Global Warming Science

Please click the links. You must at least casually review these articles to understand what I am talking about.

What is the science or lack thereof behind “Global Warming”? It may surprise some people that the earth’s climate is a very complicated thing. Carbon dioxide can intercept infrared radiation at a wavelength of about 15 microns and heat up. When the earth heats up, it can release carbon dioxide. Which came first the chicken or the egg? The plain and simple fact is nobody knows. There is much more water vapor in the earth’s atmosphere; and, water vapor absorbs infrared radiation at a much broader band width than carbon dioxide. It is universally believed that water vapor accounts for the overwhelming bulk of the so-called green-house effect. Water vapor also turns into clouds. Sometimes incoming cosmic radiation can effect the formation of clouds. Clouds cool the earth significantly. Convection also cools the earth significantly. The effect of clouds and convection would completely overwhelm the effect of radiance in the troposphere. The classic view of climate change puts ocean currents and the position of continents in the driver’s seat. Volcanoes emit both co2 which supposedly warms the earth and sulfur which cools the earth. Forrest fires emit both soot which cools the earth and enormous amounts of co2 which supposedly warms the earth. Soot can also darken snow causing the snow to absorb more visible light.  Weathering of minerals also changes the amount of co2 in the atmosphere. Weathering of kerogen or carbonates can add co2. Much of the earth’s historic co2 has been sequestered in carbonates by living organisms. Weathering of silicates absorbs co2 and most of the earth’s surface is covered by silicates. The mechanics of earth’s movement through space (Milankovitch cycles) also exert a significant effect on climate. Solar activity has a significant effect on climate; but, not the way you might think. It seems the solar wind associated with sun-spots is a barrier to cosmic rays. You can find an abundance of articles on the web connecting sun-spots with climate including the observations of Edward Walter Maunder eighty years before this climate debate began. Living things have a significant effect on the earth’s climate too. Animals produce co2. Plants absorb co2 and also cool by vaporization.  As if all this was not complicated enough, I can personally guaranty you that what we don’t know about the earth’s climate vastly exceeds what we do know! Yet it seems that the proponents of anthropogenic global warming have it all down to a computer model. I can only conclude that they must have computers based on the chips from the first “Terminator”.

 

By necessity, computer models are almost always cartoonish oversimplifications of reality. Both the code and the amount of processing time increase incredibly fast as one tries to make more realistic approximations of reality. Often these simplifications come surprisingly close to real world effects. Sometimes, they don’t. Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi claims that the black body equations used by many so called climatologists are a gross over simplification of how radiative equilibrium works on a real planet. Dr. Miskolczi’s article published in Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service Vol. 111, No. 1, January–March 2007, pp. 1–40, which can be downloaded from: http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf. In defense of Dr. Miskoliczi’s article, many scientists believe that even though the partial pressure of co2 is equal to the air pressure outside the international space station, that the co2 in earths atmosphere completely extinguishes infrared radiation in it’s main absorption band of 15 microns in a few hundred meters. Carbon dioxide is like India ink to infrared radiation at a wavelength of 15 microns. The earth’s ability to maintain a relatively stable temperature is well known to earth scientists. So mystifying is the earth’s ability to maintain a relatively steady temperature that it has been given the whimsical misnomer “Gaia Hypothesis”. In fact no one really believes that the earth is alive or is being watched over by some Greek goddess and no one had any hypothesis to explain this fact until Dr. Miskoliczi published his article. Skeptical Science claims that extinction of co2 absorption spectra is irrelevant because of convection yet the cooling effects of convection are not taken into account nor any data set cited. Go ahead click their links. The sad fact is that we seem stuck like a broken record on these radiative transfer models. A doctor thinks he cures what you have and a specialist thinks you have what he cures. Dr. James Hansen specialized in radiative transfer models; but was never able to explain how greenhouse gasses could cause a planet to spin the wrong way. Many people think that Venus is hot because of its atmospheric pressure. In the troposphere radiative transfer is much less significant than heat conduction or convection. Conduction and convection is what your local weatherman looks at. This co2 based global warming thing is really based on a series of cascading positive feedbacks. Warmer air would contain more water vapor. The water vapor would multiply the co2 effect. Their collective effect would melt the tundra which would release methane, another greenhouse gas. These cascading effects would be triggered by the global temperatures rising above a “tipping point” beyond which the earth would be sent into an uncontrollable runaway greenhouse effect. It sounds logical; but it simply does not happen.

As I said, the earth has hot times and cold times; but always seems to bounce back to its “natural temperature range”. Currently we are at the cold end of that range. This is in fact an “ice age”. We just happen to be living during a short lived glacial retreat known as an “interglacial period”. Four of the previous interglacial periods were warmer and had more co2 than the current one. In fact for most of the past half billion years the earth has been warmer and had much more co2 in its atmosphere than now. Temperatures would have to go up 3-4 degrees Celsius and there would have to be three times as much co2 in the air just to get near normal. The earth is currently very deficient in co2. Even looking back just a thousand years it seems the climate was much warmer. A thousand years ago the North Atlantic was much warmer than it is now (medieval warm period MWP). Six hundred years ago the North Atlantic got very cold (the little ice age). In the 1800’s the North Atlantic began to warm up again. We don’t have rigorous temperature readings from these times; but, we have other proxies. Proxies are not all created equal. In school I found physics and math quite easy; but, geology was always a curve ball. Geology is all about evaluating proxies and the proxies don’t always point in the same direction. Tree rings can tell you if one year was better than another year; but, you can’t ferret out a tenth of a degree difference the way Dr. Michael Mann was trying to do. If you come across a frozen Viking farm; then you know that the climate had to be mild enough for whatever agriculture they were doing. Based on these proxies and the literature of the time; I can not see a thing remarkable about our temperature trend from 1800 to the present! Claims by the proponents of AGW that the Vikings were part of a vast right wing conspiracy have not been substantiated.  There is nothing unusual about the current warming trend, even if you include a litany of exaggerated temperature readings.

“Also I cannot believe that there is not a concerted protest at the secrecy that surrounds this statistical composite from Phil Jones. You’d think that figures as widely quoted as this should be public (in the same way the satellite record is), but you’d be wrong.”

http://climateaudit.org/2007/01/26/hadcru-temperature/

It’s not just a matter of data being available in some generic form. There is tones and tones of data out there. Which data set goes with which paper? Is the data available? Even today they don’t make it easy. Remember; it’s your tax dollars that are paying for all this data. As these figures become available to the public more and more “errors” are being found. Failures in NOAA satellites went unchecked and the NOAA tries to doge FOI requests. Steve McIntyre discovered the Y2K bug in GISS data. A few months later they found more slipshod work from the house of Hansen. Data from Russian stations was cherry picked. This is particularly important because Siberia is one of the few places in the northern hemisphere where you can get rigorous data from pristine environments. An unexplained bias is added to New Zealand data and a smoking gun is found at Darwin Zero. Once the GISS data was fixed and the Darwin Zero data was un-homogenized the both indicated that the hottest year was in the 1930’s. This is significant because the proponents of AGW often claim that the medieval warm period was regional; not global. They also claim that the lack of data in the Southern Hemisphere proves this. Only for AGW does a lack of data prove anything. Furthermore it’s not up to Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre to disprove the AGW theory. It’s up to the proponents of AGW to prove their theory and they have not come close to that. The vitriol aimed at these people is incomprehensible. Scrutinizing the integrity of the data is the first order of the day in any scientific endeavor. It is the difference between science and religion. Is the data driving the theory or is the theory driving the data?

Is it possible the sun has something to do with the climate? The AGW proponents say no. They claim that the suns brightness has not changed much in fifty years. Fifty years ago the northern hemisphere was well into its warming trend. The proponents of global warming have never produced the satellite records from four-hundred years ago, before the warming began. Furthermore the theory that it’s the sun has to do with sunspots. There is in fact a very good correlation with sunspots. When there are a lot of sun spots the suns atmosphere is very active. When the sun is active it injects more plasma into the solar wind which acts as a solar atmosphere stopping cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are thought to stimulate cloud formation which has a significant influence on the earth’s climate. That theory might not explain the global warming on Mars and Jupiter; but, something is happening that has nothing to do with people.

Proponents of AGW claim that carbon isotope analysis proves that humans have caused a 33% increase in atmospheric co2. Humans produce only 4% of the worlds co2. How can humans be responsible for a 33% increase in co2? It simply is not possible! That would be a total violation of both chemical and biological laws of equilibrium. In fact there is only a fractional difference δ13c and δ12c in the biosphere due to photosynthesis. Plants seem to have a slightly higher amount δ13co2. The co2 in the air seems to be lower in δ13co2 than you would expect from burning plants. Dr. Roy Spencer thinks peaks in sea surface temperatures might have caused the difference. In his post in WUWT Dr. Spencer compares:

 The monthly C13/C12 ratio data from Mauna Loa (1990-2005) are available here: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2c13/flask/month/mlo_01D0_mm.co2c13

 The monthly Mauna Loa CO2 data (1958-2007) are contained in the 5th file listed here: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/

I find the claim that we know exactly how much co2 volcanoes produce to be questionable. Most of the worlds volcanoes are under water and very difficult to explore. Furthermore magma that encounters limestone would release huge amounts of co2. Marble comes from mixing limestone with magma. Simply examining a few volcanoes tells you nothing. The amount of co2 produced could vary greatly depending on what kind of rock the magma encountered. I know of no large scale census of volcanoes. In my last post I mentioned how a disproportionate number of most cited papers in the geosciences seem to deal with climate science, at least for American geologists. Where’s the “shake and bake”; that’s what gets people interested in geology in the first place.

“There is no question that there are very many more scientific papers which accept the mainstream view of global warming being caused by humans. And that might account for something if those papers actually independently investigated alternative, natural mechanisms that might explain most global warming in the last 30 to 50 years, and found that those natural mechanisms could not.”

-Dr. Roy Spencer http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/22/spencer-the-inquisition/

The idea that these AGW scientists just got together and in twenty years they got the Earths climate all figured out is the most ludicrous claim I’ve ever heard. If these people are really that good then they should develop fusion power and make the whole debate academic. In fact there is little historic data to go on and use of proxies is not well understood by theoretical physicists. I haven’t even gone into ocean currents, only three of which are generally discussed. Biology would be a whole new chapter in the discussion by itself. Co2 is one factor of many. In the future other factors influencing the climate will probably be discovered.  Take another look at what this much maligned man said: Balling

One of the things I like about Anthony Watts blog, WUWT, is how enlightened the comments are. In one post, Searching the PaleoClimate, the third comment states:

 “The analysis of Royer et al. (2004) assumes an unrealistically high pH correction. First, it neglects the ice-volume effect, which changes the relation between δ18O and T. Second, this large pH correction implies high temperatures for seawater even during times of extensive glaciations. Moreover, the analysis of Royer et al. (2004) consists of bootstrapping, by introducing a correction to T that is an implicit function of RCO2. It is then not surprising that a correlation between T and RCO2 is obtained. This would be the case irrespective of the RCO2 model utilized.”

Referring to: http://www.phys.huji.ac.il/~shaviv/ClimateDebate/RoyerReply.pdf

Many of these peer reviewed articles, promoting the theory of “Anthropogenic Global Warming” have professional looking citations. There are thousands of articles by somebody et al. It is humanly impossible to begin to cover a fraction of them. Every time I’ve chased these musical “et al.s“; I find somebody et al. cited somebody else et al. who cited somebody who made an assumption about something they could not possibly know and had no physical reason as to why it should be so. (i.e. 100 year half life for co2 persistence in the atmosphere)

Personally I’m extremely skeptical of the theory of “Anthropogenic Global Warming” (AGW); but, that’s not really the point I’m trying to make here. The point is that things are allot more complicated than you’ve been told. The theory of AGW is not close to being proved and we are not close to understanding the earths climate.

NN

Climate Change

I always let myself get tangled up in a discussion of whether global warming is real and man made. That is a distraction from the most important points. The most important points here are that:

1. Throughout most of the earth’s history the earth’s climate was much warmer than it is now.

2. If the earth’s climate did warm up; it would not be the disaster that some people are claiming.

3. The IPCC has carefully selected a time frame to support their Global Warming agenda rather than doing rigorous science.

If you went to see a movie and they only showed you one frame out of thousands of frames in that movie; do you think you would know what the movie was about? Physics, Climatology and Paleoclimatology are distinct disciplines. The physicist and climatologist look at one frame and they think they know what the movie is about. The paleoclimatologist stays to the end of the movie. A climatologist looks at clouds and differential equations. A paleoclimatologist looks at fluid inclusions and isotope ratios. Paleoclimatology is part of Geology and there is a war brewing, geologists vs. IPCC climatologists.

To a geologist; if the direst predictions (temperature wise) of the IPCC actually happened; it would barley register. If the global climate warmed by 3 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit; North Africa would become wetter and greener. The greening of North Africa and the longer season in Siberia would be a huge co2 sink. There would be a slight lag time for the oceans to catch up with the land masses in temperature. During that lag subtropical deserts would grow; but, they would soon green up with more rain. This would be a net benefit for humanity. That is one advantage to the slow release of co2 by industry as apposed the radical one, two punch associated with the Siberian traps or the Deccan traps. Catastrophic volcanic activity blackened the sky. When the sky finally cleared; the plants and phytoplankton that would have mitigated the effect of the co2, were dead. The pp. co2 was 20 times what it is today. That was climate change.

Today the pp. co2 is about .006 psi. That tiny bit of co2 is getting all the blame for heating up the earth. Unscrupulous scientists like Stephen Schneider publish exaggerated claims to whip the global warming mafia into a frenzy. (yes, I’ve read the pitiful attempts of liberal bloggers to defend him) Legitimate scientists risk their careers and reputations simply asking the kind of questions that must be asked to make the science rigorous.

What is local and what is global? Can you find a pristine place to measure in the northern hemisphere? If you found a pristine place would you have a history of measurements? Consider a small outpost in Alaska. A hundred years later the city has a hundred thousand people. How would you compare the measurements? No place demonstrates this better than Antarctica. You’ve heard one side say the ice is melting and the other say it isn’t. They are both right! On the peninsula that almost touches South America the ice is melting. The Antarctic peninsula has registered the fastest warming of any place on earth. Away from South America the other 96% of Antarctica does not seem to be warming at all. Furthermore there is no detectable warming in the troposphere; and, that is significant. This indicates that at least some of what is being measured is urban or more correctly suburban sprawl.

Particularly damning is the convenient time frame the IPCC is using. The IPCC is using a time frame custom designed to promote the global warming agenda. Right as we go from the Little Ice Age, caused by the Maunder Minimum, into a warmer period. Even NASA says the models don’t work unless you include the solar intensity. How much is sun? How much is suburban sprawl and deforestation? How much is co2? The IPCC’s computer models were never designed to do anything but push the global warming agenda. Though it is generally assumed that the solar cycles can account for a third of the warming; many scientists are beginning to reassess that assumption. Is it possible that deforestation and the ubiquitous black asphalt might have enhanced the suns effects? Have any of you ever stepped on the street on a hot summer day in bare feet? Do you remember Antarctica? Is it all beginning to make sense now? I could just as easily used the year 1050 as my start point and claimed that there has been almost no global warming in 800 years! A hundred years or 960 years is a geologically meaningless time frame. That is why neither a climatologist nor a physicist can give context to their findings. The oldest ice cores are less than a million years old and that is still geologic plank time. Nonetheless if you follow the temperature from the year 1050 till the present; you would realize it’s just the earth doing what the earth has been doing for 4 billion years. (temperatures inferred from tree rings)

The other thing that is intellectually dishonest about the IPCC is this “Climate Change”. What is climate change? The climate is always changing. The IPCC is pushing global warming and some kind of carbon control scheme. I don’t know what or who is behind it but it isn’t science at least not rigorous science.

The final straw was when the IPCC tried to infer that all responsible scientists were onboard with Anthropogenic Global Warming. The geologists never were. I remember 30 years ago reading an article in Scientific American. A frustrated physicist addressed a conference of geophysicists about “Global Warming”. The geophysicists were delighted to find out the world was warming up. The frustrated physicist didn’t think the geophysicists understood. The problem was the geophysicists had seen it all before. Even scientists that believed that man made co2 was the overwhelming cause of global warming have felt bullied by the populist global warming mafia. Many scientists were beginning to realize that this wasn’t rigorous science. The physicists and climatologists are now jumping ship.

Computer models of even the simplest of systems are not simple. I have mentioned only a couple variables. Assumptions were made about how long co2 stays in the air and in the ocean. Assumptions were made about many things they could not possibly know. A computer model is no better than the assumptions it is based on. There are too many wholes in the IPCC’s “science” to cover in one article. The IPCC was specifically created to push the global warming agenda, yet the faithful act like anyone who challenges them is a heretic. Claims of a general consensus among scientists that work on climate change simply mean that people who depend on climate change grants want them to continue. We can’t go around, like Chicken Little, crying “the sky is falling’ every time the earths climate hiccups. You have to remember we are talking about a 1.25 degree increase in global temperatures and a 25% increase in pp.co2~.006psi. if you believe the IPCC.

Some articles for those that are interested:

UN Climate Scientists speak out

Minority Report

It’s a bit technical but this guy thinks the suns role in “Climate Change” might be under rated: http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm06/fm06-sessions/fm06_PP23E.html

Robert Balling thinks the subject is complicated. Ya think? http://www.marshall.org/pdf/materials/170.pdf

Basically Glassman thinks the IPCC is an outright fraud: http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2007/06/on_why_co2_is_known_not_to_hav.html

These guys found some curious anomalies in Greenland ice cores that don’t quite fit the “Global Warming” agenda: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/11/17/cooling-the-debate-a-longer-record-of-greenland-air-temperature/

This guy questions the scientific rigor with which temperature measurements were made: http://xtronics.com/reference/globalwarming.htm

Scare tactics of the past: Earth Day 1970

Digg Me

Housing Crash

Why did Alan Greenspan continue to raise interest rates past 4%? Back in 2005 the fed under Alan Greenspan was raising interest rates. I understand that interest rates could not stay at 1% (Fed funds rate). A long time ago in economics 101, I was told that the sweet spot in our economy was with interest rates at 4%. I’m not as smart as Alan Greenspan; but, after a 3% increase in interest rates; common sense would demand taking a breather. This isn’t hind sight. Even at the time I remember thinking, “what is he doing”. I thought maybe the need to borrow money for our war against Islam might have caused the need to raise interest more than would otherwise be necessary.

In all fairness, our government can’t completely dictate interest rates. The Fed, in theory, acts like that little lead weight they put on your tiers. The Fed must balance the governments financial needs with the market. That said, the U.S. government is a huge factor in the market and it has a disproportional influence on interest rates.

You can’t directly correlate the “Fed funds rate” with adjustable mortgages; but, any one who claims they did not see this real estate crisis coming needs to learn to count on their fingers. You can’t raise the fed funds rate 4.25% without having some effect on mortgages. Shortly after the fed funds rate reached its peak at 5.25%, Ben Bernanke succeeded Alan Greenspan as Fed chairmen. Greenspan blamed low interest rates for the housing bubble. The problem was not the bubble; but, the way they let the air out of the bubble, too fast. Ben Bernankes own Bernanke Doctrine says not to do this. In 2006 Ben Bernanke still had time to drop interest rates according to his own doctrine and administer a soft landing for an inflated housing market.

Between them, Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan, have more letters after their names than the Chinese alphabet. Alan Greenspan acted like a drunk and Ben Bernanke did nothing to undo the damage as the economy crashed. And now where are interest rates. This is yet another reason to keep the state small and the individual big.

Have either of these guys ever explained why they kept interest rates artificially high, knowing it would cause a cascading economic failure?