The Cool Blue Blog

The Climate Change Blog

Carl Wolk has been an occasional contributor to the Cool Blue Blog in the past. Now I am happy to say that he has gone off and started his own blog dedicated specifically to a scientific discussion of Climate Change. It's called A Skeptical Look at Climate Change.

In a post entitled New Paper Shatters the "Consensus" Myth, Carl Writes

There are many methods out there to silence the political opposition, yet, the most effective one is to simply deny the existence of an opposition, and liberals in government along with many in the environmentalist lobby have been employing this technique, successfully convincing the public that no debate exists on the threat of climate change, that there is a scientific consensus.
Now I said I wouldn’t bother delving into the “consensus” debate, but there has been a paper released by
Fergus W.M. Brown, CPE, UCLAN, Preston, UK
Roger A. Pielke Sr. CIRES, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
James D. Annan, FRCGC/JAMSTEC, Yokohama, Japan.

The paper is Is there agreement amongst climate scientists on the IPCC AR4 WG1?

...This recent paper’s results are about what I would have expected; a clear majority of climate scientists agree with the UN or believe it is too conservative in its predictions, yet by no means do the results of the poll justify the description of a “consensus” in the climate science community. This, of course, means that statements made by many in government, especially on the left (although Republicans don’t have a clean record either) have made and continue to make false statements on the state of the debate on climate change. There is no consensus. The debate is not over. The science is not settled. I can think of a lot of issues where much less than 20% of those involved turned out to be wrong. In fact, it would be very interesting to see what percent of climate scientists bought into the “global cooling” scare of the ’70s...

Carl has done a lot of great work presenting the alternative theories that exist within the scientific community.

Check him out.

Feeling superior while people starve

Biofuels may seem like a great idea to some, but to others, not so much

This week, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls "a very serious crisis". Even when the price of food was low, 850 million people went hungry because they could not afford to buy it. With every increment in the price of flour or grain, several million more are pushed below the breadline.

The cost of rice has risen by 20% over the past year, maize by 50%, wheat by 100%. Biofuels aren't entirely to blame - by taking land out of food production they exacerbate the effects of bad harvests and rising demand - but almost all the major agencies are now warning against expansion. And almost all the major governments are ignoring them.

Just sayin'

The cost of hysteria

Canada is the latest country to decide that the Kyoto Protocol is an onerous burden for no discernable gain

In a somewhat surprising development, Canada, a long-time supporter of the Kyoto Protocol, announced that it may want to join the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), a six-nation coalition focusing on voluntary emission-reduction steps and technology transfers. Many environmentalists oppose AP6 out of a fear that it may undermine political support for the legally binding Kyoto treaty.

Legally binding? Who they gonna get to enforce it, the US?

Canada has run the numbers and Kyoto just doesn't add up

Reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions to meet Kyoto Protocol targets by 2012 could cost each Canadian upwards of $3,500 a year for the next several years, according to research done by The Fraser Institute, an independent research organization with offices across Canada.

The alternative is to purchase foreign emission credits, a move that would transfer $30 billion from Canada to other countries.

"In order to meet the Kyoto targets, Canada will have to make drastic cuts in its emission levels. No matter how we go about it, meeting a target that begins less than a year away is going to incur significant costs," said Nicholas Schneider, a policy analyst with The Fraser Institute and author of Welcome Back, Kyoto, published in the April issue of Fraser Forum, The Fraser Institute's monthly magazine of critical thought.

"One of the questions governments need to consider is, are Canadians willing to pay those costs?"

Schneider notes that research in the U.S. found people are willing to spend $13 to $21 per month to reduce climate change.

"If you convert that to Canadian dollars in 2007, that works out to a range of $200 to $300 per year - far below the $3,500 per person per year that may be required."

And here's the rub, the radical anti-Capitalists who are advocating Kyoto, and who are fueling the hysterical, end-of-the-world doomsday scenarios know precisely what the costs to successful capitalist nations are

Schneider's research looks at Canada's current emission levels, the Kyoto targets, and compares the results achieved by other countries to the targets for Canada. What he finds is that the easy options available to other countries are not available to Canada.

"You can control emissions by lowering a country's population or its GDP. But it's unlikely government would choose these policies since Canada has a policy of increasing population largely through immigration, and Canadians would be averse to falling real incomes," Schneider said.

And it is precisely this result that is intended. How else can you explain the fact that they were so willing to exempt the worlds largests carbon dioxide emmitters, namely China, India and Mexico, in order to make the deal "legally binding"? Because the target was, ultimately, the United States: To bring down the most successful economic engine in the world, and end capitalism as the driving force in the world.

Adding up the costs has forced people to challenge the assumptions advocated by the "environmental" groups promoting the doom-and-gloom environmental apocolypse

Before Greenpeace or anyone else criticises the Government for its failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it should cite the valid verified scientific proof that carbon dioxide causes warming of the earth to an extent that would involve New Zealanders paying President Putin of Russia for so-called carbon credits. This today from Owen McShane, chair of the policy panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition responding to a statement Friday by Bunny McDiarmid, executive director of Greenpeace which called for the immediate introduction of a carbon tax.

"There is no scientific evidence that justifies a carbon tax," said Mr McShane. "All we have is a scenario promoted by government funded scientists who are part of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on computer modelling that has been slammed by many independent climatologists around the world as  lacking any scientific validity or credibility.

The renewed scrutiny brought to bear when governments start groking the costs of Kyoto has forced people to realize that the Emperor has no clothes: In this case the fact that there is no scientific evidence to support the draconian measures  policy makers would have have to enact.

"What Kyoto will do, like the sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages, is make people and organisations pay for emissions of carbon dioxide by buying credits from countries like Russia that have vast tracts of forested land.

"New Zealand should have followed the example of other Pacific Rim countries like Australia and America, and refrained from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol until the science of climate is settled. Currently, and since 1998, the earth has been cooling. New Zealand still has the right, up until February next year, to withdraw from the Kyoto agreement without penalty, and it should do so."

And so should everyone else.

There are whole host of good reasons why the US and other countries should work to cut their carbon emmissions, and use less fossil fuels; not the least of which is national security. The more oil the US and other countries import, the more money flows into the hands of dictators, despots, and Islamists.

If I had my way, each and every oil and coal burning power plant in the US would be replaced by clean nuclear generators.

But none of that negates the fact that Anthropogenic Climate Change is a play to destroy capitalism by avowed Communists and has zero basis in scientific fact.

Dissecting Anthropogenic Warming

For today's discussion on Global Warming, I reprint (with permission) an article that will appear in "The General" a student publication of the Wooster School in Danbury CT. The Wooster School is a K-12 College Prep school and the following article is by Editor in Chief of The General, Junior Carl Wolk

Growing Doubts over the Extent of Anthropogenic Warming
by Carl Wolk

“Time” magazine recently declared to the world, “In the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it.” This statement is the epitome of misinformation thrown daily at the American public by the media and those in power; not only has “the serious debate” continued to rage on, but the arguments presented by the skeptics are rock solid in their scientific foundations, and should be closely examined.

To understand fully what factors are at play, it is critical to understand the behavioral cycles of the earth’s temperatures. Every 100,000 years or so, the earth enters an Ice Age, only to reemerge into a warm period. Many environmentalists point to the fact that carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels and global temperature follow the exact same trend, implying that the increase in CO₂ levels that the atmosphere has recently undergone will cause a jump in temperatures, just as it did in the past. Yet this is very misleading, as the idea comes from the assumption that the earth’s temperature is dependent on CO₂ concentration, when in fact, it is just the opposite. Ice ages actually suppress CO₂ levels: colder oceans absorb more CO₂, and larger ice caps reduce the CO₂ exchange with the atmosphere.

Between 1100 AD and 1250 AD, the Medieval Maximum, in which the sun was especially strong, brought about a worldwide warming period, which was followed by the Little Ice Age (1650-1850). The Little Ice Age was brought about by the “Maunder Minimum,” which was accompanied by few sunspots, less irradiance, and low magnetism. Since then, solar activity has increased to its highest level in eight-thousand years (Sami Solanki), producing much of the warming we have experienced since 1850.

For a long time, scientists have recognized the correlation between solar intensity and global temperatures, but because they lacked the ability to explain scientifically how that relationship functions, little credibility had been given to the argument. Recently, however, a connection has been found—one that could spell the death of the Greenhouse theory.

When solar sunspots are at their peak, the plasma solar winds around the earth also increase in intensity. These solar winds block cosmic rays (rays of energy from imploded stars), which enter the earth’s atmosphere and react with nitrogen, creating carbon-14 (C-14) atoms and liberating electrons. Those electrons then ionize other molecules that cluster together in a chain reaction to condense water molecules, thus creating clouds.

When 2000 scientists are wrong

On Sept 12th 2005, Hurricane Katrina had already happened and Al Gore gave a speech on Hurricanes and Global Warming. He said (in part)

the scientific community is warning us that the average hurricane will continue to get stronger because of global warming. A scientist at MIT has published a study well before this tragedy showing that since the 1970s, hurricanes in both the Atlantic and the Pacific have increased in duration, and in intensity, by about 50 %. The newscasters told us after Hurricane Katrina went over the southern tip of Florida that there was a particular danger for the Gulf Coast of the hurricanes becoming much stronger because it was passing over unusually warm waters in the gulf. The waters in the gulf have been unusually warm. The oceans generally have been getting warmer. And the pattern is exactly consistent with what scientists have predicted for twenty years. Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming. [applause] It is important to learn the lessons of what happens when scientific evidence and clear authoritative warnings are ignored in order to induce our leaders not to do it again and not to ignore the scientists again and not to leave us unprotected in the face of those threats that are facing us right now. [applause]

But where are all the hurricanes today? By this time last year we had had nine named tropical storms and four hurricanes: Cindy, Dennis, Emily and Irene.

To date in 2006 we have had only three named Tropical Storms and no hurricanes.

Hurricanes require warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and last year the tropical Atlantic sea surface temperatures were running well above normal. Global warming was the explanation given by most 'experts' the media interviewed. And since global warming will only get worse, those SSTs were expected to just keep on increasing.

But now those same regions that had anomalously warm SSTs last year are -- gasp! -- near normal. The accompanying graphic shows large areas in the tropical Atlantic even a little cooler than normal.

And what's more

A new scientific article now accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the globally averaged upper ocean cooled dramatically between 2003 and 2005, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years!

So what happens when the "Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind" are all wrong?

Well....nothing.

Kyoto Update

After criticizing the US for years about not adopting the Kyoto Protocol, it turns out Europe hasn't adopted it either.

New data has shown that the European Union (EU) remains embarrassingly off track for meeting its pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, the UN climate-change pact it championed after a US walkout.

Instead of falling, EU greenhouse-gas pollution actually rose in the latest year of monitoring, adding to the task of meeting the Kyoto goals, according to figures released by the European Environment Agency (EAA) in Copenhagen.

"Despite the various policy initiatives, this report highlights that the trend is still going in the wrong direction," declared EAA Executive Director Jacqueline McGlade.

Despite their negligence, it looks like we'll be OK anyway.

Using temperature readings from the past 100 years, 1,000 computer simulations and the evidence left in ancient tree rings, Duke University scientists announced yesterday that "the magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions."

Supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the Duke researchers noted that some observational studies predicted that the Earth's temperature could rise as much as 16 degrees in this century because of an increase in carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases.

The Duke estimates show the chances that the planet's temperature will rise even by 11 degrees is only 5 percent, which falls in line with previous, less-alarming predictions that meteorologists made almost three decades ago.

At least the US stated quite clearly that it wasn't going to be a part of Kyoto.

The least Europe could have done was admit the same.

Scientific method

ABC News is soliciting evidence from viewers that global warming is real.

Witnessing the impact of global warming in your life?   

ABC News wants to hear from you. We're currently producing a report on the increasing changes in our physical environment, and are looking for interesting examples of people coping with the differences in their daily lives. Has your life been directly affected by global warming?

We want to hear and see your stories. Have you noticed changes in your own backyard or hometown? The differences can be large or small — altered blooming schedules, unusual animals that have arrived in your community, higher water levels encroaching on your property.

Show us what you've seen. You can include video material of the environmental change, or simply tell your story via webcam. Please fill out the form below, and be sure to include captions or other descriptive information if you're sending video. We hope to hear from you. Thank you.

No video? Share your story in words here.

Who needs scientists anyway? They might disagree with your conclusion, then what will happen?

An Inconvenient Rebuttal

Former Senator Al Gore assembled a group of scientists to back up his claim that human produced CO2 is changing the world's climate for the worse. But are the scientists he collected for his film "An Inconvenient Truth" climatologists or just experts in other fields? Tom Harris writing for the Canada Free Press does the legwork

...[What] Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."

This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.

So we have a smaller fraction.

But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."

So why did Al Gore avoid using actual Climatologists when preparing his argument and film and book? Because actual climatologists disagree with his conclusions.

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

What is professor Bob Carter's position on the cause of Global Climate change?

In January 2006 Carter told The Australian that "atmospheric CO2 is not a primary forcing agent for temperature change," arguing instead that "any cumulative human signal is so far undetectable at a global level and, if present, is buried deeply in the noise of natural variation". [5]

But why take Professor Carter's word for it?

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

..."The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says [ Dr. Boris] Winterhalter [former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki]. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Professor Carter, it turns out, is only one among many who dispute Gore's conclusions and evidence.

Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.

The bottom line

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."

You see, in science, if there is disagreement among major players about a theory then you can not claim "this is what science tells us". You can at best say "this is what some scientists believe may be occurring."

But in this case, it seems, that the majority of the scientists whose expertise is actually climate change, the verdict appears to go against Gore's claims.

The fact that Al Gore did not include the consensus opinion of the actual experts in the field which was under consideration means that Gore is presenting the conclusion he wants you to hear not the conclusions supported by the evidence.

And that may be a lotta things, but it ain't science.

 

Healing the Ozone hole

Back in 2000, Friends of the Earth published an article in Foreign Policy In Focus decrying the demise of the Ozone layer. Author Jessica Vallette Revere key points were

• The U.S. is spending billions of dollars each year to combat the effects of ozone depletion and global warming on human health and weather patterns.
• Two groundbreaking international treaties, the Montreal and Kyoto protocols, have failed to adequately curb use of the chemicals causing ozone depletion and global warming.
• Ozone depletion and global warming are both man-made and interconnected, and they constitute the most serious environmental crises ever.

She also notes that

U.S. treatment of the Montreal and Kyoto protocols as mutually exclusive environmental treaties not only fails to internalize the new scientific evidence demonstrating the correlation between ozone depletion and global warming but also leads to ineffective, discordant policymaking that does not adequately protect life on earth against these synergistic atmospheric threats. In addition, the Clinton administration has accommodated industry interests bent on prolonging the use of ozone depleting and global warming chemicals. Washington, for instance, has refused to accelerate the HCFC phaseout or to close a loophole that allows methyl bromide (MB) use in developing countries even after 2005, when it is phased out in developed countries.

Well, it looks like the Bush Administration has fixed that pesky hole in the ozone. According to the AP

The ozone hole over the Antarctic is likely to begin contracting in the future and might disappear by 2050 because of a reduction in the release of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting gases, according to a team of Japanese scientists....

Chlorofluorocarbon levels in the Earth's atmosphere have been declining since the mid-1990s due to international efforts to reduce emissions.

The new findings are based on a series of numerical simulations carried out by Eiji Akiyoshi of the National Institute for Environmental Studies, near Tokyo, using projected emissions of chlorofluorocarbons and other gases blamed for the ozone hole....

The team's findings are in line with research by other scientists, including a favorable outlook from U.S. scientists published in the journal Nature earlier this month.

Recent reports also show that the rise in global temperature is no where near what environment alarmists have been saying

Duke University scientists announced yesterday that "the magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions."

    Supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the Duke researchers noted that some observational studies predicted that the Earth's temperature could rise as much as 16 degrees in this century because of an increase in carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases.

    The Duke estimates show the chances that the planet's temperature will rise even by 11 degrees is only 5 percent, which falls in line with previous, less-alarming predictions that meteorologists made almost three decades ago.

Professor Bob Carter, I think, called it right when he said

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

He also pointed out that many in the scientific community have been stifled when they refused to go along with the Global Warming populist consensus theory

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research.

So when Friends of the Earth criticized Clinton for not doing enough to fix the hole in the ozone, will they now come out and praise the Bush Administration for effecting its reduction?

Of course I'm being facetious since Bush is no more responsible for the hole in the ozone than Clinton was. On the other hand, since it appears that the reduction of freons and halons in the atmosphere has contributed significantly to the reversal of the Ozone hole's fate, we can thank the first President Bush for that.

But that's not likely...

UPDATE: Last year the Environmental alarmists were convinced that Global Warming was the cause of last year's killer hurricane season. What a difference a year makes

...conditions don't appear ripe for a repeat of 2005's record activity, the National Hurricane Center predicted Monday.     There will be up to 16 named storms, the center predicted, which would be significantly less than last year's record 27.

Natural disaster

Al Gore is out hawking his new book and movie, both titled "An Inconvenient Truth". If you couldn't guess, they're about Global Warming a situation which he calls "a planetary emergency."

"He's taking an increasingly high-profile role in working on the climate change issue," Gore spokesman Michael Feldman said.

Is his plan to run for President by ignoring the Global War on Terrorism and focusing on Global Warming?

Gore repeatedly has brushed aside talk of another presidential bid, telling a Tennessee audience last month, "I'm not planning to be a candidate again. I haven't reached a stage in my life where I'm willing to say I will never consider something like this."

A payment of $40,000 to a Democratic polling firm stirred political talk, but pollster Mark Penn said it was settlement of a 2000 account.

Unfortunately, the actual truth is inconvenient for Al Gore

Global warming may not be as dramatic as some scientists have predicted.

   Using temperature readings from the past 100 years, 1,000 computer simulations and the evidence left in ancient tree rings, Duke University scientists announced yesterday that "the magnitude of future global warming will likely fall well short of current highest predictions."

    Supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, the Duke researchers noted that some observational studies predicted that the Earth's temperature could rise as much as 16 degrees in this century because of an increase in carbon dioxide or other so-called greenhouse gases.

    The Duke estimates show the chances that the planet's temperature will rise even by 11 degrees is only 5 percent, which falls in line with previous, less-alarming predictions that meteorologists made almost three decades ago.

    In recent years, much academic research has indicated otherwise, often in colorful terms and citing the United States as the biggest contributor to global warming. This month, a University of Toronto scientist predicted that a quarter of the planet's plants and animals would be extinct by 2050 because of rising temperatures. On Wednesday, two geophysics professors at the University of Chicago warned those who eat red meat that their increased flatulence contributes to greenhouse gases.

    Last year, Oregon State University research linked future "societal disruptions" with global warming, while the Carnegie Institution reported that the insulating influence of northern forests alone would raise the Earth's temperature by 6 degrees. In 2004, Harvard University scientists informed Congress that warming had doomed the planet to climatic "shocks and surprises."

    The Duke research, however, found substantial ups and downs in the Earth's temperature before modern times, countering other studies that confine noticeable temperature increases to the industrialized era. Marked climate change in other centuries resulted from "external forcing," said the Duke findings, citing volcanic eruptions and other influences.

    "Our reconstruction supports a lot of variability in the past," said research director Gabriele Hegerl of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.

    Although her study found that the Earth is, indeed, warming, Ms. Hegerl discounts dire predictions of skyrocketing temperatures. The probability that the climate's "sensitivity" to greenhouse-gas levels would result in drastically higher temperatures is "substantially" reduced, she said.

You'd think that information such as is contained here would deflate the silly rhetoric of Al Gore and his ilk. But the fact is that there are those who deny evolution despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and their mirror are those who deny the facts of Global Warming no matter what is said.

The real Natural Disaster is humans who choose to remain ignorant and those who will exploit them.

And there's a bunch of them.