lot of good reasons to be skeptics.  In fact, we'd love to have a televised debate with Greenpeace on AGW."

Update: In a related announcement, scientists declared the science of Phlogiston settled.

This is an outstanding post that a reader sent me that offers a number of climate scientists in their own words taking issue with the climate consensus on CO2-driven anthropogenic global warming.  I won't convince you that man-made CO2 is not one cause for warming -- at this point in the science's development, that would be as big a mistake as declaring AGW theory "settled."  However, for those who get beaten about the head with "consensus" every time you ask a skeptical question about AGW, you should enjoy this article.  This is just one of the 13 vignettes on newly minted skeptics the author highlights:

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a,
recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now
calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article
in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said "global warming is largely a
natural phenomenon.  The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money
on trying to fix something that can't be fixed." "The climate-change
people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which
do not prove anything," Bellamy added. Bellamy's conversion on global
warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental
groups have ended their association with him because of his views on
climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy's long
activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy "won
respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save
Britain's peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was
arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest."

Here is a copy of the petition sent to the Canadian government which several of the people in the article refer to.  One taste:

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate
models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the
future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating
and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which
Canada's climate policies are based. Even if the climate models were
realistic, the environmental impact of Canada delaying implementation
of Kyoto or other greenhouse-gas reduction schemes, pending completion
of consultations, would be insignificant. Directing your government to
convene balanced, open hearings as soon as possible would be a most
prudent and responsible course of action....

While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policyformulation.
The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an "emerging
science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be
many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate
system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the
protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern
about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew
what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not
exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary....

"Climate change is real" is a
meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public
that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause.
Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the
time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains
impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise." The new Canadian
government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is
commendable, but allocating funds to "stopping climate change" would be
irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes
of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to
whatever nature throws at us next.

It is signed by scientific no-names like Freeman Dyson and Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology, Dept.
of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology

I think most of us are familiar with the clever movie poster for An Invconvinient Truth, with the smoke from a factory swirling into a hurricane:

In fact, this same picture of a white plume coming from a factory or power plant stack is often used to illustrate articles on pollution.  Just searching the first page of images googling "air pollution" gives us these relatively similar images illustrating air pollution articles:

Here is a big Roseanne Rosanadana Emily Litella moment for all of you using these images:  The big white cloud coming out of all those stacks is steam.  Water vapor.  H2O.  Though actually a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, no one has had the temerity to label water a pollutant (except in that great Bullshit! issue when Penn & Teller get environmentalists to sign a petition banning dihydrogen monoxide).  All of these guys are using big plumes of water vapor to panic people about pollution.  That is because most pollutants emitted by combustion are invisible.  Visible smoke was licked by most plants decades ago (here is the only "factory" picture in the google search I could find with actual smoke). 

Just to avoid being misunderstood, my point is not that pollution is OK because it is invisible.  My point is that these scare pictures are yet another example of how environmentalists feel its OK to ignore science to advance their agenda in public.  Sometimes they even go further, as Small Dead Animals points out, resorting to photo-shopping to make things seem worse, but the dreaded steam plumes are still there front and center.  (I noticed that several of the pictures above where photographed at sunset.  I thought at first this was to make them look prettier, but maybe they liked the effect because it made the steam look browner without photo-shopping).

I did not go too deep into the Google search, but I went far enough to award my personal favorite for a scare picture that has nothing to do with the point being made:

This one is a classic, with the sad-faced little girl and her asthma** inhaler super-imposed over a scene of "industrial pollution."  Except, the scene is from a nuclear power plant!  The unique shaped cooling tower is almost exclusively used on nuclear power plants, but the ultimate proof is the small nuclear reactor containment dome you can see to the right.  That plume, which is supposed to represent pollution, has to be 100% water.  There are no combustion products at a nuclear plant, and even if there were, given the way the cooling tower works, this can only be water vapor coming out of the cooling tower.  The really sad and pathetic thing is that this illustration is from the air pollution site at Battelle, which is a world-renowned private scientific and technical organization. 

What's my point?   I think that scientists and academics, in their increasing arrogance, have no respect for the general public.  The only way I can consistently interpret scientist's actions, for example around the global warming debate, is to hypothesize that they consider truth and facts important when talking to other scientists, but irrelevant when talking to the public because, in their mind, the public is stupid and its OK to tell them anything.  I will leave you with this
quote from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NOAA) climate researcher and global warming action promoter,
Steven Schneider:

[In talking to the public about the climate] We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements,
and make little mention of any doubts we have. Each of us has to decide what
the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

** By the way, there is growing evidence that increasing reported asthma rates are not correlated with outdoor air pollution. I wrote about this here, and hypothesized that the growth in asthma has coincided with the post-70s-energy-crisis steps everyone has taken to better insulate and seal up their houses and buildings, making indoor air pollution more of a problem.

Update: I started to think the dome I was calling a nuclear containment building might be telescope dome on the top of the building below.  It's not.

One of the difficulties that climate scientists face is that it is not that easy to come up with a single global temperature.  Before satellites, with limited measurement points and 75% of the world under water, global temperature is not much more than a guess.  With satellites, the job is easier but not wholly straight-forward.

Spencer and Christy have been using NASA data for a while to try to compute a global temperature, and have released new results  (the top graph is the whole earth, the second is the northern hemisphere, the third is the southern hemisphere):

The first oddity is one that the climate community struggles with but downplays in public.  It is that increases in these tropospheric measurements should be, if the theory of CO2-based anthropogenic global warming is correct, higher than temperature increases observed on the ground.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  Why ground temperatures increases should be higher than troposphere increases is something no explained by the standard greenhouse models (but is explained by alternatives).

The second oddity is the difference between the northern and southern hemispheres.  As you can observe, there really has not been any warming in the last decades in the south.  Why should that be?  One might assume it is because CO2 is produced mainly in the northern hemisphere, but my understanding is that scientists a while back determined that there was incredibly good mixing in the atmosphere and that CO2 concentrations don't vary that much around the globe.  I know that the northern hemisphere tends to have more temperature variability at the ground, since it has more land and land heats and cools faster than over the sea, but I am not sure this is sufficient to explain the difference.

Until I watched the Global Warming Swindle, I had confined my criticisms of anthropogenic global warming theory to two general areas:  1)  The models for future warming are overstated and 2) The costs of warming may not justify the costs of preventing it.

The movie offered an alternate hypothesis about global warming and climate change that, rather than refute the magnitude of anthropogenic global warming, provided a counter hypothesis.  You should watch the movie, but the counter hypothesis is that historic temperature changes have been the result of variations in solar activity.  Rather than causing these changes, increased atmospheric CO2 levels resulted from these temperature increases, as rising ocean temperatures caused CO2 to be driven out of solution from the world's oceans.

I thought one of the more compelling charts from Al Gore's pPwerpoint deck, which made the movie An Invconvienent Truth, was the hundred thousand year close relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature, as discovered in ice core analysis.  The Swindle movie, however, claims that Gore is hiding something from that analysis in the scale of his chart -- that the same ice core analyses show that global temperature changes have led CO2 concentration changes by as much as 800 years.  (short 2-minute snippet of this part of the movie here, highly recommended).

Well, this would certainly be something important to sort out.  I have not done much real science since my physics days at Princeton, but my sense is that, except maybe at the quantum level, when B follows A it is hard to argue that B caused A.

So I have poked around a bit to see -- is this really what the ice core data shows, or is Swindle just making up facts or taking facts out of context ala the truther hypotheses about 9/11?  Well, it turns out that everyone, even the die-hard global warming supporters, accept this 800-year lag as correct (Watch the Al Gore clip above -- it is clear he knows. You can tell by the very careful way he describes the relationship).  LuboÃ…¡ Motl summarizes in his blog:

However, the most popular - and the most straightforward - explanation
of the direction of the causal relationship is the fact that in all
cases, the CO2 concentration only changed its trend roughly 800 years
after temperature had done the same thing. There have been many papers
that showed this fact and incidentally, no one seems to disagree with
it....

The whole "group" at RealClimate.ORG
[ed: one of the leading sites promoting the anthropogenic theory] has agreed that there was a lag. But they say that in the first 800
years when the influence of temperature on CO2 is manifest, it was
indeed temperature that drove the gases. But in the remaining 4200
years of the trend, it was surely the other way around: CO2 escalated
the warming, they say.

Frequent readers will know that I have criticized forward looking climate models on many occasions for being too reliant on positive feedback processes.  For example, in the most recent IPCC models, over 2/3 of future warming come not from CO2 but from various positive feedback effects (section 8.6 of the 2007 report). 

The folks at RealClimate.org are similarly positing a positive feedback mechanism in the past -- "something" causes initial warming, which drives CO2 to outgas from the oceans, which causes more warming, etc. 

I am not sure I have ever done so, so let me take a minute to discuss positive feedbacks.  This is something I know a fair amount about, since my specialization at school in mechanical engineering was in control theory and feedback processes.  Negative feedback means that when you disturb an object or system in some way, forces tend to counteract this disturbance.  Positive feedback means that the forces at work tend to reinforce or magnify a disturbance.

You can think of negative feedback as a ball sitting in the bottom of a bowl.  Flick the ball in any direction, and the sides of the bowl, gravity, and friction will tend to bring the ball back to rest in the center of the bowl.  Positive feedback is a ball balanced on the pointy tip of a mountain.  Flick the ball, and it will start rolling faster and faster down the mountain, and end up a long way away from where it started with only a small initial flick.

Almost every process you can think of in nature operates by negative feedback.  Roll a ball, and eventually friction and wind resistance bring it to a stop (except, apparently, on the greens at Augusta).  There is a good reason for this.  Positive feedback breeds instability, and processes that operate by positive feedback are dangerous, and usually end up in extreme states.  These processes tend to "run away."   I can illustrate this with an example:  Nuclear fission is a positive feedback process.  A high energy neutron causes the fission reaction, which produces multiple high energy neutrons that can cause more fission.  It is a runaway process, it is dangerous and unstable.  We should be happy there are not more positive feedback processes on our planet.

Since negative feedback processes are much more common, and since positive feedback processes almost never yield a stable system, scientists assume that processes they meet are negative feedback until proven otherwise.  Except in climate, it seems, where everyone assumes positive feedback is common.

Back to the climate question.  The anthropogenic guys are saying that when the earth heated, it caused CO2 to outgas from the oceans, which in turn caused more warming, which causes more outgassing, etc.  But where does it stop?  If this is really how things work, why isn't the Earth more like Venus?  If you are going to posit such a runaway process, you have to also posit what stops it.  So far, the only thing I can think of is that the process would stop when the all bands of light that are absorbable by CO2 are fully saturated.

But the feedback is worse than this.  I won't go into it now, but as you can see from this post, or from section 8.6 of the 2007 IPCC report, the current climate models assume that warming from CO2 itself yields further positive feedback effects (e.g. more humidity) that further accelerate warming, acting as a multiplier as great as 3-times on CO2 effects alone.

So here is the RealClimate view of the world:  Any small warming from some outside source (think Mr. Sun) is accelerated by outgassing CO2 which is in turn accelerated by these other effects in their climate models.  In other words, global temperature is a ball sitting perched on the top of a mountain, and the smallest nudge causes it to accelerate away.  This is the point at which, despite having only limited knowledge about the climate, I have to call bullshit!  There is just no way our planet's climate could be as stable as it has been long-term and be built on such positive feedback loops.  No way.  Either these folks are over-estimating the positive feedback or ignoring negative feedbacks or both.  (and yes, I know we have had ice ages and such but against the backdrop of the range of temperatures the Earth theoretically could have in different situations, our climate variation has been small).

Postscript:  The other day I mentioned that it was funny a group studying solar output felt the need to put in a statement validating anthropogenic global warming despite the fact that nothing in their research said any such thing.  Motl points to a similar thing in the ice core studies:

Well, the website tells us that the paper that reported the lag contained the following sentence:

• ...
  is still in full agreement with the idea that CO2 plays, through its
  greenhouse effect, a key role in amplifying the initial orbital forcing
  ...

Again, this statement was included despite the fact that their study pretty clearly refutes some key premises in anthropogenic global warming theory.  It's become a phrase like "no animal was hurt in the filming of this movie" that you have to append to every climate study.  Or, probably a better analogy, it is like Copernicus spending a few chapters assuring everyone he still believes in God and the Bible before he lays out his heliocentric view of the solar system. 

Update: All this is not to say that there are not positive feedback loops in climate.  Ice albedo is probably one -- as temperatures rise, ice melts and less sunlight is reflected back into space by the ice so the world warms more.  My point is that it does not make any sense to say that positive feedback processes dominate.

Correction: Like a moron, I have been using anthropomorphic rather than anthropogenic to refer to man-made climate effects.  Oops.  Thanks to my reader who corrected me.  I have fixed this article but am too lazy to go back and edit the past.

Further Update:  The irony of my correction above juxtaposed against the title of the previous post is not lost on me.

Update to the Postscript: Oh my god, here it is again.  An NOAA-funded study comes to the conclusion that global warming might actually reduce hurricane strength and frequency.  Nowhere in the study did the researchers touch any topic related to anthropogenic warming -- they just studied what might happen to hurricanes if the world warms for any reason.  But here is that disclaimer again:

"This study does not, in any way, undermine the widespread consensus in the scientific community about the reality of global warming," said co-author Brian Soden, Rosenstiel School associate professor of meteorology and physical oceanography whose research is partly funded by NOAA.

Does the NOAA and other funding bodies actually require that this boilerplate be added to every study?

Via Jane Galt:

The environmental movement has so far utterly failed to develop a
coherent approach to replacing carbon producing power sources. Wind and
solar are not such a coherent response without a massive breakthrough
in battery technology, because variable sources are inadequate to
provide base-load power. Also, they too have negative externalities:
wind kills birds and destroys views, and many solar panels are loaded
with gallium arsenide, a highly toxic substance that is apparently
rather tricky to dispose of.

All this wouldn't be so bothersome if the environmental movement
merely failed to provide realistic alternatives, but in fact, many
environmentalists actively move to block new wind installations (I'm
looking at you, Robert jr.) and nuclear power plants, spread hysteria
over nuclear waste, and otherwise actively work against the cause they
are trying to advance. As such, it is perfectly legitimate to demand
why they are blocking the only things that have any realistic chance of
replacing carbon-emitting power plants.

The answer, in my opinion, is that too many environmentalists flunk
basic and economic knowlege, which is why so many people believe it is
practical to replace a coal-fired turbine that pumps out 1,000
megawatts with a solar installation that will, in peak sun conditions,
produce about 1 kilowatt per 150 feet of space, twelve hours a day; or
wind farms, which average less than 1 megawatt per turbine in prime
spots. In addition, the core of the environmental movement are people
with a whole host of linked views about things like capitalism,
consumer culture, and so forth; they find solutions that support,
rather than changing, the existing system much less emotionally
interesting than radical conservation strategies. Unfortunately, the
latter are a thoroughgoing political failure, but the environmental
movement has strenuously resisted adjusting to this reality. (Some
leaders have, God bless them). As long as this attitude persists, the
environmental movement is blocking change that could and should happen;
it is perfectly legitimate, nay necessary, to tax them on this.

She only sortof answers her own question at the end.  The real answer is that many who currently lead the environmental movement don't want a technological fix that sustains economic growth without CO2 emissions.  The whole point of latching onto, and exaggerating, the theory of anthropomorphic global warming is to find a big new club to bash capitalism and wealth.  Just watch this segment of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! where film of environmental movements is shown.  All the rhetoric is not anti-polluter, it's anti-corprorate and anti-capitalism.  Many leading environmentalists want nothing less than to shut down the global economy, and if that means taking down every poor person in the world just to get at Exxon and General Motors, they are willing to do so.

I found this conjured up a terribly funny image in my mind.  JunkScience has a challenge to climate journalists to try the math to test for themselves whether current global warming estimates make any sense.  The challenge per se is not funny, but the picture of a journalist... well, read the challenge first:

We believe climate
models are programmed with excessive climate sensitivity based on a
flawed understanding of past ice ages. Moreover, climate models wrongly
magnify potential warming to accommodate positive feedback mechanisms
while comparison with empirical measure shows negative feedback dominates, reducing warming experienced to about half theoretical values.

The challenge is for you to actually check the numbers -- see for yourselves whether we are wrong or not. Look up Stefan's Constant or just use 5.67 x 10^-8
(close enough for our purpose but look it up to be sure). The textbook
derivation of globally averaged greenhouse, using Stefan's Constant,
evaluates to roughly 33 °C and 150 Wm^-2. The IPCC Third Assessment Report alt: Third Assessment Report (Equation 6.1) states: "The climate sensitivity parameter (global mean surface temperature response ΔT_s to the radiative forcing ΔF) is defined as: ΔT_s / ΔF = λ." A blackbody-equivalent Earth climate sensitivity parameter (λ) would be 33 / 150 = 0.22 °C per Wm^-2. Real world measures (here) indicate Earth responds with only half the efficiency of a blackbody with a lambda (λ) value of just 0.1 °C per Wm^-2.

Now use it to check the assertion: "Global climate forcing was about 6 1/2 W/m²
less than in the current interglacial period. This forcing maintains a
global temperature difference of 5 °C, implying a climate sensitivity
of 3/4 ± 1/4 °C per W/m²." Either consult your texts for Earth's temperature in Kelvin and any other numbers you need or see the numbers we've used here. Off you go -- we'll wait. If you can show us where we're wrong we'll retract and correct.

Can anyone out there picture your favorite journalist trying to do this?  Many journalists followed the tried-and-true career path of:  Avoid math altogether --> Become an English major --> Become a journalist as an alternative to playing the guitar in subway stations.  Who else would love to see Maureen Dowd taking on this analysis?

I finally watched the BBC special Global Warming Swindle and have to say that it presents a pretty good counter-hypothesis to the prevailing theory of anthropomorphic CO2 production to explain recent global temperature changes.  It also hits some good points on what might be motivating the hard core of the environmental movement beyond just concern about global warming, and why the costs of CO2 control are so high.

I have historically accepted the basic hypothesis of anthropomorphic global warming but have been skeptical of the exaggerated outcomes (Al Gore's 26 foot sea-level rise, for example, which is 17 times more than even the IPCC predicts over the next century) and have posited that a warmer but richer world may well be better than a cooler but poorer one.  I have also pointed out the uncertainties in the IPCC analysis that never get mentioned in the press, like the huge uncertainty in the feedback loops that drive much of the temperature change in current models.  For example, the IPCC admits they don't even know the sign of the largest feedback loop (clouds), which is a big uncertainty since about 2/3 or more of the warming in the models come not directly from CO2 but from these feedback loops.

Anyway, most of my past skepticism has been within the framework of these IPCC studies.  However, this documentary casts off the whole framework, offering a counter-hypothesis of solar activity to explain temperature variations.  I thought the most interesting part of the documentary was when they showed Al Gore from An Inconvenient Truth with a multi-thousand year plot of temperature and CO2.  The chart certainly looks compelling, but this movie makes the point that while the two lines move together, the CO2 line is lagging the temperature line by five hundred years.  Meaning that CO2 levels may be linked to temperature, but the causality may be opposite of that implied by Gore. 

The documentary goes on to offer solar activity as an alternative explanation, with graphs of moving curves of solar activity and temperature that seem to show at least as much correlation as Gore's CO2 graphs.  They hypothesize that rising temperatures driven by changes in solar
activity heat up oceans over time and cause them to release CO2 into
the atmosphere.  I don't think the evidence is definitive, but it certainly casts doubt as to whether we really know what is going on.  I always thought it a bit odd that people would search for the causes of changing temperatures without first checking out the sun, sortof like walking in a room that is too hot and trying to fix it without first checking the thermostat.  This is particularly true given new evidence that other planets are warming, presumably due to solar activity (unless, of course, it's an Exxon plot).

By the way:  Advocates of the anthropomorphic theory are criticizing this movie in part because it does not use Mann's hockey stick temperature chart.  Sorry, but if they want to claim the scientific high ground, I think they need to stop tying their argument to this weak study.  Statisticians have dumped on it repeatedly (apparently random white noise fed into their model produces a hockey stick) and the evidence for eliminating the Medieval warm period is based on the rings in one or two trees.

Who would have ever predicted this...

BARNET, VT. -- Sara Demetry thought she had found a way to atone for her personal contribution to global warming.

The
psychotherapist clicked on a website that helped her calculate how much
heat-trapping carbon dioxide she and her fiance emitted each year,
mostly by driving and heating their home. Then she paid $150 to e-BlueHorizons.com, a company that promises to offset emissions.

But Demetry's
money did not make as much difference as she thought it would. While
half of it went to plant trees to absorb carbon dioxide, the other half
went to a Bethlehem, N.H., facility that destroys methane -- a gas that
contributes to global warming. The facility has been operating since
2001 -- years before the company began selling offsets -- and Demetry's money did not lead the company to destroy any more methane than it would have anyway.

Well, I predicted it:

I don't have any inside information on TerraPass, the company made
famous by providing the $399.75 certificates that offset all your
emissions for a year.  I do know that the numbers don't seem to add up,
as I wrote here and Protein Wisdom similarly wrote here.

However, I thought about their business model some (since I have been on a role with new business models) and it strikes me that it is brilliant.  Because I am almost positive that they are (legally) reselling the same carbon credits at least three times!...

1. Their energy projects produce electricity, which they sell to
   consumers.  Since the
   electricity is often expensive, they sell it as "CO2-free"
   electricity.  This is possible in some sates -- for example in Texas,
   where Whole Foods made headlines by buying only CO2-free power.  So the
   carbon offset is in the bundle that they sell to
   electricity customers.  That is sale number one. 
2. The company most assuredly seeks out and gets
   government subsidies.  These subsidies are based on the power being
   "CO2-free".  This is sale number two, in exchange for subsidies. 
3. They still have to finance the initial construction of the plant, though.  Regular heartless
   investors require a, you know, return on capital.  So Terrapass
   finances their projects in part by selling these little certificates that you
   saw at the Oscars.  This is a way of financing their plants from people
   to whom they don't have to pay dividends or interest "”just the feel-good
   sense of abatement.  This is the third sale of the carbon credits.

My guess is that the majority of carbon offsets sold are for projects that would have gone ahead anyway, without the purchase of the offset (for example, planting trees or building power plants).  In this case, e-BlueHorizons is doing #3 after the plant was commissioned.   Caveat Emptor.  HT: Maggie's Farm

I promise, cross my heart, this is my last post on climate change for a while.  I thought my series of posts last week about the funny math of carbon offsets was the last, but Joe Miller at Catallarchy wrote something that caused me some introspection:

Just one caveat, though: I'm really, seriously, profoundly uninterested
in your skepticism about man-made global warming. Personally, I think
that the debate is just about as fruitful as a discussion of the
relative merits of evolution and Genesis as models of the origins of
the universe. It's called scientific consensus, people. You seem to
like it well enough for every other subject. And even if that
overwhelming scientific consensus turns out to be wrong, it's not like
a debate here is going to help with that. When scientists are wrong,
it's up to, you know, like, other actual scientists to settle
the question. A bunch of non-scientists googling studies that say what
we like them to say isn't accomplishing much, really.

Certainly I have always been in favor of facts and science over hysteria.  I criticized the rampant breast implant litigation in the face of science that showed no real long-term harms.  Ditto vaccinations.  So am I being a Luddite by, as an amateur, being skeptical of the scientific "consensus" on global warming?  Certainly climate change hawks want to paint my positions as "holocaust denial."  I had a few thoughts:

• For what it is worth, I have actually read much of the 2001 IPCC climate report (not the management summary, which is a worthless political document, but the report itself).  Courtesy of JunkScience.com, who has posted some of the 2007 report, I have read key parts of that report as well.  So I have at least informed myself beyond random Google searches.  My original university training was as a scientist, and later an engineer, though neither in climate (physics and mechanical engineering).
• The media has been known to declare a consensus ahead of its actual existence.  One example that comes to mind is a recent letter that a number of economists wrote supporting a Federal minimum wage increase, which much of the media spun into a "consensus" among economists that a minimum wage increase would be desirable and would not reduce employment.  I don't know Mr. Miller, but my bet is that some of the folks at Catallarchy might dispute this particular scientific consensus.
• To even imply that there is a single consensus on something as complex and multi-faceted as anthropomorphic global warming is facile.  I will take the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" as a fair representation of what the media perception of the consensus is  (the IPCC report actually does not agree in full, but we will get there in a minute).  Taking that movie as our straw man, the "consensus" or hypothesis is as follows:

1. The world has been warming for a century, and this warming is beyond any historical cycles we have seen over 1000 years  (ie, the hockey stick)
2. The last century's warming is almost all due to man's burning of fossil fuels and other releases of greenhouse gasses
3. In the next 100 years, CO2 produced by man will cause a lot more warming
4. Positive feedbacks in the climate, like increased humidity, will act to triple the warming from CO2
5. The bad effects of warming greatly outweigh the positive effects, and we are already seeing them today (polar bears dying, glaciers melting, etc)
6. These bad effects, or even a small risk of them, easily justify massive intervention today in reducing economic activity and greenhouse gas production

I believe this is a mostly fair representation of the media reporting of the scientific "consensus", with the exception that the media never really goes into step #4, and assigns all the blame for 6-8 degree temperature rise forecasts to CO2.  But this split between #3 and #4 is important to understand the science at all, and is included in the IPCC report, so I will make it. 

This is a complicated string of logic, with multiple assumptions.  I hope you see why declaring a scientific consensus on all points of this hypothesis is facile.  So where is there a scientific consensus on all of this?  My interpretation from the recent IPCC report and other sources is:

1. The world has been warming for a century, and this warming is beyond
   any historical cycles we have seen over 1000 years  (ie, the hockey
   stick)   There is a strong consensus on the first half.  We can argue about urban heat island corrections and ground vs. satellite all day, but the earth has pretty clearly warmed for a hundred years or so, after cooling before that.  The second half of the proposition is trickier.  The 2001 report relied on the Mann hockey stick to make the point that the 20th century is not just warmer but uniquely warmer.  I sense the 2007 report backing off this -- the Mann analysis has a lot of problems, and ongoing climate research continues to point to the great variability and cyclicallity of climate over time.  There is too much historical evidence, for example, of a warm middle ages for Mann to dismiss it with a few tree rings.
2. The last century's warming is almost all due to man's burning of fossil fuels and other releases of greenhouse gasses.   The 2001 IPCC report implied about half of the century's warming was man-made.  The new report seems to put more of the blame on man.  My sense is this will move over time back to half and half -- the evidence today of increased solar activity is becoming too strong to ignore as a cause along with man-made CO2.  However, I recognize right now that I am out of step with the IPCC and perhaps the "consensus" on this.
3. In the next 100 years, CO2 produced by man will cause a lot more warming.  CO2 production by man will cause more warming.  How much is the subject of models, which any economist or businessperson can tell you are notoriously flaky.  However, here is one fact that is part of the scientific consensus but you never hear in the media -- the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration and warming is a diminishing return.  In other words, the next doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will have less impact on temperatures than the last doubling.  At some point, the effect of CO2 maxes out, and further increases in CO2 have no effect on temperatures.  My reading of the newest IPCC seems to imply that if the models predict about 6 degrees of warming over the next 100 years, of which about 2 is directly from CO2, while the rest are from positive feedbacks (discussed next)
4. Positive feedbacks in the climate, like increased humidity, will act to triple the warming from CO2.  OK, this strikes me as the key point in the scientific consensus.  Hypothesized positive feedback loops in the climate are what take the IPCC models from results that are warmer but probably manageable to results that appear catastrophically warmer.  Their models assume that as the world warms a bit from CO2, other effects take hold, and the world will warm even more.  For example, they posit that if the world is warmer, more water evaporates into water vapor in the atmosphere, which is a strong greenhouse gas, which accelerates the warming.  I think it is absurd to say there is a consensus on this point, which is adding 2/3 or more of the warming.  The notion of positive feedbacks in nature offends my intuition --  there are just not that many such processes in nature, or else nothing would be stable -- but then again Einstein's intution was offended by quantum mechanics and he was wrong.  However, using the IPCC's own findings (starting in section 8.6 here) the IPCC admits to there not even being a consensus on the sign (ie if it is positive or negative feedback) of what they describe as by far the strongest feedback process (cloud cover)!  I don't know how you can declare a consensus if you admit you don't even know the sign of the largest effect.
5. The bad effects of warming greatly outweigh the positive effects,
   and we are already seeing them today (polar bears dying, glaciers
   melting, etc)  It would be absurd to declare a consensus here because no one has really done much definitive work.   Most folks, including me, presume that since substantial warming would take us beyond the temperature range for which our bodies and our civilization has been adapted, the net effect would be bad.  But there are positive offsets to the negative effects (e.g. oceans rising) that you never really hear about in the press (longer growing season, for one) but which are in the IPCC report.  Climate scientists themselves have admitted there is no consensus on what effects that we are seeing today are due to warming.  Part of Antarctica (about 2%) shown in Al Gore's movie is warming, but most scientists now think that this may be due to cyclical variations in ocean currents, while most of Antarctica has actually been cooling of late.  Greenland is warming, but glaciers may not be receding as fast as once feared.  Polar bear populations, despite reports to the contrary, are increasing.
6. These bad effects, or even a small risk of them, easily justify
   massive intervention today in reducing economic activity and greenhouse
   gas production.  Many climate scientists express an opinion on this, often definitively, but if one argues that I am not qualified to test the consensus as a layman on global warming, then certainly climate scientists are far from qualified in drawing any conclusions on this topic.  The effects of a worldwide rollback on CO2 production at current technologies could be catastrophic, particularly for a billion people in India and China just on the verge of emerging from poverty.  Even in some of the most dire forecasts for warming, it is a very open question with little consensus as to whether a cooler but poorer world is better.  In fact, one can argue that even the pious Kyoto-signing countries are voting with their actions, rather than their words, on this issue, since they have resisted taking the hard economic steps necessary to meet their targets.

OK, that is more than I meant to write.  My point is that the word consensus is an absurd word to apply to the topic of anthropomorphic global warming.  Some things we understand pretty well (the world is warming, in part due to man-made CO2) and some we understand less well (the effect of feedback loops).  And some issues, like whether the harms from climate change are worth the cost of avoiding them, are entirely outside the purview of climate science.

Update: Strata-Sphere has a funny bit of related snark:

Global warming on Neptune's moon Triton as well as Jupiter and Pluto, and now Mars has some scratching their heads over what could possibly be in common with the warming of all these planets....

I still don't know. Could there be something in common with all the
planets in our solar system that might cause them all to warm at the
same time?

On a serious note, he has some nifty graphs of historic earth temperature reconstructions (including Mann) vs. sunspot activity reconstructions (sunspot activity generally being a proxy for solar output).  Short answer:  Sunspot activity at historical highs, at the same time as historical highs in temperature. 

Bruce Hall at Hall of Record has performed a really interesting analysis.  He created a data base for each state which shows in what year that state's monthly temperature records were set.   So for each state, he has the years when the twelve monthly high temperature records were set (e.g. year of highest Arizona Jan temp, year of highest Arizona Feb temp, etc.) and the years when the twelve monthly low temperature records were set.  Here, for example, is his data for Arizona:

So, for example, the record for the highest July temperature was set in 1905 at Parker, Arizona with a scorching 127 degrees.  The entry in his database would then be Arizona-July:  1905.  He notes that there is a bias in the data toward more recent years, since if the record was set in 1905 and tied in 1983, only the newer 1983 date will show in the data.  I would also observe that this data is uncorrected for urban heat island effects (as cities urbanize they get hotter, and effect that is different than CO2-cause global warming and is usually corrected for in global warming studies).  There is also a bias towards the present in having more measurement points today than 100 years ago:  More measurement points means that, over a state, one is more likely to pick up the true high (or low).

Though I have other problems with the anthropomorphic global warming hypothesis, I have never really doubted that the world has warmed up over the last century.  So even I, a skeptic, would expect a disproportionate number of the all-time high temperatures to be in the last decade, particularly without UHI correction and with the bias discussed above.  The global warming folks would argue that the effect should be doubly pronounced, since they claim that we are seeing not just a general heating, but an increase in volatility (ie more extreme variation around the mean).

But Hall doesn't find this when he graphs the data.  Take the 600 state monthly high temperature records that exist on the books today (50 states times 12 months) and graph the distribution of years in which these records were set:

Assuming about 120 years of data, you should expect to see a high temperature record on average in a database of 600 records at 5 per year, which is precisely where we have been of late and well below the record years in the thirties (remember the dust bowl?) and the fifties. It seems to actually show a reduction in temperatures or volatility or both.  Hmm.

Of course, the US is not the whole world -- in fact, all developed land masses are only 25% of the world, so there is a lot not covered by such records.  Also, statisticians are welcome to comment on whether looking only at extremes in a data set is even meaningful.  But this sure isn't what you might expect from, say, watching the Oscar telecast or the nightly news.

Hall also has the low temperature records in his very comprehensive post, which, surprisingly, do show more activity in the last several decades.  He has a follow-up here.  Finally, Hall has summarized his data a different way in this post -- you have to click on the chart to really see it in all its beauty.  Just take a quick look.  I won't steal his thunder by reproducing it here, but suffice it to say it reminded me of some of the best examples in the book Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

I am pretty convinced that the case for anthropomorphic global warming is being overblown, and part of my reasoning is that other factors, like recent increases in solar activity, are being virtually ignored in the race to place a big fat blame sign on man (and on the US in specific).

So I was ready to really like this chart, via Q&O via RedState via Hall of Record (click image for larger view):

Increases in sunspot activity are generally correlated with increases in solar output, so the chart seems to show a correlation between solar output and global temperatures that is much better than the correlation with CO2 concentration.  Now, this still may be correct (I have what is probably a better chart below), but this particular graph is odd in a few ways.  First, the Y-axis scale is "Sunspot Cycle Length" presumably in years (thus the "y").  But how does that make sense?  If it is the length of the trailing cycle, it should go up uniformly then drop to zero, like a sawtooth.  I don't know who a cycle length that seems to average around 11 years can look like that line on that timescale.  I tried to get back to the original, but it was attributed to a presentation that did not seem to be online by a professor that doesn't seem to work in exactly this field of study.  If anyone has any insight on this chart, please comment.

So, as much as this chart would be good news (remember my definition of good news here), I have to be skeptical of it.  I do think the underlying point is a good one:  It is well known that we are in a period of unusually high sunspot activity and solar output.  A better chart may be this one, from this study and via junkscience.com:

Regular readers will know I am skeptical that anthropomorphic global warming and its effects will be as bad as generally predicted.  However, if I can work around this bias, I would like to cast the issue as neutrally as I can:  Man-made CO2 will likely cause the world to warm some, and the negative effects of this for man are likely higher than the positive effects.  Under some assumptions, these net negative effects of man-made warming could be astronomical in cost, while under other assumptions they will be less so.  Against this variable outcome, efforts to substantially reduce CO2 production world wide and prevent further increases of atmospheric CO2 concentrations will carry a staggering cost, both in dollars and the inevitable social effects of locking developing countries into poverty they are just now escaping (not to mention loss of individual liberty from more government controls).

The political choice we therefore face is daunting:  Do we pay an incredibly high price to abate an environmental change that may or may not be more costly than the cure?  Reasonable people disagree on this, and I recognize that I may fall in the minority on which side I currently stand on (I think both warming and its abatement costs are overblown, mainly because I have a Julian-Simonesque confidence in man's adaptability and innovation).

Against this backdrop, we have Kevin Drum declaring "More good news on the global warming front:"

Seeking to shape legislation before Congress, three major energy trade
associations have shifted their stances and decided to back mandatory
federal curbs on carbon dioxide and other man-made emissions that could
accelerate climate change.

Here is my news flash:  Having some Washington lobbying organizations switch which side of this incredibly difficult trade off they support is not "good news."  Good news is finding out that this trade off may not be as stark as we think it is.  Good news is finding some new technology that reduces emissions and which private citizens are willing to adopt without government coercion (e.g. sheets of solar cells that can be run out of factories like carpet from Dalton, Georgia).  Or, good news is finding out that man's CO2 production has less of an effect on world climate than once thought.  Oddly enough, this latter category of good news, surely the best possible news we could get on the topic, is seldom treated as good news by global warming activists.  In fact, scientists with this message are called Holocaust deniers.  I wonder why?

Update: LOL

I sure wish I could like activists like Al Gore.  Last night, at the Oscars, he was charming and passionate.  He has something he cares deeply about and flies around the world speaking about.    It's terribly compelling, which you could see in the reaction Al got last night from an adoring audience and various fawning actors.

And if Mr. Gore were there last night to convince the audience to get out of their stretch limos and G-V's and drive Prius's and use compact fluorescent bulbs, I'd be fine.  Sure I might laugh that it was all pointless and the movie Inconvenient Truth was terribly overblown, but its a free society and Mr. Gore would be welcome to make his call to other individuals that they change their lifestyle. 

Unfortunately, Mr. Gore's only goal last night was not just to rally the TV audience to change its lifestyle.  The more important goal was to increase the likelihood that government will compel Americans to do what Mr. Gore wants.  And this is what makes me cringe nowadays when I hear the term "activist."  I don't want to cringe, because passionately advocating for you cause, even if I disagree with it, should be part of the rich fabric of a free society.  Unfortunately, though, at the heart of nearly every modern activist's agenda is compulsion -- the desire to use the coercive power of the government to force you to do something you would not otherwise choose to do.  It is the very unusual activist today who is not trying, whether they admit it or not, to chisel away at individual freedom for some "higher cause."

By the way, speaking of higher cause, did anyone else note the religious parallels in the green-speak last night at the Oscars?  You had Al Gore in the role of Bill Graham, with several people talking about how Al had helped them "see the light."  Even more amazing to me was the parallel with a confessional at Catholic Church.  I have been lucky enough in the past to attend the Academy Awards, and I can tell you from experience what was sitting right outside:  The largest collection of stretch limousines you can ever imagine -- I am talking about enough limos to create a traffic tie-up four lanes wide and extending back for miles, all running their engines for six hours waiting to whisk stars to late-night parties and private jets.  I am fairly certain that no other small group in America generated more CO2 yesterday through their private use than the audience at the Oscars.  Yet by declaring the Oscars to be "green", voting for an Inconvenient Truth, and cheering Al Gore, the audience was in effect saying 10 hail mary's in the confessional, washing away all sin. 

Update:  How I can be sure Al Gore's activism is about government control and not individual action:

Drudge reports  that Al Gore's Nashville mansion consumes more than 20 times the average amount of power for an American household.

Since
Gore's whole deal is that civilization-saving absolutely and vitally
requires an action on everyone's part that he seems to refuse to do
himself, it leads one to wonder about how this whole global warming
thing is going to play out with the public and with the government.
(Unless Gore's house is powered completely or partially off a
conventional coal-burning grid, which doesn't seem to be true based on
Drudge's piece.)

Does Gore's seeming inability to curb his
power consumption--which has apparently grown since the release of his
Oscar-winning flick--mean it isn't true that we really do all
have to scrupulously use less carbon-burning energy or doom the planet?
No. But it does make it a little hard to believe that he really
believes it--or that if even the biggest believer in global warming of
all can't control himself in this regard, that a serious planetwide
reduction in the short or medium term short of draconian outside
controls has much hope.