Despite a consensus among scientists on the use of ocean heat as a robust measure for anthropogenic global warming (AGW), air temperature continues to be employed as the icon of global climate projections. In a recent AP article by Seth Borenstein, “Statisticians reject global cooling”, the Associated Press “gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.”
A lot of mercury and red alcohol has been spilled over the last several years dissecting the reliability of near-surface temperature measurements. The controversy has spawned high profile blogs dedicated to the scrutiny of surface station reliability and the analysis of climate statistics . The exercise has proven to be fruitful in many cases, discovering systemic weaknesses in the network of surface stations, exposing sloppy calculations, and raising legitimate questions about the algorithms used to adjust raw data. Though satellite air temperature measurements do not suffer from these limitations, our observations extend back only 30 years.
The use of air temperature as an index of global warmth has weak scientific support, except, perhaps, on a multi-decadal or century time-scale. Climate scientists agree that 80% - 90% of the heat in earth’s climate system is stored in the oceans. For any given area on the ocean’s surface, the upper 2.6 meters of water has the same heat capacity as the entire atmosphere above it! Air temperature may not register accumulated ocean heat from year to year. Since this heat is not always at the ocean’s surface, there may be long lags in air temperature response time. But eventually, as the ocean heats or cools, air temperature is sure to follow. Accordingly, the findings represented in Borenstein’s article are no surprise and do little to support or damage the case for AGW.
Hype generated by scientists and activists over short-term changes in global air temperature (up or down) has diverted us from the real question: Is heat accumulating in the world’s oceans? Many climate scientists, including those at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the British Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, are being rather disingenuous in their use of air temperature. They advocate ocean heat as a climate metric in research articles (including AR4 - the most recent IPCC report), but then use air temperature as a metric when discussing AGW with the public. Presumably, from a marketing perspective, the man on the street cannot connect with “Joules of accumulated heat” absorbed by the ocean.
So what does ocean heat tell us about the progress of global warming? That’s the elephant in the living room that proponents of AGW aren’t talking about - at least not lately. Writing in 2005, NASA scientists James Hansen, Josh Willis, Gavin Schmidt, et. al. suggested that their model projections of global warming had been verified by a solid decade of increasing ocean heat (1993 to 2003). This was regarded as confirmation of the AGW hypothesis (see “Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications”, Science, 3 June 2005, 1431-35).
But by mid-2003 warming ceased rather abruptly and, by all appearances, not one Joule of energy has been added to the ocean for over 6 years. According to some analysts there has been a slight cooling, even as CO2 levels continue to rise. Advocates of AGW have dismissed this as natural variability. But the implications are clear. If the climate system is not accumulating heat, the hypothesis may be false.
The current trend also raises some pointed questions. If climate change is now dominated by CO2 induced warming, what mechanism is responsible for the current cessation of warming? The immediate cause is well known: The periodic cooling and warming of ocean waters called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). But the underlying causes of the PDO itself are not well understood, which is also true for much of the variability in our climate system.
If we cannot explain the causes behind natural variability, then how can we project future climate trends? Moreover, how can we be sure that the prior warming trend was anthropogenic rather than natural? After all, we cannot eliminate from consideration causes we do not understand. Borenstein’s article proceeds on the assumption that if there is warming, it must be anthropogenic, and it must be from CO2. The question of attribution - the most difficult scientific question of all - is never raised.
At the very least, the flattening of ocean heat over the last 6 years should raise cautionary flags and provoke a re-examination of climate model projections. If CO2 induced warming is so easily overwhelmed by natural variability, then perhaps the threat of “runaway warming” and climate “tipping points” has been overstated. Despite the sophistication of our efforts, perhaps our ignorance exceeds our knowledge.
Unfortunately, climate scientists who continue to hide behind the metric of air temperature are dodging the hard questions. Repeated efforts to confront them on the issue of ocean heat have met with silence (see Roger Pielke’s article here). Now that heat accumulation has stopped (and maybe even reversed), the tables have turned. The same criterion used to confirm Anthropogenic Global Warming, is now challenging its legitimacy. See full post with citations here.
Bill DiPuccio was a weather forecaster and instructor for the U.S. Navy, and a Meteorological/Radiosonde Technician for the National Weather Service. More recently, he served as head of the science department for St. Nicholas Orthodox School in Akron, Ohio (closed in 2006). He continues to write science curriculum, publish articles, and conduct science camps.
The current meeting in Copenhagen is anticipated to produce a follow-on to the Kyoto “global warming” treaty (a treaty to which few, if any, signers were able to meet their obligations). The U.S. was wise enough to not endorse that treaty (it failed overwhelmingly in the U.S. Senate). Had Kyoto provisions been adhered to, after 100 years there would be little measurable impact on climate, even according to those who support the flawed human-caused global warming theory.
Now we have the follow-on to Kyoto being fabricated in Copenhagen. There are provisions in the draft treaty that seek to overrule the U.S. Constitution and seek to create a world-wide authority with significant power to enforce treaty provisions. Adoption by the U.S. of this proposed treaty would be disastrous on many levels.
In an effort to build opposition in the U.S. Senate to any proposed treaty based on the deeply flawed “science” of human-caused global warming, Lord Monckton of Brenchley (Christopher Monckton), who is an outstanding spokesman against the flawed global warming theory (and former advisor to Margaret Thatcher), has created an “Instrument of Repudiation” document which he is asking U.S. citizens to endorse. I have created the web pages to enable this process online. I urge each of you to go online here and follow the links to read and endorse this “Instrument of Repudiation.” Thanks for all you can do to help stop this proposed monstrosity!
By Janet Albrechtsen, Wall Street Journal
We can only hope that world leaders will do nothing more than enjoy a pleasant bicycle ride around the charming streets of Copenhagen come December. For if they actually manage to wring out an agreement based on the current draft text of the Copenhagen climate-change treaty, the world is in for some nasty surprises. Draft text, you say? If you haven’t heard about it, that’s because none of our otherwise talkative political leaders have bothered to tell us what the drafters have already cobbled together for leaders to consider. And neither have the media.
Enter Lord Christopher Monckton. The former adviser to Margaret Thatcher gave an address at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, earlier this month that made quite a splash. For the first time, the public heard about the 181 pages, dated Sept. 15, that comprise the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - a rough draft of what could be signed come December.
So far there have been more than a million hits on the YouTube post of his address. It deserves millions more because Lord Monckton warns that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty is to set up a transnational “government” on a scale the world has never before seen.
The “scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention” that starts on page 18 contains the provision for a “government.” The aim is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.
The reason for the power grab is clear enough: Clause after complicated clause of the draft treaty requires developed countries to pay an “adaptation debt” to developing countries to supposedly support climate change mitigation. Clause 33 on page 39 says that “by 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in developing countries must be [at least $67 billion] or [in the range of $70 billion to $140 billion per year].”
And how will developed countries be slugged to provide for this financial flow to the developing world? The draft text sets out various alternatives, including option seven on page 135, which provides for “a [global] levy of 2 per cent on international financial market [monetary] transactions to Annex I Parties.” Annex 1 countries are industrialized countries, which include among others the U.S., Australia, Britain and Canada.
To be sure, countries that sign international treaties always cede powers to a U.N. body responsible for implementing treaty obligations. But the difference is that this treaty appears to have been subject to unusual attempts to conceal its convoluted contents. And apart from the difficulty of trying to decipher the U.N. verbiage, there are plenty of draft clauses described as “alternatives” and “options” that should raise the ire of free and democratic countries concerned about preserving their sovereignty.
Lord Monckton himself only became aware of the extraordinary powers to be vested in this new world government when a friend found an obscure U.N. Web site and searched through several layers of hyperlinks before discovering a document that isn’t even called the draft “treaty.” Instead, it’s labelled a “Note by the Secretariat.”
Interviewed by broadcaster Alan Jones on Sydney radio Monday, Lord Monckton said “this is the first time I’ve ever seen any transnational treaty referring to a new body to be set up under that treaty as a ‘government.’ But it’s the powers that are going to be given to this entirely unelected government that are so frightening.” He added: “The sheer ambition of this new world government is enormous right from the start—that’s even before it starts accreting powers to itself in the way that these entities inevitably always do.”
Critics have admonished Lord Monckton for his colorful language. He has certainly been vigorous. In his expose of the draft Copenhagen treaty in St. Paul, he warned Americans that “in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy and your prosperity away forever.” Yet his critics fail to deal with the substance of what he says.
Ask yourself this question: Given that our political leaders spend hundreds of hours talking about climate change and the need for a global consensus in Copenhagen, why have none of them talked openly about the details of this draft climate-change treaty? After all, the final treaty will bind signatories for years to come. What exactly are they hiding? Thanks to Lord Monckton we now know something of their plans.
Janos Pasztor, director of the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, told reporters in New York Monday that with the U.S. Congress yet to pass a climate-change bill, a global climate-change treaty is now an unlikely outcome in Copenhagen. Let’s hope he is right. And thank you, America.
Ms. Albrechtsen is a columnist for the Australian.
Global temperature fell in the period ~1940 to ~ 1970. ‘Concerned scientists’ then proclaimed that emissions from human activities - notably suplhates - predominantly from power generation were causing global cooling. They called for
(i) cessation of the emissions especially from power generation, and
(ii) funding for research of the problem.
Then the trend reversed. By 1980 there had been a decade of warming and the man-made global cooling scare was becoming unsustainable. So, they morphed the global cooling scare into the global warming scare (yes, “they” because it was mostly the same people).
They proclaimed that emissions from human activities - notably carbon dioxide - predominantly from power generation were causing global warming. They called for:
(i) cessation of the emissions especially from power generation, and
“WASHINGTON - The Earth is still warming, not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming, according to an analysis of global temperatures by independent statistics experts. The review of years of temperature data was conducted at the request of The Associated Press. Talk of a cooling trend has been spreading on the Internet, fueled by some news reports, a new book and temperatures that have been cooler in a few recent years. The statisticians, reviewing two sets of temperature data, found no trend of falling temperatures over time. And U.S. government figures show that the decade that ends in December will be the warmest in 130 years of record-keeping.
Global warming skeptics are basing their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. They say that since then, temperatures have fallen - thus, a cooling trend. But it’s not that simple. Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, dropped again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998.
“The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record,” said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. “Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming.” Statisticians said the ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.”
This article, however, (which is not a true independent assessment if the study was completed by NOAA scientists) is not based on the much more robust metric assessment of global warming as diagnosed by upper ocean heat content. Nor does it consider the warm bias issues with respect to surface land temperatures that we have raised in our peer reviewed papers; e.g. see and see.
With respect to ocean heat content changes, as summarized in the articles
Douglass, D.H. and R. Knox, 2009: Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance. Physics letters A
trends and anomolies in the upper ocean heat content permits a quantitative assessment of the radiative imbalance of the climate system.
Jim Hansen agrees on the use of the upper ocean heat content as an important diagnostic of global warming. Jim Hansen in 2005 discussed this subject (see). In Jim’s write-up, he stated “The Willis et al. measured heat storage of 0.62 W/m2 refers to the decadal mean for the upper 750 m of the ocean. Our simulated 1993-2003 heat storage rate was 0.6 W/m2 in the upper 750 m of the ocean. The decadal mean planetary energy imbalance, 0.75 W/m2, includes heat storage in the deeper ocean and energy used to melt ice and warm the air and land. 0.85 W/m2 is the imbalance at the end of the decade.
Certainly the energy imbalance is less in earlier years, even negative, especially in years following large volcanic eruptions. Our analysis focused on the past decade because: (1) this is the period when it was predicted that, in the absence of a large volcanic eruption, the increasing greenhouse effect would cause the planetary energy imbalance and ocean heat storage to rise above the level of natural variability (Hansen et al., 1997), and (2) improved ocean temperature measurements and precise satellite altimetry yield an uncertainty in the ocean heat storage, ~15% of the observed value, smaller than that of earlier times when unsampled regions of the ocean created larger uncertainty.”
As discussed on my weblog and elsewhere (e.g. see and see), the upper ocean heat content trend, as evaluated by its heat anomalies, has been essentially flat since mid 2003 through at least June of this year. Since mid 2003, the heat storage rate, rather then being 0.6 W/m2 in the upper 750m that was found prior to that time (1993-2003), has been essentially zero.
Nonetheless, the article is correct that the climate system has not cooled even in the last 6 years. Moreover, on the long time period back to 1880, the consensus is that the climate system has warmed on the longest time period. Perhaps the current absence of warming is a shorter term natural feature of the climate system. However, to state that the “[t]he Earth is still warming” is in error. The warming has, at least temporarily halted.
The article (and apparently the NOAA study itself), therefore, suffers from a significant oversight since it does not comment on an update of the same upper ocean heat content data that Jim Hansen has used to assess global warming. See post here.
Icecap note: Also as Chip Knappenberger showed in his A Cherry-Picker’s Guide to Temperature Trends, all the data sets have shown cooling back to 2001. Picking years before that can yeild different results for the different data sets, the most warming in the NOAA and GISS where they have engineered the selective use of data and adjustments to maximize apparent warming.
See larger here.
Each point on the chart represents the trend beginning in September of the year indicated along the x-axis and ending in August 2009. The trends which are statistically significant (p<0.05) are indicated by filled circles. The zero line (no trend) is indicated by the thin black horizontal line, and the climate model average projected trend is indicated by the thick red horizontal line.
See Chip's comments on Borenstein's nervous 'Hail Mary" pass play here.
No wonder a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 85% of U.S. voters trust their own judgment more than the average reporter when it comes to the important issues affecting the nation. Only four percent (4%) trust the average reporter more. Three-out-of-four Americans (74%) trust their own judgment more than that of the average member of Congress when it comes to economic issues facing the nation.
Climate change is the greatest new public-spending project in decades. Each year as much as $100 billion is spent by governments and consumers around the world on green subsidies designed to encourage wind, solar, and other -renewable-energy markets. The goals are worthy: reduce emissions, promote new sources of energy, and help create jobs in a growing industry. Yet this epic effort of lawmaking and spending has, naturally, also created an epic scramble for subsidies and regulatory favors. Witness the 1,150 lobbying groups that spent more than $20 million to lobby the U.S. Congress as it was writing the Clean Energy bill (which would create a $60 billion annual market for emission permits by 2012). Government has often had a hand in jump--starting a new -industry - both the computer chip and the Internet got their start in American defense research. But it’s hard to think of any non-military industry that has been so completely and utterly driven by regulation and subsidies from the start.
It’s a genetic defect that not only guarantees great waste, but opens the door to manipulation and often demonstrably contravenes the objectives that climate policy is supposed to achieve. Thanks to effective lobbying by American and European farmers, the more cost--efficient and environmentally effective Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol is locked out of U.S. and EU markets. Even within Europe, most countries have their own “technical standard” for biofuels to better keep out competing products - even if they are cheaper or produce a greater cut in emissions. Because the subsidies are tied to feedstocks, there is zero incentive to develop better technology.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development have asked Germany to end its ludicrous solar subsidies that will total $115.5 billion by 2013. In theory, these subsidies are designed to create viable markets for climate-friendly technology by bringing down production costs, after which subsidies could be phased out. But Germany’s solar program has been a textbook case of how subsidies achieve the opposite of their stated intention. As the share of renewable power has jumped from 3 percent in 2001 to 15 percent now, subsidies per -kilowatt-hour of renewable power aren’t going down but up, meaning that clean energy is getting more expensive. Energy economist Manuel Frondel of Germany’s RWI Institute says the country’s lavish subsidies have blocked innovation and delayed the advent of cost-competitive solar power worldwide. For several years solar-module costs stagnated because German subsidies sucked up global production at virtually any price. Only when Spain decided in 2008 to scrap a similar subsidy scheme it had copied from the Germans did the global solar bubble collapse and costs fall. The German solar case also defies the green-jobs model. The idea is that subsidies create a new industry and a lot of high-tech jobs. Yet Germany’s solar producers are downsizing. With little pressure to become efficient and cost--competitive, they are now getting crowded out by Chinese producers.
In truth, green tech is no longer the tender niche industry the public debate makes it out to be. Global wind-turbine production alone is already a $50 billion annual market. And just as the bulk of farm subsidies don’t go to farmers, but to agro-conglomerates and food giants, it’s not small green-tech ventures but big corporations that are getting the best seats on the green gravy train. DuPont, Siemens, power companies, and investment banks are hungry for a slice of the subsidy pie or the new -carbon-trading market. Defenders rightly point out that fossil fuels get a staggering $500 billion in subsidies each year. Yet 80 percent of these are consumer subsidies in a handful of developing countries such as China, Russia, and Iran, and pale in significance when you account for fossil fuels’ much higher share of the energy supply. No one denies the necessary role of governments in environmental policy. But of the 10 most cost-effective and measurable ways for the world to cut emissions, for example, subsidies for renewables don’t even make it onto the list. Much more effective is putting a price on emissions, or finding other ways to mandate reductions and letting the market decide which technologies are the best. Here’s hoping governments take the point soon. Read more here.
