Our paper “Limits on CO2 Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth” has just been published in Energy and Environment. (Vol 20, Jan 2009). [Copies may be downloaded here. Preprint with figures in color here]

We show in Figure 1 the well established observation that the global atmospheric temperature anomalies of Earth reached a maximum in 1998.

See larger image here.

This plot shows oscillations that are highly correlated with El Nino/La Nina and volcanic eruptions. There also appears to be a positive temperature trend that could be due to CO2 climate forcing.

We examined this data for evidence of CO2 climate forcing.  We start by assumed that CO2 forcing has the following signature.

1. The climate forcing of CO2 according to the IPCC varies as ln(CO2) which is nearly linear over the range of this data. One would expect that the temperature response to follow this function.

2. The atmospheric CO2 is well mixed and shows a variation with latitude which is less than 4% from pole to pole. Thus one would expect that the latitude variation of the temperature anomalies from CO2 forcing to be also small.

Thus, changes in the temperature anomaly T that are oscillatory, negative or that vary strongly with latitude are inconsistent with CO2 forcing. The latitude dependence of the UAH data is shown in Figure 2.

See larger image here.

The anomalies are for NoExtropics, Tropics, SoExtropics and Global. The average trends are 0.28, 0.08, 0.06, and 0.14 K/decade respectively. If the climate forcing were only from CO2 one would expect from property #2 a small variation with latitude.  However, NoExtropics is 2 times that of the global and 4 times that of the Tropics.  Thus one concludes that the climate forcing in the NoExtropics includes more than CO2 forcing. These non-CO2 effects include: land use [Pielke et al. 2007]; industrialization [McKitrick and Michaels 2007, Kalnay and Cai 2003, DeLaat and Maurellis 2006]; high natural variability, and daily nocturnal effects [Walters et al. 2007].

Thus we look to the tropical anomalies. If one is able to determine an underlying trend in the tropics, then assuming that the latitude variation of the intrinsic CO2 effect is small (CO2 property #2), then the global trend should be close to this value.

Read full guest blog here.

A recent paper by Chan and Xu in the International Journal of Climatology looked at trends in landfalling tropical cyclones in East Asia. The paper finds no trends since 1945. From the abstract:

This paper is the first of a two-part series that presents results of a comprehensive study of the variations in the annual number of landfalling tropical cyclones (ATCs) in various parts of East Asia during the period 1945–2004. The objective is to identify possible trends and cycles in such variations, from inter-annual to inter-decadal, and the possible reasons for such variations. The East Asian region is divided into three sub-regions: South (south China, Vietnam and the Philippines), Middle (east China), and North (Korean Peninsula and Japan). . . An important finding from the time series analysis is that none of the ATC time series shows a significant linear trend, which suggests that global warming has not led to a higher frequency of landfalling tropical cyclones or typhoons in any of the regions in Asia.

See full size here.

Considering this finding along with previous research showing no trends in tropical cyclone (i.e., hurricane) landfalls in the United States (e.g., Pielke et al. 2008 in PDF) or Australia (Crompton and McAneney 2008), means that there are few remaining continental locations where such trends might be found. I’d welcome hearing from anyone aware of studies of landfall trends in the other continental regions exposed to tropical cyclones, including the Indian Ocean (including eastern and Horn of Africa) and Eastern Pacific (Mexico).

The data on landfall trends further confirms arguments that global trends in tropical cyclones losses can be explained entirely by growing populations and wealth in regions exposed to tropical cyclone impacts.

Read more here.

Also see this Hurricane/Warming Non-Link: Florida State University: “Global [both Southern and Northern Hemisphere] Tropical Cyclone Activity [still] lowest in 30-years” - Updated April 17, 2009 Ryan N. Maue - Department of Meteorology - COAPS - Florida State University

See larger image here.

In one of the ads of the We Can Solve It campaign of Al Gores Alliance for Climate Protection, its on-screen text says: Save us from this climate crisis ...

See larger video here.

In a recent Repower America ad that laments our weaker economy and a worsening climate crisis, we are told we can take advantage of free energy sources like the wind and sun to solve our problems…

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In a recent Repower America ad, a wizened old rancher, who’s obviously spent too much time exposed to the wind and sun, decries the use of coal and oil as an answer to our energy problems ...

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In a recent Repower America ad, a young construction worker urges cutting our dependence on old dirty fuels that are killing our planet…

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A break from faith in Australia! The continent down under, which until recently adhered to a strict form of global warming dogma, is experiencing an enlightenment.

“Beware the climate of conformity,” warns the headline for a column on global warming in the Sydney Morning Herald. “What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years,” starts the column by Paul Sheehan, one of Australia’s top authors. “Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits?” Sheehan closes by answering in the affirmative, with “a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence.”

“Wong is wrong on ETS,” runs an editorial in The Australian, criticizing Climate Change Minister Penny Wong for her proposal to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme in the midst of a recession. Instead, the newspaper asks the government to listen to the Australian Coal Association and the Australian Industry Group and postpone any decision for at least a year, if not forever. Jobs and the economy should not be threatened, the paper declares, particularly when climate change is an unproven theory.

“Garnaut turns on Government’s greenhouse scheme,” reports the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, advising its audience that “The future of the Government’s greenhouse gas trading regime is under question again, this time from the man who helped to design it.” “Ross Garnaut - who headed the Government’s review of climate change policy - has told a Senate Committee that it might be better if the scheme in its current form is not passed into law.
“That adds to the growing uncertainty about emissions trading, which is due to be up and running by next year.”

Still more: “Climate change science isn’t settled,” announces an opinion piece in The Australian by Canadian geologist Jan Veizer of the University of Ottawa. Veizer mocks the notion that “the tiny - biologically controlled - carbon cycle drives the climate.”

And more: “Planet doomsayers need a cold shower,” writes Miranda Devine in the Sydney Morning Herald, in an extensive article that damns “the global warming scare campaign.” She cites at length a hugely influential new book by University of Adelaide geologist, Ian Pilmer, Heaven And Earth (subtitled “Global Warming: The Missing Science"). It is “a comprehensive scientific refutation of the beliefs underpinning the idea of human-caused climate change,” she explains, pointedly noting that Pilmer’s book was written “for those out there with an open mind wanting to know more about how the planet works. The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open.”

Into this global warming glasnost that Australia is experiencing steps Pilmer, with perspectives that would once have been derided and dismissed. To those who claim it is economically prudent to curb greenhouse gases based on the information known to date, Pilmer responds that the business world would never “make trillion-dollar decisions without a comprehensive and expensive due diligence.” To those who claim that an overwhelming consensus of scientists associated with the United Nations climate change report have concluded that man is responsible for bringing us to global warming catastrophe, Pilmer points to the report’s chapter dealing with man’s role, which is “based on the opinions of just five independent scientists.”

Thanks to Pilmer, the press and politicians, Australia is likely to become the developed world’s third Denier Nation, after the Czech Republic, where only 11% of the public blame humans for global warming, and the United States, where only 34% blame humans. Read more here.

To celebrate Earth Day, President Obama trekked to Iowa to stump for “green jobs” and the assortment of federal green mandates that will, truth be told, free us from dependence on foreign oil.  The President said that protecting the nation’s natural resources “not only fulfills a sacred obligation to our children and grandchildren, but also provides an opportunity to stimulate economic growth.” According to the Associated Press, Obama visited “financially struggling Newton, Iowa,” where he touted the Trinity Structural Towers wind energy plant “as a model for job creation and energy production in a town whose biggest employer was sold and then stopped operations.” “The administration contends,” the AP reported, “that the president’s plan will create jobs and protect the environment.”

FACT: As the New York Times recently put it, “No one believes that renewable energy can fully replace what has been lost on the American factory floor” Except, of course, President Obama.  Upon closer inspection, one finds that the Times is right: the plant that “was sold and then stopped operations” in 2007 was the Maytag washing machine factory, which employed 1,800 people in a town of 16,000.  Obama today highlighted green jobs at wind energy facilities amidst the rubble of Maytag.  Both would employ 700 workers - doubt a welcome development for Newton, but it represents a net job loss.  Moreover, workers at the Maytag plant earned $20 an hour with health benefits; workers at the TPI Composites wind turbine facility, across the way from where Obama delivered his speech, would earn $13 an hour.  For the record, this is not the first time Obama has raised an example of green jobs that fell short.  He has also lauded Spain for its green jobs programs.  Yet Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, found that each renewable job created by the Spanish government destroyed an average of 2.2 other jobs, while each “reen"megawatt installed in Spain destroyed 5.39 jobs in non-energy sectors.  This is hardly the green utopia as marketed by Obama and Al Gore.  Or is it?

Read full post here.

Read more here. Also see on SPPI the relevant story “The Danger of Environmentalism by Michael Berliner here. Michael starts “EARTH DAY approaches, and with it a grave danger faces mankind. The danger is not from acid rain, global warming, smog, or the logging of rain forests, as environmentalists would have us believe. The danger to mankind is from environmentalism. The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological industrial civilization. Environmentalism’s goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where “nature” is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion. In a nation founded on the pioneer spirit, environmentalists have made “development” an evil word. They inhibit or prohibit the development of Alaskan oil, offshore drilling, nuclear power - and every other practical form of energy. Housing, commerce, and jobs are sacrificed to spotted owls and snail darters. Medical research is sacrificed to the “rights” of mice. Logging is sacrificed to the “rights” of trees. No instance of the progress that brought man out of the cave is safe from the onslaught of those “protecting” the environment from man, whom they consider a rapist and despoiler by his very essence.

The respected economist first highlighted the social and economic costs of global warming in his 2006 report for the UK Government the Stern Review.  Now in a new book, the World Bank’s former chief economist has warned the science he based his predictions on is out of date. He said levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are already at 430 parts per million (ppm) and the world has “probably missed the chance” of keeping emissions below 450 ppm.
Trees are growing faster and could buy time to halt global warming. This means temperatures are likely to rise by at least two degrees Celsius by the end of the century - even if measures are taken to keep the levels of carbon dioxide below 500 ppm - causing a rise in sea levels, greater frequency of storms and a “high chance that the rainforests will collapse”.

If nothing is done to keep emissions low, he warned that temperatures may rise by up to six degrees with catastrophic consquences. Lord Stern warned that Florida and Bangladesh could disappear, alligators could survive at the North Pole and millions of people would have to migrate. “The location of many species, including humans, would be radically different and many would not survive,” he added.

Lord Stern, who is to launch his book - A Blueprint for a Safer Planet - at a public lecture at LSE on Tuesday, said in the face of such evidence those who continue to deny climate change are “ignorant and reckless.” “The greenhouse effect is simple and sound science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting more greenhouse gases. There will be oscillations, there will be uncertainties. But the logic of the greenhouse effect is rock solid and the long-term trends associated with the effects of human emissions are clear in the data,” he writes. “The arguments from those who deny the science look more and more like those who denied the association between HIV and Aids or smoking and cancer.”

However, despite the gloomy predictions in the book, Lord Stern’s overall argument is one of optimism. He argues that the world should cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 and make the world a cleaner, quieter, more biodiverse and safer place by investing just one per cent of GDP into transforming how we use and make electricity, travel and live. “These huge risks can be reduced drastically at reasonable cost, but only if we act together and follow clear and well-structured policies starting now.

“The cost of action is much lower than the cost of inaction - in other words, delay would become the anti-growth strategy. The low-carbon world we must and can create will be much more attractive than business as usual. Not only will growth be sustained, it will be cleaner, safer, quieter and more biodiverse.” Read more about one of the top ten most dangerous (and misinformed) men on the planet here.

At night, there is no incoming radiation and any reduction in cooling rate by CO2 will depend on whether or not it re-radiates some of the absorbed radiation from earth. By the argument which follows this can not happen because the absorbed radiation which causes inter atomic vibration will immediately be converted partly into kinetic energy in the translational rather than the vibrational form.

This means that all the energy absorbed by CO2 as radiation to give kinetic energy of vibration (various modes) will be partly converted into kinetic energy of translation, such that the two forms of energy are statistically equal. The heat energy of vibration having been partially converted into heat of the translational form is then not available at high enough level in the vibrational form to allow the molecule to re-radiate. Thus radiation from earth and absorbed by CO2 will not be re-radiated at least not near the ground. Instead it will be carried aloft by convection.

Also it should be noted here that warming of the atmosphere by actual contact with earth surface, land or water will vastly exceed that caused by absorbed radiation. The transfer of heat from ocean to air is greatly accelerated by air movement.

This being the case, what does an increase in the concentration of CO2 imply for the earth’s temperature?

An increase in CO2 concentration should simply mean that the photon energy initially causing resonant vibration in the molecule is partially converted into kinetic energy (translational form) of all components of the atmosphere in a shorter distance in the atmosphere both for the incoming and outgoing radiation. So, logically, a change of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere should cause no increase in earth’s surface temperature. Read more here. Along this line, Hans Schreuder of Ilovemycarbondioxide.com submittted this analysis to the EPA on their engangerment ruling.

The Carbon Sense Coalition has delivered its submission to the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Climate Change in response to the Exposure Draft of the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009”.

The recommendations are:

The Senate must reject the “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill” on the basis of its “Two Fatal Flaws” - the science and the economics. It is not supported by independent scientific assessment, nor does it present any credible cost benefit analysis. Moreover, at a time when politicians are calling for better financial disclosure and discipline, this Bill is alarming in its deceptive advertising, shows contempt for good practice by omitting independent expert reports, and stands condemned for failure to disclose the numerous vested interests supporting its claims.

See larger image here. (The purple line is an extension of the latest warming trend that ended in about 1998. Like all trends, that one came to a sudden halt.)
Source: A paper delivered by Don Easterbrook to the recent Heartland Conference.

The Bill should also be rejected for promoting the risky and repugnant idea that Australia can or should lead the world into universal acceptance of a massive program of wealth distribution administered by bodies such as the United Nations. This shows a lack of appreciation of the fact that popular opinion all over the world is turning strongly against the global warming hysteria, and many significant industrial nations such as China, India, Brazil and Russia are motivated solely by what they see will promote their own national interest and industrial strength.

Finally the Bill should be rejected because of the naivety of people who tell us that a nation which generates 90% of its electricity from coal, and which also prohibits nuclear power, can maintain energy supplies for its people while cutting per capita production of carbon dioxide by 30% over the next decade or so. This cannot be done without either significant cuts in living standards or reduced population.

However, the Carbon Sense Coalition supports every initiative to reduce pollution of land, air or water. We also support energy conservation, and oppose any subsidies that encourage waste and overuse of any energy type. However neither of these worthy goals have anything to do with the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming. Unproven climate scares should not be used to promote secret agendas to introduce massive new consumption taxes on top of the rash of taxes already there such as Goods and Services Tax, Income Tax, Payroll Tax, Coal and Oil Royalties, petrol excise, vehicle and stock levies and so on.

Our future in the UN’s hands
“A United Nations document on “climate change” that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes - all under the supervision of the world body.” George Russell, March 27, 2009 reported on CCNet. Read the very detailed and excellent full submission here.