By Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill
After the Paul Nurse programme the other day, eyebrows were raised over one of the claims in the show, namely that emissions from fossil fuel burning dwarfed natural emissions. Here’s an excerpt from the transcript:
Bob Bindschadler: We know how much fossil fuel we take out of the ground. We know how much we sell. We know how much we burn. And that is a huge amount of carbon dioxide. It’s about seven gigatons per year right now.
Paul Nurse: And is that enough to explain...?
Bob Bindschadler: Natural causes only can produce - yes, there are volcanoes popping off and things like that, and coming out of the ocean, only about one gigaton per year. So there’s just no question that human activity is producing a massively large proportion of the carbon dioxide.
Paul Nurse: So seven times more.
Bob Bindschadler: That’s right.
Aynsley Kellow, writing in the comments said that this was wrong, and so I thought I would try to clarify things by writing to Dr Bindschadler and finding out his source. This is it.
The source is the Arctic Impact Climate Assessment apparently, although I haven’t actually looked for the graph in its original location yet. You can see the 7:1 ratio in the front graph, and you will also see that the graph is comparing two anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide, namely fossil fuels and land-use changes. Dr Bindschadler has agreed that this graph therefore doesn’t support the claim he made in the Horizon programme.
Dr Bindschadler suggests that the 7:1 figure is actually not that far out from the correct figure for netanthropogenic:natural carbon dioxide emissions, so the effect of the mistake is limited. We should note, however, that he was originally speaking about emissions rather than net emissions. But even if you look at the net figures I still don’t think the numbers are correct. Prof Kellow has pointed me to this page at Skeptical Science, which puts the net figures at 29 GtCO2 emissions for anthropogenic and a net 17 GtCO2 (450-439+338-332) absorbtion from natural sources. For what Prof Nurse and Dr Bindschadler were actually talking about in the Horizon show, gross emissions, the 7:1 ratio for anthropogenic to natural becomes, by my reckoning 1:27 (i.e. with natural emissions completely dwarfing anthropogenic).*
So in terms of what is interesting us here, the figures in the Horizon show were clearly completely wrong, which I guess we knew. It’s good to have confirmation of this though. The question is, what does this mean for Prof Nurse and the reputation of the BBC?
*Note that the Skeptical Science page is talking in terms of GtCO2while Dr Bindshadler was talking Gt carbon, but it’s the ratios we are interested in.
Comment by Professor Aynsley Kellow
I did remark to His Grace on the irony of Dr Bindschadler quoting the Hockey Stick at him!
For those interested in the detail of the various fluxes, according to the Koran (AR4 IPCC WG1), I refer you to Fig 7.3, which states the fluxes in GT C pa. Here you will find the following figures for anthropogenic fluxes:
Fossil Fuel: 6.4 GT out
Oceans: 20 Gt pa out; 22.2 in (A net anthropogenic sink of 2.2 GT pa)
Land use change: 1.6 GT pa out; Land sink: 2.6 GT pa in (A net anthropogenic sink of 1 GT pa).
The annual non-anthropogenic flux out is adds up to 190.2 GT pa.
The nonanthropogenic flux in is given as 190.2 GT pa
(This seems strange! The best estimate - it’s in the IPCC, it must be true - is that nature is in perfect balance! Wouldn’t you know it!)
The IPCC did not see fit to include Dr Bindschadler’s volconoes as a separate item.
According to this figure, anthropogenic sink activity offsets half of fossil fuel emissions of 6.4 GT pa, so the net anthropogenic figure is a mere 1.7% of natural fluxes (3.2 of 190.2), if we want to talk nets rather than grosses. This is not something we should ignore, but let’s at least state it accurately.
Of course, put in those terms, it doesn’t frighten the children and horses. Either Bindschadler and Nurse knew this and wanted to frighten same children and horses, or were talking through their hats.
Either way, it rather destroys the point of the program, since climate science seems most under attack from Sir Paul Nurse.
By Kenneth Schortgen Jr., Finance Examiner
A new study published in the journal, Climate Change, suggested that the world should impose a new tax on milk and meats to stem the growth of global warming.
In a Discovery News article from Monday, the authors of the study believe that imposing a tax on foodstuffs will get people to cut back on proteins in their diet, and thus save carbon emissions.
“This tax is not at all a matter of forcing people to become vegetarians but merely moving toward a slightly more climate-smart diet,” said one of the study’s authors, Stefan Wirsenius of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in a press release.
Tacking about $82 onto the cost of beef for every “ton of carbon dioxide equivalent” would reduce Europe’s beef consumption by 15 percent. By taxing all meats and milk, Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by about 7 percent, according to the study.
Economically, this tax and policy would be a disaster to the western nations of the world, as their diets are tied to the need for protein to deal with colder climates. Inflation on all food, including fruit and vegetables has grown over 30% in the past decade, and in this world-wide recession any additional taxes would cause more people to go into poverty than it would help the environment.
In the end, environmentalists have a difficult time weighing in the overall cost of their ideological programs. They don’t see the ramifications and consequences of forcing change on people and culture that does not want to change, and would only create hardships that outweigh any potential good.
The question remains this… if environmental scientists want to fight global warming, then why do they waste so much time trying to impose their lifestyles on others? Why not instead, spend the time and energy to create technology that would clean the atmosphere of what they perceive is too much carbon, and that way they affect very few, but benefit a planet?
Continue reading on Examiner.com: Global warming advocates suggest a tax on milk and meats - National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com
World Climate Report
A common rhetorical device to make potential future climate sounds even scarier, is to invoke the concept of “tipping points” - events that no one is sure when or even if they will happen, but suggest that when and if they do come to pass, they will lead to some sort of catastrophe that can’t be recovered from. Of course, global warming will push us closer to reaching these “tipping points.”
President Obama’s advisor on Science and Technology and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, John Holdren, is a fond user of such scare tactics.
Here is a portion of Holdren’s testimony before the (now-disbanded) House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming back on December 2, 2009:
But these more or less steadily increasing impacts are not the only possible outcome. Climate scientists worry about “tipping points” in the climate system, including ecosystems, meaning thresholds beyond which a small additional increase in average temperature or some associated climate variable results in major changes to the affected system. Examples of tipping points of potential concern include the complete disappearance of Arctic sea ice in summer, leading to drastic changes in ocean circulation and climate patterns across the whole Northern Hemisphere; drastic acceleration of the rate of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, driving rates of sea-level increase that could reach 6 feet per century or more; ocean acidification from CO2 absorption reaching a level that causes massive disruption in ocean food webs; and a flood of carbon dioxide and methane from warming tundra and thawing permafrost, accelerating the onset of all of the other impacts of concern.
While our understanding of the global climate system and our ability to project its future behavior have grown enormously over the past couple of decades, we cannot yet predict with confidence exactly where on a rising temperature trajectory these or other thresholds would be crossed. It seems clear, however, that the probability of crossing one or more of them goes up sharply as the global-average surface temperature increase compared to 1900 goes above 3.6F (2C). That is a major reason for the growing global consensus that worldwide efforts should limit heat-trapping emissions sufficiently to hold the average temperature increase to 3.6F (2C) or less.
Ok then.
The latest science indicates that perhaps Holdren ought to rethink this whole line of argument. It is grossly outdated and misinformed.
First off, a flood of new research has hit the library shelves concerning the rates of ice flow of Greenland’s glaciers indicating that many of the proposed mechanisms for large and rapid ice loss there do not work the way they have been postulated to. And, new findings into how they do work indicate a much less drastic response to a warming climate. For examples and summaries of these new findings, see here, here, and here, among other places.
But, there’s more!
Now, a team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, in Hamburg, Germany, led by Steffen Tietsche, examine whether or not there is indeed a “tipping point” when it comes to Arctic sea ice coverage.
To do this, they used the Max Plank Institute climate model, and “prescribed” ice-free conditions during one Arctic summer. They then watched the model output to see how the conditions evolved during the coming months and years. If the Arctic remained locked into an ice-free summer state, then this was a good indication that a tipping point existed in this system.
But, what they found was virtually the opposite.
It turns out, that in the model at least, the extra heat that was absorbed by the ice-free ocean during the summer was largely lost to space during the following winter which itself was marked by an ice cover than was anomalously thin and thus less insulating. While the surface temperature anomalies were quite large (and positive) during the fall and early winter immediately following the ice-free summer, by late winter the temperature anomalies were back within the range of normal variability. And the ice coverage the following summer had nearly completely recovered to its average state.
Read more here.
By Tom Nelson
Harsh winter a sign of disruptive climate change, report says - washingtonpost.com
This winter’s extreme weather—with heavy snowfall in some places and unusually low temperatures—is in fact a sign of how climate change disrupts long-standing patterns, according to a new report by the National Wildlife Federation.
...
Richard Somerville, who was a lead writer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report, said the public needs to grasp that it is important to reduce carbon dioxide quickly because it stays in the atmosphere for centuries.
Icecap Note: It is shocking how little this so called expert knows about CO2 - see here that the real residence time is 5-7 years. Not surprising the WWF did this study. They have been front and center supporting the AGW scam.
...
A poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press made a similar point: Respondents were asked to rank 21 issues in terms of their priority. Global warming came in next to last. They added obesity to move it up a category from the bottom.
That was not a surprise, as it has been last before.
But this time it was worse than usual: Just 28 percent of respondents listed global warming as a top priority, down from 35 percent in 2008.
Economy Dominates Public’s Agenda, Dims Hopes for the Future: Section 1: Public’s Policy Priorities - Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
Roughly four-in-ten Democrats (41%) say that dealing with global warming should be a top priority for the president and Congress, compared with 29% of independents and just 10% of Republicans. The wide partisan gap over the importance of dealing with global warming is not new - it was approximately as large in 2010 and 2009.
See post and more here.
C3 headlines
Read here. Map source here. A new peer-reviewed study (Clegg et al.) firmly establishes that modern global warming is significantly less than the global warming experienced in the high latitudes, during the summers of multiple periods over the last 3,000 years. Specifically, historical global warming is still unprecedented, and modern warming is a blip in comparison.
Enlarged here.
“The authors conducted a high-resolution analysis of midge assemblages found in the sediments of Moose Lake in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.....The results of the study are portrayed in the accompanying figure, where it can be seen, in the words of Clegg et al., that “a piecewise linear regression analysis identifies a significant change point at ca 4000 years before present (cal BP),” with “a decreasing trend after this point.” And from 2500 cal BP to the present, there is a clear multi-centennial oscillation about the declining trend line, with its peaks and valleys defining the temporal locations of the Roman Warm Period, the Dark Ages Cold Period, the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age.....and, finally, the start of the Current Warm Period, which is still not expressed to any significant degree compared to the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods.” [Benjamin F. Clegg, Gina H. Clarke, Melissa L. Chipman, Michael Chou, Ian R. Walker, Willy Tinner, Feng Sheng Hu 2010: Quaternary Science Reviews]
By Christopher Booker
In its obsessive desire to promote the virtues of electric cars, the BBC proudly showed us last week how its reporter Brian Milligan was able to drive an electric Mini from London to Edinburgh in a mere four days - with nine stops of up to 10 hours to recharge the batteries (with electricity from fossil fuels).
What the BBC omitted to tell us was that in the 1830s, a stagecoach was able to make the same journey in half the time, with two days and nights of continuous driving. This did require 50 stops to change horses, but each of these took only two minutes, giving a total stopping time of just over an hour and a half.
Considering that horse power was carbon-free, emitting only organic fertiliser along the way, isn’t it time the eco-conscious BBC became more technologically savvy?
------
Fast becoming something of a modest national joke is the Comment is Free section of The Guardian’s website, which supposedly gives readers the right to comment on items by the paper’s contributors. The joke is that the paper then employs a team of ruthless moderators to censor any comments which they dislike, however politely and rationally these may be put.
Last week Bob Ward, who is employed by the Grantham Institute to act as a PR man and general attack dog on behalf of the global warming industry, wrote a piece bemoaning the lack of media coverage given to the claim that 2010 was the warmest year in history. Scores of the readers’ comments which then flooded in to disagree were duly marked “deleted”. Comment may be free - but only, it seems, so long as it toes The Guardian’s party line.
By Brad Wilmouth
Update; See BOB WEBSTER’S EXCELLENT COMMENTARY Extreme Climate or Extreme Politics? on the ABC and media coverage of the issue here.
On Friday’s World News on ABC, correspondent Linsey Davis filed a one-sided report in which she cited the views of climate scientists who blame the recent cold temperatures and high amounts of snowfall on global warming. After recounting the recent extreme weather around the country, Davis continued:
If this winter seems especially brutal, scientists say you’re right. ABC News contacted 10 climate scientists to ask their take, if an extreme winter like the one we’re having is the way of the future. The consensus? Global warming is playing a role by shifting weather patterns in unpredictable ways. Many say the forecast for the future calls for record-breaking precipitation and extreme temperatures year round. And that means winters with more snow.
The ABC correspondent concluded the report by noting the unusually cold temperatures in Boston:
LINSEY DAVIS: Here in Boston, the good news is that the snow has stopped, at least for now. But the bad news is that temperatures are expected to drop below zero for the first time in this area in six years. Diane?
DIANE SAWYER: And this could be the new normal, as you say. Linsey Davis reporting.
Notably, in July 2005, ABC’s World News filed a report touting predictions that hurricane intensity would likely increase due to global warming, omitting the theory that hurricane intensities go through cycles over decades. The report was recycled in September 2007 as a nearly identical piece ran.
Below is a complete transcript of the report from the Friday, January 21, World News on ABC:
DIANE SAWYER: And up next, millions of people across the East saying enough already with the snow and ice and cold. Another winter storm roared through today. More records were toppled, and it heightened that question: Do the leading scientists now agree that this is global warming? And this is what winter will be from now on? Linsey Davis is in Boston.
LINSEY DAVIS: More than half the country spent the day digging out yet again, a rough winter of broken records. Miami Beach, Florida, has just shivered through their coldest December on record. On the 14th last month, Atlanta dropped to 14 degrees, a record low for the day. More than 55 inches of snow has fallen this season on Hartford, Connecticut, which averages 46 inches in an entire winter. Typically, Boston gets about 42 inches worth of snowfall each year. But just in the last month, this area’s had about 50 inches of snow. That’s an entire season’s worth of snowfall in just the first month of winter.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Feel like I’m in a different state right now. I ain’t never seen nothing like this in Georgia.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Honestly, I think it’s enough is enough.
DAVIS: School administrators are struggling, too, not only with the snow days wracking up, but when to cancel outdoor recess. In Houston, the principal at Frazier Elementary typically keeps the kids inside if the mercury dips below 45 degrees. But in hardy South Dakota, the principle of Parkston Elementary says it has to be below bone-chilling 0 to keep his kids inside. If this winter seems especially brutal, scientists say you’re right. ABC News contacted 10 climate scientists to ask their take, if an extreme winter like the one we’re having is the way of the future. The consensus? Global warming is playing a role by shifting weather patterns in unpredictable ways. Many say the forecast for the future calls for record-breaking precipitation and extreme temperatures year round. And that means winters with more snow.
DR. RICHARD SOMERVILLE, CLIMATE SCIENTIST: In a warmer world, more water evaporates from the ocean and more precipitation falls down from the sky. And that’s what we’re seeing.
DAVIS: Here in Boston, the good news is that the snow has stopped, at least for now. But the bad news is that temperatures are expected to drop below zero for the first time in this area in six years. Diane?
SAWYER: And this could be the new normal, as you say. Linsey Davis reporting.
Read story here. H/t Marc Morano.
“The ABC news article interview of the climate scientists is actually a confession of the failure of the scientific robustness of the 2007 IPCC WG 1 report.” Roger Pielke Sr. here.
Scientific Alliance Newsletter
According to the World Meteorological Organisation, 2010 was officially the warmest year on record, just over half a degree warmer on average than the baseline of 1961-1990. This is based on three separate data sets: the Hadley Centre/UEA one in the UK and the NASA and National Climatic Data Center ones in the USA. The press release tempers this by saying that there was no statistical difference between 1998, 2005 and 2010. Indeed, the average temperature for 2010 was only 0.01C above the figure for 2005 and 0.02 above 1998’s average. These differences are well within the margin of error of plus/minus 0.09.
To be fair to the WMO, their press release is headlined 2010 equals record for world’s warmest year. But reporting was not always quite so measured. The BBC’s Richard Black has this statement at the beginning of his report: “2010 was the warmest year since global temperature records began in 1850 - although margins of uncertainty make it a statistical tie with 1998 and 2005.” Meanwhile, the Guardian and Independent decided to stick with the UK Met Office figures, with stories headlined Met Office: 2010 was second warmest year on record and Last year was second hottest on record, say scientists.
The WMO itself argued that the latest data confirmed the fact of human-driven global warming. In their words:
“ ‘The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,’ said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. ‘The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.’
Over the ten years from 2001 to 2010, global temperatures have averaged 0.46C (0.83F) above the 1961-1990 average, and are the highest ever recorded for a 10-year period since the beginning of instrumental climate records. Recent warming has been especially strong in Africa, parts of Asia, and parts of the Arctic, with many subregions registering temperatures 1.2 to 1.4C (2.2 to 2.5F) above the long-term average.”
But, looked at dispassionately, the evidence of sustained global warming driven by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the air has been pretty sparse for more than a decade (and even before that was merely circumstantial). And of course, as readers of this newsletter and other sources will know, there are considerable uncertainties associated with the collection and averaging of temperature data from across the world.
Official weather stations, of which there are many fewer now than half a century ago, tend to be concentrated in developed countries and data from some is inevitably contaminated by the Urban Heat Island effect. On the other hand, there are vast tracts of ocean and sparsely populated areas, including deserts in both the Tropics and polar regions, where weather stations are few and far between. Attempts have been made to fill in the gaps by projecting or assuming temperatures in parts of the Antarctic from data gathered at the nearest stations, but these have been quite rightly discredited. So data collection is by no means geographically uniform.
The WMO statement about regional warming is particularly interesting given that the generally accepted hypothesis of the enhanced greenhouse effect predicts that warming would be greatest at the Poles and least in the Tropics. The press statement indeed picks out ‘parts of’ the Arctic as having suffered the greatest warming, but says nothing about the Antarctic, which is a pretty sure sign that warming has been modest there at most. The fact that Africa and parts of Asia also feature in the statement fails to fit with the hypothesised picture. But reports of unusually warm weather in any region tell us nothing useful about climatic trends (neither do reports of very cold weather in parts of Europe which the WMO, to its credit, also mentions in the press release).
Meanwhile, things on the climate change policy front continue as normal. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme, which has always seemed ill-designed and ineffective, has also been seen as vulnerable to fraud by some commentators. Trading rights to emit carbon dioxide was intended to put a cap on emissions from individual companies and sites and so reward those who were energy efficient (who could sell their allocated permits) and punish those who did not cut back (who would have to buy more permits). Having an effective system means keeping accurate and reliable records, and one concern has been that shady dealing could be covered up within the complexity of the system.
Now it has been reported on euractiv.com that up to two million permits have gone missing and been sold on the spot market: Great carbon theft may have netted 14m Euros of permits. This is not the first such problem, but it is the biggest so far. It was caused apparently by phishing scams which have gathered passwords necessary to trade the permits. The seriousness of it has prompted the shutdown of the national carbon registries and hence the ETS itself.
In the same item, it was reported that “Trevor Sikorski, director of carbon markets and environmental products research at Barclays Capital, predicted that the closure could cost carbon traders around €70m per week.” To put it another way, a scheme which seems both ineffective and vulnerable to serious fraud is providing profits to traders of 3.5bn a year. All of this, ultimately, is a cost paid by consumers and taxpayers.
If we must spend such sums (plus the other additional costs of the ETS) and we must use it for something which will help to reduce carbon intensity, the quest for affordable, reliable renewable energy seems a much better bet. See newsletter here.