Physics professor Howard Hayden offers the editors of Physics Today a simple algebraic exercise to alleviate climate alarmism.

October 13, 2011

Editor
Physics Today
AIP, Suite 1NO1
2 Huntington Quadrangle
Melville, NY 11741-4502

Re: Two “climate change” articles in October 2011 issue

Gentle Folks:

In elementary algebra - oh, so long ago - we learned how to make graphs with the independent variable on the horizontal axis and the dependent variable on the vertical axis. Later on, in science classes we learned the usefulness of the technique: the independent variable is the cause and the dependent variable is the effect. In the fields of health physics and pharmacy, the graphs are called dose-response curves, but everybody who has done experimental science has made similar plots.

The discussions about whether - and how much - increases of CO2 concentration cause increases in temperature come down to such a cause-effect relationship. A reasonable approach would be to plot temperature rise (effect) on the vertical axis versus CO2 forcing on the horizontal axis. The reason I say “would be” is that climate alarmists have never done it. A pharmaceutical company that approached the FDA for a license to manufacture and distribute a drug for which they failed to produce dose-response curves would be laughed out of the hearing room.

The Somerville/Hassol article talks of “communicating the science of climate change.” There is, of course, no theory of climate, because the all-important Navier-Stokes equations can’t even be solved for turbulence in a 4-inch pipe. The causal relationship of temperature rise to CO2 concentration increase, could, however, be displayed in a simple graph using readily available data. Now that would be a way to communicate.

The Sherwood article is merely reasoning by analogy - giving some cases where good science was opposed by establishment opinion. Curiously, in the present case, he opines in favor of establishment opinion, dismissing opposition as “bogus counterarguments,” the same as was done to Copernicus and Galileo. In any case, reasoning by analogy is inherently illogical. Listing a million analogies would neither strengthen nor weaken the link between CO2 and temperature.

We need not sit helplessly by, waiting to climate modelers to connect effect with cause. I call upon readers to make the requisite graph, using the forcing function 2 5.35 Wm *ln(C/C0) from Table 6.2 of IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (http://ipcc.ch/), temperature data and CO2 data from NASA/GISS here and here respectively. The results may cause you to issue a sigh of relief.

Best Regards,

Howard C. Hayden
Prof. Emeritus of Physics, UConn

The United State Global Change Research Program Strategic Plan 2012-2021 has invited public comments on their Plan here.

The Plan starts with an assumption that they already know the direction of climate change in the coming decades. It does not read as a balanced scinece plan. I encourage readers of my weblog to submit comments.

The text in the Executive Summary starts with the text [highlights added]

Earth’s environment is changing rapidly. Increases in world population and industrialization are altering the atmosphere, ocean, land use, ecosystems and the distribution of species over the planet. Scientific research, including monitoring and modeling of the multifaceted Earth system, provides information for governments, businesses, and communities to understand these changes and to respond to potential risks brought about by global change, such as more severe heat waves, storms, floods, fires, crop failures, and water shortages.

An example of their text includes

The goals acknowledge that global change research is not a purely academic endeavor. To be useful, scientists must understand the needs of decision makers at all levels in the public and private sectors and clearly and effectively make research results relevant to those decision makers. For example, farmers depend upon information to adjust and manage crops as planting seasons, growing zones, and pest and weed ranges change. Health care providers must prepare for more severe heat waves and outbreaks of diseases previously unknown in their regions. Insurers must account for shifting weather extremes in assessing future financial risk.  Inhabitants of coastal cities need to understand the implications of sea level rise, while many regions of the country address changes in the availability of freshwater and increasing energy demands.

The goals recognize that global change is an international concern affecting many aspects of societies, livelihoods, and the environment. Across the Nation and around the world, people are making decisions to effectively minimize (mitigate) and prepare for (adapt to) global change. The global nature of today’s economy, and the speed with which challenges faced in one part of the world can affect others, reinforces the need for a global response based upon the best available science. Vital resources, such as water and food supplies, cross regional and national boundaries, and the effects of global change can disrupt social, economic, and political systems.  Understanding global change and our options to minimize and manage the risks of such change is important for U.S. national security and for maintaining regional and global stability, and for long-term economic vitality.

They are ignoring research that shows we cannot yet skillfully predict how regional climate will change, as well as to consider a new bottom-up approach to societal and environmental vulnerability, rather than continue to focus on the top-down global climate model predictions. This new perspective is summarized in our article

Pielke Sr., R.A., R. Wilby, D. Niyogi, F. Hossain, K. Dairuku, J. Adegoke, G. Kallos, T. Seastedt, and K. Suding, 2011: Dealing with complexity and extreme events using a bottom-up, resource-based vulnerability perspective. AGU Monograph on Complexity and Extreme Events in Geosciences, in press.

Judy Curry has an excellent summary of where we are in the USA with respect to federal support for climate research.

She writes (see)

“...Decision making associated with the issues of climate and global change can be characterized as decision making under deep uncertainty.  The deep uncertainty is associated with our reliance on projections from climate models, which are loaded with uncertainties and do not adequately treat natural climate variability.  Further substantial areas of ignorance remain in our basic understanding of some of the relevant phyiscal, chemical and dynamical processes.

If we as scientists are not humble about the uncertainties and areas of ignorance, we have an enormous capacity to mislead decision makers and point them in the direction of poor policies.  Uncertainty is essential information for decision makers.

Climate scientists have this very naive understanding of the policy process, which is aptly described by the A+B=C model in the context of the precautionary principle.  This naive understanding is reflected in the palpable frustration of many climate scientists at the failure of the “truth” as they “know” it to influence global and national energy and climate policy.  This frustration has degenerated into using to word “denier” to refer to anyone who disagrees with them on either the science or the policy solution.

The path that we seem to be on, whereby the science is settled and all we need is better communication and translation of the science to policy makers, not only has the potential to seriously mislead decision makers, but also to destroy atmospheric and climate science in the process.

Very well said Judy!

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Action item: Demand natural variability included in next round of fed climate research
Posted on October 7, 2011 by Steve Milloy

Now is the time to demand that natural variability be the focus of the U.S. Government’s climate change research program.

Click for the UNITED STATES GLOBAL CHANGE RESEARCH PROGRAM STRATEGIC PLAN 2012–2021.

Click for directions on submitting comments.

Comments are due by November 29, 2011.

One Response to Action item: Demand natural variability included in next round of fed climate research
Jim Barker October 8, 2011 at 8:27 am
My comment was submitted.

I believe it is time to consider natural variability as the main cause of climate change. it is also time to invest much more effort in actual measurements of this complex, chaotic and misunderstood system.

EXPERTS continue to hunt for the psycho-social underpinnings of that alleged mental disorder, climate-change denialism. Unwilling to accept that climate-change scepticism is simply an idea, informed by analysis and ideology, green know-it-alls are always sniffing around for a pseudo-scientific explanation for this apparently unhinged outlook.

So this week Scientific American informs us of a new academic study titled Cool Dudes: The Denial of Climate Change Among Conservative White Males in the United States. Having pored over polling data on climate-change denial collected in the US between 2001 and 2010, the study’s authors deduce that 29.6 per cent of conservative white men believe global warming will never have much of an effect, compared with only 7.4 per cent of the general adult population.

When it comes to what the researchers call “confident conservative white males” - those who claim to have a high understanding of global warming - the findings are even more striking: 48.4 per cent of these cocky cons think global warming is a lot of hot air.

What explains this alleged sniffiness about climate-change orthodoxy among the white and well-off in the US? According to the report, it’s down to a mix of evolution and the cult of identity.

Apparently, there’s something called “the white male effect”, where, because white men have faced fewer obstacles in life than other groups, they are “more accepting of risk than the rest of the public”. In short, having lived cushy lives, they now laugh in the face of the End of Days.

There are so many problems with this report it’s hard to know where to begin. First, the report patronisingly treats what it calls climate-change denial - itself a loaded term - as a kind of default behaviour, a group instinct.

In line with authoritarian regimes throughout history, many of which had a tendency to write off alternative views as the products of unstable minds, greens refuse to treat scepticism as a legitimate way of thinking.

Even worse is the report’s suggestion that white male conservatives are likelier to be sceptical about climate change because they don’t like “challenges to the status quo”.

Wait: green thinking represents a challenge to the status quo? That’s a laughable idea. From schools and universities to every corner of the Western political sphere, the climate-change outlook is the status quo. It’s the new conservatism, its aim being to conserve nature at the expense of further developing and transforming society.

Greens like to fantasise that they are radicals whose ideas are continually shot down by what Scientific American calls the white male establishment. Yet at a time when everyone from Barack Obama to stuffy stick-in-the-muds such as Prince Charles sing from the climate-change hymn sheet, in what sense can it be described as a radical creed? These apparently dangerous white male deniers are straw men set up by greens who can’t quite handle the fact it is they and their friends who are now the promoters and protectors of the political status quo. Perhaps this means green-baiting white male conservatives actually represent a new and weird band of rebels?

Please take the opportunity to watch these excellent new climate skeptic videos produced by the Galileo Movement in Australia and spread the link far and wide.

See more videos and presentations by Australia’s James Cook University’s Dr Bob Carter here.

Source: Financial Times

By Andrew Parker in London

Airlines face being caught up in a global trade war as opposition grows to the European Union’s controversial plan to make carriers pay for their pollution, the aviation industry’s main representative body warned on Monday.

Tony Tyler, director-general of the International Air Transport Association, told the Financial Times there was a genuine risk that countries outside the EU would take retaliatory action against the bloc’s plan to bring airlines within its carbon emissions trading scheme from January.

On Thursday, an advocate general to the European Court of Justice will issue an opinion on a request by US airlines for non-European carriers to be excluded from the EU scheme. This should give a steer on the subsequent ruling by the ECJ, which the European Commission is confident will side with the EU rather than the US airlines.

Last Friday, 21 countries including the US, Japan, Brazil, Russia, India and China issued a declaration opposing how the EU scheme will apply to flights that start or end in one of the bloc’s 27-member states. They say the scheme was inconsistent with international law and should not apply to flights by non-EU carriers.

Mr Tyler said he feared retaliatory measures against European airlines by countries outside the EU if the US carriers lose their court case.

“That is the worst possible outcome for us - the airlines being caught in the middle of a trade war,” said Mr Tyler. “Other countries saying to Europe ‘OK, if you are hitting our airlines with additional cost, which you should not be doing, we will hit your airlines’ - none of us wants that.’

He also noted that China, partly in protest at the EU scheme, threatened in June to derail a deal under which Hong Kong Airlines would order 10 superjumbo A380 aircraft from Airbus, a subsidiary of EADS, the European aerospace and defence group.

Mr Tyler said the EU should abandon its plan to bring airlines within its emissions trading scheme, adding the issue should be tackled through a global industry framework devised by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, a UN agency.

Iata estimates airlines face a bill of at least $26bn to comply with the EU scheme over the next decade. Under the scheme, airlines will have to surrender permits, each equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide, to cover their annual emissions. A portion of the permits will be allocated to airlines free of charge but heavy polluters will have to buy additional ones.

A spokesman for Connie Hedegaard, the European climate change commissioner, said the EU scheme was consistent with international law, adding the bloc was willing to engage with countries that had concerns about it. The spokesman said ICAO’s member states had been unable to agree on how to tackle the aviation industry’s emissions and, therefore, the EU had decided it was time to act.