Anthropogenic Global Warming
Part 2
THE SUN
The satellite age and advances in
measurement technology have in the last 20 years confirmed that the sun is a
variable star, what used to be called the solar constant (total solar
irradiance or TSI) has been shown to vary by 0.1% over the approximately 11
year solar cycle. It has also been discovered that the suns Extreme UV output
varies by 10% or more.
Scientists do not know if these
figures vary more over longer time periods.
TSI is the amount of the high energy
short wave radiation (‘visible’ light and ultra-violet light) and the low
energy long-wave radiation (infrared radiation) Earth receives from the sun.
Scientists who are proponents of AGW
theory have claimed that this variation in the TSI output is too small to
affect Earths’ climate, so it has not been factored into General Circulation
Models.
Recent studies cast doubt on this
assumption.
Since Henrik Svensmark’s work on the Solar Magnetic Shield strength/Solar
Wind relationship with Galactic Cosmic Rays and their effect on clouds (Forbush
events), scientists have renewed interest in other solar phenomena that may
affect our climate, the low sun spot numbers correlating to the Maunder minimum
is the subject of intense study, Plasma, the various solar fluxes, coronal holes, mass coronal
ejections are all likewise being studied, as is the Earths geomagnetic field.
We are currently 4 years into solar
cycle 24, it is the weakest cycle for 50 years and cycle 25 is predicted to be much
quieter.
Should there be a greater solar
influence on Earth’s climate than proponents of AGW believe, then this influence
will become apparent in the next decade. The signs from the last 5 years are
pointing that way.
OCEAN OSCILLATIONS
Oceans contain the majority of the
heat energy on Earth and ocean oscillations account for more than 40% of the
heat transport mechanisms in the system. A very lucid and easy to understand
presentation of the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) can be found at the
following link;
The
El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most well-known, its influence on
climate is well reported and, as we can see from the link above it is short
wave radiation penetrating hundreds of meters into the oceans that fuel these
oscillations.
Less
well known but equally important oscillations include PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation)
AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) and NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation).
The
following graphs show PDO and AMO trends from the mid to late 1800’s
Look
for the periods of warming: 1850-1880/ 1910-1940 and 1975/2000
Compare
these graphs with the combined Temperature/CO2 chart from the previous posting;
Does
CO2 have as good a correlation with temperature as the PDO/AMO?
No
it does not.
There
is a lag between ocean oscillations and temperature response which is due to
the slower heat transfer of ocean oscillations compared to atmospheric
oscillations, none the less the correlation between ocean oscillations and
temperature is very good, and as both PDO and AMO are entering their cool
phases we should expect temperatures (in the Northern Hemisphere at least) to
reflect this shift. Again, as with the suns variations the next 5/10 years will
show us if the natural variation inherent in the climate system is over-powered
by the effect of ever increasing CO2 levels.
CLOUDS
Along
with oceans, clouds are the least understood variable in the known climate
system.
The above graph
is from the IPCC AR4 WG1 report, on the left hand side it lists the
Anthropogenic and natural radiative forcings, solar irradiance is the only
natural radiative forcing mentioned, other forcings that may not be radiative
(see sun above) are not listed. Looking to the right hand column we see the
level of scientific understanding (LOSU) for each forcing. Settled science? I think not.
There
is a lot of scientific speculation regarding the positive/negative feedback
(warming/cooling) of clouds, it is thought that wispy cirrus clouds could have
a positive feedback by letting shortwave radiation enter the lower atmosphere
and restricting outgoing longwave radiation. Cumulus clouds because of their
albedo are thought to reflect some shortwave radiation implying a negative
feedback, overall it is thought that clouds have a net negative feedback
effect.
Albedo
is the reflectiveness of surfaces due to colour, ice, snow, thick clouds and
deserts have a strong Albedo and together they reflect about 30% of the suns
shortwave radiation back into space.
Henrik
Svensmark’s hypothesis that Galactic Cosmic Rays play a role in seeding clouds
and thus effecting temperatures has been the subject of small scale experiments
at CERN, the initial results have convinced scientists at CERN to initiate
larger scale cloud chamber experiments; report from Nature Journal;
One
of the heat transport properties of clouds not in any of the climate models are
storms. Thunderstorms, cyclones and tornadoes happen when surface temperatures
and pressure combine with the coriolis force (an artefact of Earths’ rotation)
to cause a vortex, warm air is transported upward by convection and cooler air
is drawn inward, large amounts of heat are removed from the surface by storms
in this way, bypassing the radiative process of heat transport.
Here
is a link to NASA/GISS Cloud Climatology page;
Clouds
are one of the great uncertainties in;
GENERAL
CIRCULATION MODELS
GCM
are mathematical equations climate scientists use to try to model climate
behaviour. Generally there are two types of GCM – atmospheric and oceanic. When
these two GCM are run together it’s called a coupled run, GCM require the most
powerful supercomputers (1.1 petaflops is common) to handle the calculations,
typically a one day supercomputer run will yield a 25 year coverage. GCM are
complex and the computers used to run them have huge capacity, however they do
not even come close to the complexity and data needed to describe Earths’
climate system.
The
basis of GCM is that CO2 precedes temperature, this is contrary to all of the
observational evidence.
The
amount of data points is inadequate and the length of the data record
insufficient, below is a video of the worlds’ surface temperature stations from
1880-2007, notice the number of stations taken out of the record from 1988 on
where about 4,000 stations were removed from the record, coincidently 75% of
the removed stations were cold stations i.e. higher altitudes and
latitudes.
Furthermore
GCM are 3D, higher than surface measurements are woefully sparse.
The IPCC
itself recognises the impossibility of modelling the climate system
From the
third assessment report section 14.2.2.2;
“In
sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate
research
and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing
with
a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the
long-term
prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Kevin
Trenberth a lead author of IPCC report chapters in 2001 and 2007 said of IPCC
GCM in Nature.com;
“None of the models used by
IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in
the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.”
In one of the ‘Climategate’ emails Prof. Phil
Jones director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia
wrote;
“Basic problem is
that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low level clouds. …what
he [Zwiers] has done comes to a different conclusion than Caspar and Gene! I
reckon this can be saved by careful wording.”
GCM cannot even
describe what little is known of the climate system, they do not handle the
interactions of the various elements, add to this the unknown unknowns and we
see why the met office get their long range predictions so spectacularly wrong.
These boffins and their mates want me to accept they can forecast climate 80
years into the future!
CONSENSUS
Many
proponents of AGW theory would have us believe that there is an overwhelming
consensus amongst scientists that AGW theory is settled science. Since the
first IPCC Assessment Report the MSM have reported nonsense like 2500 of the
worlds top scientists agree that manmade global warming is real and dangerous.
“Claims such as ‘2,500 of the world’s leading
scientists have reached a consensus that human
activities are having a significant influence on the climate’ are disingenuous.
That particular consensus judgement, as are many others in the IPCC reports, is
reached by only a few dozen experts in the specific field of detection and
attribution studies; other IPCC authors are experts in other fields.”
The much maligned yet un-refuted Global Warming Petition Project has over
31,000 scientists from the USA alone who disagree that AGW is settled science
and will cause catastrophe, the following link provides all of their names and
qualifications;
The US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works/Minority Report
has details of over 700 international scientists who disagree with the IPCC
findings.
“Since I am no longer
affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite
frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that
man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost
entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the
air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the
world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and
formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called
“among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”
“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new
religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner
for Physics, Ivar Giaever.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in
the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy
into anthropogenic global warming.”
- U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane
Research Division of NOAA.
“The Kyoto
theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that
triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way
round…A large number of critical documents submitted at the 1995 U.N.
conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was
one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a
scientific fact,” Andrei Kapitsa, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher.
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When
people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and
scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD
environmental physical chemist.
“For how many years must the
planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For
how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science
committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130
plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in
Sweden.
The full report can be
found here;
Of course, we still hear that all
of the worlds’ scientific institutions have come out in favour of AGW theory.
Yet few realise that it is the executive boards (administrators) of those
institutions that have made these grant seeking statements,
not one of those institutions have polled their members (the scientists) to
find out what they think.
Contrary
to what proponents of AGW say, there is no consensus, no real time or
historical evidence that CO2 controls temperature, no empirical evidence for
positive feedback loops and absolutely no evidence for tipping points that will
cause catastrophic runaway global warming. So why does the majority of MSM and
advocacy groups keep peddling discredited Malthusian predictions of doom?
In the
final post on this subject we will look at the Ideology, Politics, Propaganda
and probity of AGW Theory, and naturally, we shall be following the money.
Cyril Le Squirrel
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