Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess

[Uncle Galt]

Brrrrr it's cold this morning.

Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess

By PATRICK MICHAELS

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120847988943824973.html

President George W. Bush has just announced his goal to stabilize greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025. To get there, he proposes new fuel-economy standards for autos, and lower emissions from power plants built in the next 10 to 15 years.

Pending legislation in the Senate from Joe Lieberman and John Warner would cut emissions even further – by 66% by 2050. No one has a clue how to do this. Because there is no substitute technology to achieve these massive reductions, we'll just have to get by with less energy.

Compared to a year ago, gasoline consumption has dropped only 0.5% at current prices. So imagine how expensive it would be to reduce overall emissions by 66%.

The earth's paltry warming trend, 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the mid-1970s, isn't enough to scare people into poverty. And even that 0.31 degree figure is suspect.

For years, records from surface thermometers showed a global warming trend beginning in the late 1970s. But temperatures sensed by satellites and weather balloons displayed no concurrent warming.

These records have been revised a number of times, and I examined the two major revisions of these three records. They are the surface record from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the satellite-sensed temperatures originally published by University of Alabama's John Christy, and the weather-balloon records originally published by James Angell of the U.S. Commerce Department.

The two revisions of the IPCC surface record each successively lowered temperatures in the 1950s and the 1960s. The result? Obviously more warming – from largely the same data.

The balloon temperatures got a similar treatment. While these originally showed no warming since the late 1970s, inclusion of all the data beginning in 1958 resulted in a slight warming trend. In 2003, some tropical balloon data, largely from poor countries, were removed because their records seemed to vary too much from year to year. This change also resulted in an increased warming trend. Another check for quality control in 2005 created further warming, doubling the initial overall rate.

Then it was discovered that our orbiting satellites have a few faults. The sensors don't last very long and are continually being supplanted by replacement orbiters. The instruments are calibrated against each other, so if one is off, so is the whole record. Frank Wentz, a consulting atmospheric scientist from California, discovered that the satellites also drift a bit in their orbits, which induces additional bias in their readings. The net result? A warming trend appears where before there was none.

There have been six major revisions in the warming figures in recent years, all in the same direction. So it's like flipping a coin six times and getting tails each time. The chance of that occurring is 0.016, or less than one in 50. That doesn't mean that these revisions are all hooey, but the probability that they would all go in one direction on the merits is pretty darned small.

The removal of weather-balloon data because poor nations don't do a good job of minding their weather instruments deserves more investigation, which is precisely what University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick and I did. Last year we published our results in the Journal of Geophysical Research, showing that "non-climatic" effects in land-surface temperatures – GDP per capita, among other things – exert a significant influence on the data. For example, weather stations are supposed to be a standard white color. If they darken from lack of maintenance, temperatures read higher than they actually are. After adjusting for such effects, as much as half of the warming in the U.N.'s land-based record vanishes. Because about 70% of earth's surface is water, this could mean a reduction of as much as 15% in the global warming trend.

Another interesting thing happens to the U.N.'s data when it's adjusted for the non-climatic factors. The frequency of very warm months is lowered, to the point at which it matches the satellite data, which show fewer very hot months. That's a pretty good sign that there are fundamental problems with the surface temperature history. At any rate, our findings have not been incorporated into the IPCC's history, and they probably never will be.

The fear of a sudden loss of ice from Greenland also makes a lot of news. A year ago, radio and television were ablaze with the discovery of "Warming Island," a piece of land thought to be part of Greenland. But when the ice receded in the last few years, it turned out that there was open water. Hence Warming Island, which some said hadn't been uncovered for thousands of years. CNN, ABC and the BBC made field trips to the island.

But every climatologist must know that Greenland's last decade was no warmer than several decades in the early and mid-20th century. In fact, the period from 1970-1995 was the coldest one since the late 19th century, meaning that Greenland's ice anomalously expanded right about the time climate change scientists decided to look at it.

Warming Island has a very distinctive shape, and it lies off of Carlsbad Fjord, in eastern Greenland. My colleague Chip Knappenberger found an inconvenient book, "Arctic Riviera," published in 1957 (near the end of the previous warm period) by aerial photographer Ernst Hofer. Hofer did reconnaissance for expeditions and was surprised by how pleasant the summers had become. There's a map in his book: It shows Warming Island.

The mechanism for the Greenland disaster is that summer warming creates rivers, called moulins, that descend into the ice cap, lubricating a rapid collapse and raising sea levels by 20 feet in the next 90 years. In Al Gore's book, "An Inconvenient Truth," there's a wonderful picture of a moulin on page 193, with the text stating "These photographs from Greenland illustrate some of the dramatic changes now happening on the ice there."

Really? There's a photograph in the journal "Arctic," published in 1953 by R.H. Katz, captioned "River disappearing in 40-foot deep gorge," on Greenland's Adolf Hoels Glacier. It's all there in the open literature, but apparently that's too inconvenient to bring up. Greenland didn't shed its ice then. There was no acceleration of the rise in sea level.

Finally, no one seems to want to discuss that for millennia after the end of the last ice age, the Eurasian arctic was several degrees warmer in summer (when ice melts) than it is now. We know this because trees are buried in areas that are now too cold to support them. Back then, the forest extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean, which is now completely surrounded by tundra. If it was warmer for such a long period, why didn't Greenland shed its ice?

This prompts the ultimate question: Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you're liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn't such a threat, who needs all that funding? Who needs the army of policy wonks crawling around the world with bold plans to stop climate change?

But as we face the threat of massive energy taxes – raised by perceptions of increasing rates of warming and the sudden loss of Greenland's ice – we should be talking about reality.

Mr. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and professor of environmental sciences at University of Virginia.

[Doug]

But as we face the threat of massive energy taxes – raised by perceptions of increasing rates of warming and the sudden loss of Greenland's ice – we should be talking about reality.

DOUG
Then why don't you want to talk about reality?

=================
The Canadian Press

April 25, 2008

Differences in everything from sea ice to permafrost show the Arctic climate is changing even more rapidly than scientists had predicted, says a new summary of the most recent research.

The report, produced for the World Wildlife Fund and presented this week to the Arctic Council, adds that there could be factors contributing to climate change that were not even considered until recently.

...The report was compiled from papers published since the 2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. It also contains research not considered by the 2007 United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.

Even those predictions may now be too conservative.

While the UN panel, which won a Nobel Prize for its work, predicted an ice-free Arctic by 2100, new measurements from the field suggest ice-cover shrinkage is actually 30 years ahead of that.

New models that take into account factors such as the increased absorption of the sun's heat by open water suggest the summer ice pack could be gone in five to 32 years.

The vast Greenland ice cap is also thought to be shrinking more quickly than anticipated.

"We don't have enough knowledge to be able to predict the future of the Greenland ice cap with any confidence," said Dr. Sommerkorn, who was speaking from Svolvaer, Norway. "But there are quite substantial scientific papers that show this immense ice loss in the last couple years."

Scientists now believe water melting off the cap is raising global sea levels by half a millimetre a year, five times the UN panel's estimate. The panel said sea levels would rise by a maximum of 59 centimetres by the end of the century, but newer research suggests the maximum is between 140 and 160 cm.

See here.

==============
(160 centimeter = 5.2 feet)

==========
In September 2007, the sea ice shrank to 39 per cent below its 1979-2000 mean level, the lowest since satellite monitoring began in 1979 and also the lowest for the entire 20th century based on monitoring from ships and aircraft.

The rate of loss had accelerated massively with the two lowest years on record occurring in 2005 and 2007.
See here.
======================
In July of 2006, the frigid water of a large meltwater lake atop the Greenland Ice Sheet drained in less than two hours, cascading down through the ice sheet faster than the rushing waters of Niagara Falls.

Scientists were awed by the event. And today they explained what happened.

The water gushed all the way down to the bed of the ice sheet, through almost 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of ice.

The flood doubled the average speed of the ice sheet's slide across the bedrock underneath it.

Scientists have long suspected that surface meltwater could drain to the base of an ice sheet and lubricate the ice sheet's flow out to sea. But no one had ever observed the phenomenon — until now.

See here.
============
Thursday April 24, 2008
The overall levels of Ice in the Arctic Ocean and the Greenland Ice Sheet were measured and estimated to be 4.4 million cubic metres, and 2.9 million cubic metres, respectively. The measurements were taken in September of 2007, and reveal that the state of both Ice masses is at the lowest ever recorded levels.
Experts are not only alarmed at the current state of the ice sheets, but officials and experts are beginning to question if the Ice Sheets have reached a “Tipping point,” or a level beyond which they are not likely to recover.

See here.
=================
DOUG
As usual, Galt just cuts and pastes an article without caring about whether it tries to back up its conservative claims.

There are many mistakes in his article, but this about Greenland is something rebutted by just a few minutes on the Internet.

Maybe Galt should wonder why Greenland's ice is at historic lows if it isn't getting any warmer. Maybe God is pouring large amounts of salt on the glaciers, right Galt?

Humans are facing one of the most perilous catastrophes in history and self-absorbed assholes like Galt and the Bush administration keep LYING about it. Amazing.

[LaWood]

without caring about whether it tries to back up its conservative claims.

I would modify your comment thusly:
without caring about the oil company financed claims.

Cato=Big Oil

[Abel]

Not just Uncle Galt...

http://www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdat ... 60625.html

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power - a concept tied closely to the underground nuclear testing his former environmental group formed to oppose.
The chemistry of the atmosphere is changing, and there is a high-enough risk that "true believers" like Al Gore are right that world economies need to wean themselves off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases, he said.

"It's like buying fire insurance," Moore said. "We all own fire insurance even though there is a low risk we are going to get into an accident."

The only viable solution is to build hundreds of nuclear power plants over the next century, Moore told the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. There isn't enough potential for wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal or other renewable energy sources, he said.

With development of coal-fired electric generation stopped cold over greenhouse gases, the only alternative to nuclear power for producing continuous energy at the levels needed is natural gas. But climate change isn't the only reason to move away from fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels also are a major health threat. "Coal causes the worst health impacts of anything we are doing today," Moore said.

Plus, uranium can be found within the United States and also comes in large quantities from Canada and Australia. Nuclear Power reduces the reliance on supplies in dangerous places including the Middle East, he said.

Moore spoke at the chamber breakfast after an appearance in Idaho Falls Tuesday night that attracted 300 people. He also spoke to the Idaho Environmental Forum in Boise, all sponsored by the Partnership for Science and Technology.

He represents the Clean Air and Safe Energy Coalition, a nuclear energy-backed group promoting reactors for electric energy generation. He began his career as a leader of Greenpeace fighting nuclear testing and working to save whales.

In recent years, he has taken on causes unpopular with his former group, like old-growth logging, keeping polyvinyl chlorides and now nuclear energy.

He says his change of heart comes from his background in science and a different approach to sustainability.

He sees a need for maintaining technologies that are not harmful while fixing or replacing those that are harmful.

"We don't believe we have been making too much electricity," he said. "We believe we've been making energy with the wrong technologies."

His critics, like Andrea Shipley, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, say he has simply sold out.

"The only reason Patrick Moore is backing something as unsafe and risky as nuclear power is he is being paid by the nuclear industry to do so," Shipley said.

[Dardedar]

Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess
By PATRICK MICHAELS

DAR
If one were to make a formula to calculate Galt it might look like this:

Galt = cut + paste + run

GALT
Brrrrr it's cold this morning.

DAR
Well if your chilly you might want to put a hat on. Since you are in the freethinker forum my recommendation, if you don't want to look silly, would be a Thinking Cap.

I'll get one for you from the freethinker closet:



It's too bad that you won't look at this issue closely enough so that you can learn to defend these assertions from Michaels. And that's too bad because I think this is a pretty good attempt by Mr. Michaels. He uses actual arguments and tries to make a case. His points deserve to be responded to. Michaels attempts are much better than the usual stuff you cut & paste on this issue.
The article is light and fluffy, meant for the casual reader so we find no sources backing up the claims. We would have to investigate them for ourselves. The WSJ and Michaels know 99.99% of readers won't do this. If he were known to be trust worthy fellow I would be quite intrigued and take his claims very seriously. Since nothing in the article is sourced, it is fair to start with considering the background of the one making the claims. Let see, off the top of my head, Patrick Michaels is a:

a) a notorious contrarian crank? Check

b) not a climatologist? Check

c) writing in a popular business journal (WSJ) known for consistently publishing only the worst, most irresponsible, unscientific anti-GW crap in the country? Check

d) frequently appears in unscientific propaganda documentaries like "Swindled" etc.? Check

e) is well paid by the anti-GW propaganda industry for saying what he says. Check please...

f) has been found to be profoundly dishonest when arguing against climate change in the past? Check

Okay, so at least we have established Michaels is imminently qualified to speak on the side of the argument Galt/Abel feel comfortable believing in!

If Galt staggers back in here and would like me to back-up my claims "a" through "f" with evidence and citation, he knows I will be most pleased to accommodate him. Just quickly regarding "f", and my dishonesty charge (that's a biggie). I have researched this one extensively. Here is something I posted Feb. 15 2007.
This is regarding the fraudulent smear job he did on James Hansen before Congress:

***
"As for James Hansen, he did not tell the US Congress that temperatures would rise by 0.3C by the end of the past century. He presented three possible scenarios to the US Senate - high, medium and low. Both the high and low scenarios, he explained, were unlikely to materialise. The middle one was "the most plausible".

As it happens, the middle scenario was almost exactly right. He did not claim, under any scenario, that sea levels would rise by several feet by 2000. But a climatologist called Patrick Michaels took the graph from Hansen's paper, erased the medium and low scenarios and - in testimony to Congress - presented the high curve as Hansen's prediction for climate change. A memo sent in July from the Intermountain Rural Electric Association, a US company whose power is largely supplied by coal, revealed that Michaels has long been funded by electricity companies. "In February this year, IREA alone contributed $100,000 to Dr Michaels." Michaels, it says, meets periodically with industry representatives to discuss their activities in countering stories about climate change.

Pat Michaels's misrepresentation of Hansen's claims was picked up by Michael Crichton in his novel State of Fear, and somehow transmuted into an "error" of 300%." [urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/n ... ce.comment]link[/url]
***

DAR
So while I do think the article is well written, and needs to be responded to, I also know the writer of the article to be a lying sack of crap. If (more likely when) I stumble across a detailed roast of it (Doug's right, it has several blatant errors) I'll be sure to post it so you can completely ignore it like any yellow bellied coward would.

On to the next.

D.
-------------------------
A bit more:

"Writing in Harpers Magazine in 1995, author Ross Gelbspan noted that "Michaels has received more than $115,000 over the last four years from coal and energy interests. World Climate Review, a quarterly he founded that routinely debunks climate concerns, was funded by Western Fuels."[3]

A furor was raised when it was revealed in 2006 that, at customer expense, Patrick Michaels was quietly paid $100,000 by an electric utility, Intermountain Rural Electric Association, which burns coal to help confuse the issue of global warming." LINK

Lots more detailed roast of this guy at that link. Yawn.

[Dardedar]

Not just Uncle Galt...

LINK

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power...

DAR
Patrick Moore wasn't "the founder" but he was there in the early days. The fact that he had this early association with Greenpeace (something he abandoned over 20 years ago) now lets him sell himself to the nuke industry, for a hefty price, so they can both deceptively use the Greenpeace name. It's a neat marketing trick. Very common. Don't be fooled.

Personally, I am not against nukes and am certainly open to being persuaded more in that direction, but I would not look to a high paid shill for the industry to give me an accurate and fair appraisal of the information for and against.

Consider:

"Patrick Moore is a former Greenpeace activist who has been a corporate consultant since at least 1991. He began working for the Nuclear Energy Institute front group, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, in 2006. The Coalition was organised and funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute, with help from the public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton that has a $8 million account with the nuclear industry."

Regarding your quote (I am quoting a different source here):

"During an April 2008 talk in Idaho, Moore said "there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power."

The part before the comma is just stupid and can be ignored. After all, he's not a climatologist is he? The part after the comma means he thinks GW is "likely enough" that we need to stop spewing the carbon. I think he's right there. His nuke solution may have merit but it is so tainted by his formal position as prostitute for the nuke industry that we really don't know if we can trust him to give a fair appraisal. Perhaps his opinion could be profoundly influenced by the considerable paycheck he gets for saying it? Note:

"Since 2005, Moore has been listed as a speaker who "Makes the Case for Nuclear" for the Global Speakers Agency, listing his fee as anything from $10,000 to $25,000." LINK

It's his job to say it. It's what he does for a living.

Lots more about him at that link. Do give it a read Abel.

D.
------------------------------
"Nuclear power advocates are hoping that Moore and Whitman can sell the American public on the benefits of nuclear power and help spark the resurgence of an industry that has not constructed a new plant in some 30 years...

An editorial in the Colombia Journalism Review noted the benefit to the nuclear industry of having Moore and Whitman front their PR exercise, as in subsequent media articles Moore was often quoted as a "founder of Greenpeace" or an "environmentalist," but not as a paid consultant to the nuclear industry." --ibid

Examples of them successfully pulling the trick off provided at the link.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

And of course we DO have the technology - not nuclear - to turn this around (if we haven't passed the "tipping point" with the methane being spewed up due to melting what used to be permafrost). Some of them we've had versions of for years - wind, solar (both thermal and photovoltaic), geothermal - and some relatively new, like various forms of bioconversion (which produce vehicular fuel as well as electricity). What we haven't done is start building them. The irony of our current whining and snotting about "what can we do? we don't have time..." is that the "green" power sources are faster builds than the "traditional" ones. Renewable facilities have 6-24 month build times. "Traditional" ones have 4-10 year build times. Renewables (except geothermal) can be build modularly, so can be putting out energy long before the facility is completed. We just have to start building. ("just" sigh)

[Dardedar]

DAR
I bought a four panel (60 watt total, $299) solar kit Friday and set it up today. It came with all of the wires, connectors, mounting equipment and an inverter to make AC. All I needed was to add a nice deep-cycle battery ($65). The kit came with 25 feet of cable which I was able to run down an old stove pipe I wasn't using. The panels are on my roof and I am charging and running things in the house. What a hoot! My first little baby solar step.

I think I'll buy more. I had $300 worth of fun just setting it up. This is the kit I got.

D.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Wish I could do that. I'd need to get something that would intertie with the grid - I don't have anything I could run off a 12-volt system.

[Dardedar]

I don't have anything I could run off a 12-volt system.

DAR
Ah, but the above mentioned kit comes with a 175 watt AC inverter. So if you buy a deep cycle battery (about $75) you can plug in and run anything that pulls about 150 watts or less. I bought a 400 watt AC inverter continuous (800 peak) at Harbor Freight Tools for $24. Now I can plug in bigger things, like even a fridge. However, if I want to run them for very long I will need to get a bigger bank of batteries (right now just have the one).

D.