By Doug L. Hoffman, The Resilient Earth

A new paper in Science reports that a careful study of satellite data show the assumed cooling effect of aerosols in the atmosphere to be significantly less than previously estimated. Unfortunately, the assume greater cooling has been used in climate models for years. In such models, the global-mean warming is determined by the balance of the radiative forcings—warming by greenhouse gases balanced against cooling by aerosols. Since a greater cooling effect has been used in climate models, the result has been to credit CO2 with a larger warming effect than it really has. A new paper in Science reports that a careful study of satellite data show the assumed cooling effect of aerosols in the atmosphere to be significantly less than previously estimated. Unfortunately, the assume greater cooling has been used in climate models for years. In such models, the global-mean warming is determined by the balance of the radiative forcings - warming by greenhouse gases balanced against cooling by aerosols. Since a greater cooling effect has been used in climate models, the result has been to credit CO2 with a larger warming effect than it really has.

Aerosol cooling and climate sensitivity in the models must balance each other in order to match historical conditions. Since the climate warmed slightly last century the amount of warming must have exceeded the amount of cooling. As Dr. Roy Spencer, meteorologist and former NASA scientist, puts it: They program climate models so that they are sensitive enough to produce the warming in the last 50 years with increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. They then point to this as ‘proof’ that the CO2 caused the warming, but this is simply reasoning in a circle.

A large aerosol cooling, therefore, implies a correspondingly large climate sensitivity. Conversely, reduced aerosol cooling implies lower GHG warming, which in turn implies lower model sensitivity. The upshot of this is that sensitivity values used in models for the past quarter of a century have been set too high. Using elevated sensitivity settings has significant implications for model predictions of future global temperature increases. The low-end value of model sensitivity used by the IPCC is 2C. Using this value results, naturally, in the lowest predictions for future temperature increases. According to the paper Consistency Between Satellite-Derived and Modeled Estimates of the Direct Aerosol Effect published in Science on july 10, 2009, Gunnar Myhre states that previous values for aerosol cooling are too high - by as much as 40 percent - implying the IPCC’s model sensitivity settings are too high also.

Myhre argues that since preindustrial times, soot particle concentrations have increased much more than other aerosols. Unlike many other aerosols, which scatter sunlight, soot strongly absorbs solar radiation. At the top of the atmosphere, where the Earth’s energy balance is determined, scattering has a cooling effect, whereas absorption has a warming effect. If soot increases more than scattering aerosols, the overall aerosol cooling effect is smaller than it would be otherwise. According to Dr. Myhre’s work, the correct cooling value is some 40% less than that previously accepted by the IPCC.

Not that climate modelers are unaware of the problems with their creations. Numerous papers have been published that detail problems predicting ice cover, precipitation and temperature correctly. This is due to inadequate modeling of the ENSO, aerosols and the bane of climate modelers, cloud cover. Apologists for climate modeling will claim that the models are still correct, just not as accurate or as detailed as they might be. Can a model that is only partially correct be trusted? Quoting again from Roy Spencer’s recent blog post:

It is also important to understand that even if a climate model handled 95% of the processes in the climate system perfectly, this does not mean the model will be 95% accurate in its predictions. All it takes is one important process to be wrong for the models to be seriously in error.

Can such a seemingly simple mistake in a single model parameter really lead to invalid results? Consider the graph below, a representation of the predictions made by James Hansen to the US Congress in 1988, plotted against how the climate actually behaved. Pretty much what one would expect if the sensitivity of the model was set too high, yet we are still supposed to believe in the model’s results. No wonder even the IPCC doesn’t call their model results predictions, preferring the more nebulous term “scenarios.”

See larger image here.

Now that we know the models used by climate scientists were all tuned incorrectly what does this imply for the warnings of impending ecological disaster? What impact does this discovery have on the predictions of melting icecaps, rising ocean levels, increased storm activity and soaring global temperatures? Quite simply they got it wrong, at least in as much as those predictions were based on model results. To again quote from David Evans’ paper:

None of the climate models in 2001 predicted that temperatures would not rise from 2001 to 2009 - they were all wrong. All of the models wrongly predict a huge dominating tropical hotspot in the atmospheric warming pattern - no such hotspot has been observed, and if it was there we would easily have detected it. See much more.

Wall Street Journal

When King Canute of lore wanted to teach his citizens a lesson, he set his throne by the seashore and commanded the tides to roll out. Canute’s spirit was back in business this week at the G-8 summit in Italy, where the assembled leaders declared that the world’s temperature shall not rise: “We recognize the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees [Celsius],” or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, said the summit declaration.

So let it be written, so let it be done. As for how they will achieve this climate-defying feat, well, the leaders were somewhat less definitive: “we will work… to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050.”

Translation: Since the heads of the world’s leading economies couldn’t agree on an actual policy on climate change, they opted instead to command the clouds, the seas and all of the Earth to cool. Or maybe they were finally admitting that this whole climate business is getting too expensive, so let’s just throw out a goal that everyone knows is beyond the reach of kings, much less democratic leaders.

The politics of climate change have always been long on apocalyptic rhetoric but short on policy realism. But a global economic crisis does have a way of shearing away illusions about the price people and their leaders, elected or otherwise, are willing to pay in higher taxes, higher prices and economic competitiveness to perhaps make a fractional dent on the temperature.

Concerns about high costs and lost jobs have already threatened or killed carbon-emissions control schemes in enviro-conscious Australia and New Zealand. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, another sunshine environmentalist, insisted on exemptions for German industry, including cement and steel, from last year’s EU climate deal, which pledged to reduce carbon emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. Italy engineered its own escape clause, requiring the EU to renegotiate its climate policy after a U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen later this year. That probably kills the European deal, since China (the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases), India and other developing countries showed this week that they are unlikely to agree to any draconian emissions cuts.

European politicians have been wondrously adept at signing on to climate pacts, like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which they have no real intention of honoring even as they enjoy taking the political credit. But really binding agreements are becoming harder to reach this time around, thanks to mounting opposition from businesses and labor unions.

Philippe Varin, chief executive of Corus, Europe’s second-largest steel producer, told the London Independent in December that the cost of carbon credits and new technologies needed to reduce emissions would destroy European steel production, forcing manufacturers overseas. Poland’s Jaroslaw Grzesik of the Solidarity trade union estimated last month that the EU’s climate policy would cost 800,000 European jobs. The London-based Open Europe think tank has estimated the climate package would cost European economies over a trillion dollars in the coming decade.

Meanwhile, the supposed economic benefits of “green technologies” are evaporating. In Germany, government subsidies for installing solar panels—and, it was presumed, thereby creating domestic manufacturing jobs—backfired when it turned out that it was cheaper to make solar panels in China. A recent paper from Spanish economist Gabriel Calzada Alvarez noted that since Spain started investing in a “green jobs” policy nine years ago, the country has lost 110,500 jobs in other parts of the economy. That amounts to 2.2 jobs lost for every green job created.

European leaders still do pray to the climate gods, and they would love to see the U.S. burden its own industries with the kind of cap-and-tax bill just approved by the House. But even Senate Democrats are getting wise to the political risks they run for tying the economy down with regulatory schemes that America’s competitors in Europe and Asia will either flout or ignore. In the legend of Canute, the king, after failing to stop the rising tide, told the assembled crowd: “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth and sea obey by eternal laws.” If a medieval monarch could draw the right conclusion, how hard can it be for his sophisticated 21st-century successors? Read story here.

Icecap Update: Meanwhile the court jester that holds the position of science czar for Obama, John Holdren, has a track record that shows a trend of alarmist viewpoints on scientific issues, including a statement made in 1973 that the U.S. population of 210 million at the time was “too many, and 280 million in 2040 is likely to be much too many.” In response, Holdren recommended “a continued decline in fertility to well below replacement should be encouraged, with the aim of achieving [zero population growth] before the year 2000.” Holdren like his mentor, Paul Ehrlich once advocated a shocking approach to the “population crisis” feared by scientists at the time: namely, compulsory abortions in the U.S. and a “Planetary Regime” with the power to enforce human reproduction restrictions. The current U.S. population is approximately 304 million.