There is yet another article that documents that the role of humans in the climate system is much more than the radiative effect of CO2 and a few other gases (h/t to Marc Morano). This new study bolsters our conclusions in

Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union

The Scientific American article, however, still misinterprets climate system heat changes (and climate change more generally) as dominated by added CO2. The new article is

Stratospheric Pollution Helps Slow Global Warming By David Biello July 22 2011 in Scientific American with the headline

Particles of sulfuric acid-injected by volcanoes or humans–have slowed the pace of climate change in the past decade.

My comment on this statement is that the ejection of aerosols from humans into the stratosphere IS part of human climate change. The implication from the term “pace” is that the radiative effect of CO2 and a few other greenhouse gases is climate change. It is NOT as we summarize in our EOS article

Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first-order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (CO2). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.

Excerpts from the Scientific American text read [highlights added]

Despite significant pyrotechnics and air travel disruption last year, the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajokull simply didn’t put that many aerosols into the stratosphere. In contrast, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, put 10 cubic kilometers of ash, gas and other materials into the sky, and cooled the planet for a year. Now, research suggests that for the past decade, such stratospheric aerosols - injected into the atmosphere by either recent volcanic eruptions or human activities such as coal burning - are slowing down global warming.

Combined with a decrease in atmospheric water vapor and a weaker sun due to the most recent solar cycle, the aerosol finding may explain why climate change has not been accelerating as fast as it did in the 1990s. The effect also illustrates one proposal for so-called geoengineering - the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment - that would use various means to create such sulfuric acid aerosols in the stratosphere to reflect sunlight and thereby hopefully forestall catastrophic climate change.

But that points up another potential problem: if aerosol levels, whether natural or human-made, decline in the future, climate change could accelerate - and China is adding scrubbing technology to its coal-fired power plants to reduce SO2 emissions and thereby minimize acid rain. In effect, fixing acid rain could end up exacerbating global warming. China “could cause some decreases [in stratospheric aerosols] if that is the source,” Neely says, adding that growing SO2 emissions from India could also increase cooling if humans are the dominant cause of injecting aerosols into the atmosphere. On the other hand, “if some volcanoes that are large enough go off and if they are the dominant cause [of increasing aerosols], then we will probably see some increases” in cooling.

First, the statement that water vapor has been decreasing is remarkable. An increase in atmospheric water vapor is central to the hypothesis that the radiative effect of added CO2 would result in global warming that is significant in terms of effects on society. A lack of such an increase in water vapor is in contradiction to the 2007 IPCC model projections.

Second, the claim that “fixing acid rain could end up exacerbating global warming” somehow seems to suggest we should consider geoengineering that retains these aerosol emissions in order “to forestall catastrophic climate change”.  This is an absurd claim. I wrote about this in my post

Health Benefits Of Air Quality Control Should Never Be Sacrificed By Delaying The Clean-Up Of Aerosol Emissions For Climate Reasons

I ended that post with the conclusion

Thus, when I see attempts to delay implementation of any air quality improvement, which will cost lives, in order to provide a climate effect (i.e. through the delay in reducing sulphate emissions), we need to recognize that the priorities of those making such climate recommendations are misplaced.

Heidi Cullen and network management hurt the reputation of The cable TV Weather Channel with their propaganda filled global warming stories and hype. Many former regular viewers were turned off by that one-sided view of the climate change issue and te placement of the stories often in dayparts when real weather was occurring and their was viewer interest in weather forecasts and insights as opposed to a National Gographic or Discovery Channel kind of programming. Whatsmore to the network’s weather and climate data savvy watchers, she proved time and again how little she really knew about climate.

George $oro$ lured her away to Climate Central, a new media propaganda organization. She hasn’t done very much with CC but had a very opportunistic story in the New York Times, following the suggestions of the Yale, Columbia and George Mason communications specialists who said to regain traction on cliamte change with the public the media needs to play up the extreme weather- climate change connection. Though the extremes of the last four years are consistent with a cooling earth, cooling Pacific and low solar and not with warming and THEY STARTED with an admonition to skeptics not to confuse weather with climate, they are blaming everything from tornadoes, flooding, drought, local dust storms, record heat and cold and yes even record snow and tsumnamis on global warming. My partner on WeatherBell, Joe Bastardi responded this morning to Heidi. Here is an excerpt. Go to weatherbell.com to become a premimum member and read posts every day from Joe and I and forecasts for hurricanes, snowstorms, severe weather, heat and cold. We both have posts on the tropical season and why the risk of landfall is greater in the east. Commercial clients get much more detail and global coverage.

By Joe Bastardi, Co-chief Meteorologist, Weatherbell.com

One of the nicest and nastiest things about being on the front end of the global warming debate is I get to see almost everything in this debate as people that dont like me mail me ideas about why I am wrong, and people that do the opposite. Sometimes I am stunned by what I see, from people with PHDs and one such article was in the New York Times by a known AGW proponent Heidi Cullen.  Once again, it was a stunning commentary on either not knowing the facts, or knowing and ignoring.

The article says the weather is not the way it used to be, and the reason of course is global warming. This is stunning that MS Cullen, with a PHD, does not understand that the atmosphere is capable of much more than you actually see day to day, and even over the years. In preparation for the Al Gore-A-Thon, there is a blitzkrieg of Bologna coming out and this is part of it.

Everytime I hear about how hot it is in the plains.. not just with this heat wave, I simply tell people to go back and look at what happen the last time the Pacific had been warm for 30 years. This is impressive, but its not as extreme as its been.. Des Moines Iowa set 26 of the 31 records in July between 1929 and 1959. They have not had a record high since the 1950s in July.  How can she not know that?  I dont know if people on the other side of the debate have a clue as to what went on in this country, and I suspect globally though remember even then America was far more advanced at observing, during this period. We really have no way of knowing exactly how bad it was, because we did not have the data saturation we did then. But a climatologist should know and understand how extreme the weather has been, and a 10 day heat wave in mid July, that is going to get knocked down anyway next week and may be followed by a cool August in many of the areas that are only for the second time this summer baking and may not be the rest of the summer, is impressive, but its not anything that AGW is responsible for. Quite the opposite, since we all know it has been warm, its probably the opposite, that overall cooling is taking place and leading to more extremes. But I wont go that far, except to say that is more likely.

Global drought Frequency down

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Global flood frequency down

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Northern Hemipshere Snowfall up

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Tornado frequency - strong F3+ down

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US winter temperatures down - all regions last decade as global temperatures fell.

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Heat waves dominated by 1930s

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Sea levels have been FALLING
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Be sure to comment back to the Times if you can. They need to hear the truth. 

Fred Singer talks about global warming Monday at CSU’s Glover Building. About 125 people showed up to listen to the presentation and grill the global warming and climate change skeptic about his theories and views.

UPDATE: H/T Steve Goddard. The room where Fred Singer spoke at at CSU was not set up so that Fred could present any data. Fred Singer, President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia, spoke at CSU (Colorado State University) in Ft. Collins on July 18th.  Unfortunately the room was not set up to allow Fred to present his visual aids, so Fred made his presentation without his many interesting charts.

And don’t believe newspaper articles like this one - the mainstream media are not to be trusted because reporters have been “brainwashed” to believe the prevailing wisdom of climate science, which suggests climate change is real and caused by people.

Those were the messages Monday evening from Colorado State University emeritus atmospheric science professor William Gray and the “dean” of climate change skeptics, Fred Singer, an emeritus professor at the University of Virginia. Singer and Gray spoke to a sometimes unruly and tense audience in a packed CSU auditorium in attempts to convince them that most climate science is “hokum” and “bunk.”

Fear about climate change, Singer said, is a “psychosis” because global warming is natural and harmless.

Presenting almost no data while being peppered with questions from some of CSU’s other atmospheric scientists and faculty, the pair emphatically denied the climate has warmed significantly in recent decades and said rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have only positive implications for humans.

Any doubt about that, Gray said, has been sewn by error-ridden climate models from government-supported scientists and parroted by the United Nations and the mainstream media.

“A lot of people agree with what Fred has said, but the majority of people don’t because of the brainwashing of the mainstream media and TV and the intellectuals and so on,” Gray said. “They want to run this under the U.N.”

Singer said nature, not humans, rules the climate because rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are harmful neither to humans nor the planet.

“Stop worrying, don’t worry,” Singer said. “Nothing you do will have any effect on the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere. Even if it did have an effect, it won’t affect the planet.”

He said that even if the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were to double, the level of warming would be negligible. The additional carbon will help plants grow and bolster agriculture tremendously, he said.

“If carbon dioxide becomes too low, plants will stop operating, then animals will die and we will die, too,” he said. “We depend on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in order to survive.”

Humans, he said, will have to adapt to a climate that changes naturally.

He said wind and solar energy are neither viable as alternative energy sources nor desirable, adding that he has joined a lawsuit with the conservative Heartland Institute opposing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

In the meantime, “government is spending a great deal of money on what it calls alternative energy under the belief that carbon dioxide is bad for you,” Singer said, urging the continued use and exploration of fossil fuels.

In responding to criticism from a member of the audience that Gray and Singer can’t get their research published in scientific journals, Gray said, “If you want to see where the real research is going on, you’ll look on the blogs.”

“There’s no scientific review on blogs, it’s all a matter of opinion,” the audience member said. “Peer-reviewed scientific journals are the gold standard for science.”

“No, they aren’t,” Gray said. “They are not the gold standard. Why do you think they’re the gold standard?”

“You don’t vote in science,” Singer said, criticizing peer review.

CSU atmospheric science professor Scott Denning interrupted, saying he’s skeptical and needs a high degree of evidence to believe a claim that runs contrary to common sense.

“So, you know, you don’t really think humans cause climate change; we think heat causes climate change,” he said. “We know that burning fossil fuel produces CO2, we know that CO2 emits heat. Now most people know that heat warms things up.”

He said Gray admitted that the Earth has seen a small increase in carbon dioxide levels in recent decades, but if China and India power their growth with coal, carbon levels will increase significantly.

“You hypothesize that something’s going to come and get rid of all that heat,” he told Gray and Singer, “but you haven’t told us what it is that’s going to get rid of that heat or why you believe it’s going to get rid of all that heat, and I would suggest that people be pretty skeptical of that claim. Why should we believe you?

“Scientists should all be skeptical,” Singer said.

Some of you might remember last year’s little dust-up between Andy Dessler and me over feedbacks in the climate system.

Our early-2010 paper showed extensive evidence of why previous attempts to diagnose feedbacks (which determine climate sensitivity) have likely led to overestimates of how sensitive the climate system is to forcings like that from increasing CO2. The basic reason is that internal radiative forcing from natural cloud variations causes a temperature-radiation relationship in the data which gives the illusion of high climate sensitivity, even if climate sensitivity is very low.

Dessler’s late-2010 paper basically blew off our arguments and proceeded to diagnose cloud feedback from satellite data in the traditional manner. His justification for ignoring our arguments was that since: 1) most of the temperature variability during the satellite record was due to El Nino and La Nina (which is true), and 2) no one has published evidence that ‘clouds cause El Nino and La Nina’, then he could ignore our arguments.

Well, our paper entitled On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance which refutes Dessler’s claim, has just been accepted for publication. In it we show clear evidence that cloud changes DO cause a large amount of temperature variability during the satellite period of record, which then obscures the identification of temperature-causing-cloud changes (cloud feedback).

Along with that evidence, we also show the large discrepancy between the satellite observations and IPCC models in their co-variations between radiation and temperature:

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Given the history of the IPCC gatekeepers in trying to kill journal papers that don’t agree with their politically-skewed interpretations of science (also see here, here, here, here), I hope you will forgive me holding off for on giving the name of the journal until it is actually published.

But I did want to give them plenty of time to work on ignoring our published research as they write the next IPCC report. 

And this is not over…I am now writing up what I consider to be our most convincing evidence yet that the climate system is relatively insensitive

Update: See David Archibald’s new post on WUWT - Archibald: Solar Based Climate Forecast to 2050

Update: See New Scientist: Sluggish sun may sit out next cycle

The NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) has released their latest charts on solar activity and the news is not encouraging for solar watchers. Today, the sun has but a couple of anemic “sunspecks”.

Last month I wrote about how May had not continued the advances seen in March and April. Now according the the latest SWPC graphs of the three major metrics of solar activity, June appears to have slipped even further.

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I see NASA’ Hathaway making another adjustment to his forecast soon. He wrote on July 1st:

current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 69 in June of 2013. We are currently over two and a half years into Cycle 24. Three consecutive months with average daily sunspot numbers above 40 has raised the predicted maximum above the 64.2 for the Cycle 14 maximum in 1907. The predicted size would make this the smallest sunspot cycle in over 100 years.

Now that the UK Met Office is half way to admitting that solar activity is the main driver in climate, it is appropriate to check up on how the Sun is going.

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Two and a half years after solar minimum, the Ap Index remains below the minima of previous solar cycles.

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Dr Svalgaard provides a useful daily update on the F 10.7 flux at http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png What the above graph shows is the ramp up of Solar Cycle 24 F 10.7 flux relative to the previous five solar cycles, aligned on the month of minimum. The current cycle has a very flat trajectory.

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Similar to the Ap Index, the Interplanetary Magnetic Field is now up to the levels of previous solar minima.

This chart compares the development of Solar Cycle 24 with the last de Vries cycle event - the Dalton Minimum. The Solar Cycle 24 ramp up in terms of sunspot number is tracking much the same as that of Solar Cycle 5 but about a year ahead of it. All solar activity indications are for a Dalton Minimum repeat. There has been no development that precludes that outcome.

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This graph shows the sum of the north and south polar magnetic fields on the Sun. It has yet to get down to the levels of previous maxima, and solar maximum may be still two to three years off.

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See larger images and comments at post.