Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for July 2007

CO2 Record in Ice Cores Unreliable: A Note from Paul Williams

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Cllimate Change (IPCC) estimates pre-industrial levels of CO2 based largely on information derived from ice cores. These are kilometres long cylinders of ice drilled (in short sections) from the Greenland and Antarctic icecaps.

The theory is that air bubbles trapped in the ice are samples of the ancient atmosphere, and thus give an accurate reading of CO2 levels in those ancient times. The ice cores tell us that the pre-industrial level of
CO2 was about 290 parts per million (ppm).

Of course it’s not that simple. There are many factors to take into account, because ice from deep down in the ice cap is under enormous pressure, and that pressure is released when the cores are brought to the surface.

A brief summary of some of the processes going on in ancient, deep ice can be found here:

http://geoweb.princeton.edu/people/bender/lab/research_ice_cores.html

Zbigniew Jaworowski, a multidisciplinary scientist, has long been a critic of the ice core CO2 record:

http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_articles/IceCoreSprg97.pdf

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_10-19/2007-11/pdf/38_711_science.pdf

He makes a number of claims:

1. Ice core results reported before about 1985 showed higher CO2 levels than those reported since 1985, which he details in his 1997 paper.

2. Low pre-industrial concentration of CO2 in ice cores is an artefact caused by more than 20 physical-chemical processes. For example, CO2 is more than seventy times as soluble in water as is nitrogen, and liquid water is present in deep ice, even at -73C.

3. Drilling and retrieval of ice cores, including their decompression as they are brought to the surface, drastically disturbs the sample.

4. Subsurface melting of snow due to absorption of solar radiation is common in very cold sites, and may occur several times a year. This implies that the practice of dating ice cores using isotopes of oxygen, which assumes the temperature peaks are yearly events, is wrong.

The net result of these effects is to lower the CO2 levels in ice compared to that found in the atmosphere, by 30 – 50%, and to minimise fluctuations in CO2 in ice compared to the atmosphere.

Jaworowski illustrates this by comparing ice core data to other CO2 proxy data, such as stomata indices, which gives higher atmospheric CO2, with more variation than the ice core data over the last 8,000 years.

There is no doubt that ice core analysis is a highly technical subject, and scientists must make many assumptions when interpreting the data. One assumption that I personally found very interesting was that air inclusions in the snow and firn, or compacted granular snow, are well mixed with the atmosphere. In other words, the air in the hard packed snow is basically the same as the atmospheric air, down to the level of the ice. This could be 50 – 120 metres below the surface. Imagine hard packed snow that far down having a connection (and circulation with) the surface air. To me this is very counter-intuitive, but apparently Argon dating confirms it.

Jaworowski claims this is wrong, and that impenetrable layers, caused by melting and refreezing, cut off air inclusions from the atmosphere much earlier. This is the basis of his criticism that ice core data from the Siple core showed similar CO2 levels as the atmosphere did 83 years later, and thus the air in the ice core was assumed to be 83 years younger than the ice it was in.

Jaworowski has been criticised here:

http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7

The late Hans Oeschger, a prominent ice core scientist, was also critical of Jaworowski, and wrote a letter in 1995 expressing his views :

http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=12

Following are some other links.

Jaworowski interview in May this year:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=25526754-e53a-4
899-84af-5d9089a5dcb6&p=1

Diffusion of CO2 in atmospheric gas analysis (on pp10 – 11)

http://www.biomind.de/nogreenhouse/daten/AIGnewsNov06.pdf

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From Paul Williams who lives in the Adelaide Hills, Australia

Other contributions to this blog from Paul Williams include:

Hockey sticks and ancient pine tree, at https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001546.html
Measuring Atmosheric C02, at https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001983.html
Build Dykes to Beat Global Warming, at https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001983.html

Humane Society and Japanese Whalers Argue Over Pregnant Minke Whales

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“Humane Society International (HSI) has reviewed the Japanese reports from their most recent 2006/07 whale hunt in Antarctic waters and found that over half those killed were pregnant.

Of the 505 Antarctic minke whales killed in Antarctic waters last summer, 262 of them were pregnant females, while one of the three fin whales killed was also pregnant.

“These are gruesome statistics that the Japanese Government dresses up as science”, said HSI’s Nicola Beynon.

HSI reviewed the reports in preparation for our court case against the Japanese whalers, which resumes in the Federal Court of Australia this morning.

At today’s hearing we expect the Court to set a date for the full hearing. The full hearing will be to determine whether Japanese whalers are in breach of Australian law when they hunt whales in the Australian Whale Sanctuary in Antarctica and whether the Court will issue an injunction for the hunt to be stopped. HSI will ask for the final hearing to be held as soon as possible before the hunt starts up again this summer. It has been 3 years since HSI launched the case and many hurdles have been overcome to get to this point.

“It horrifies Australians to know that pregnant humpback whales breeding in the warm waters off Australia this winter will be targeted by the Japanese hunters in Antarctic waters this Christmas”, Ms Beynon said.

Japan has issued its whaling company with permits to kill 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales and 50 humpback whales in Antarctic waters this summer and, based on their past hunting grounds, we expect 90% of the hunt to be conducted within the Australian Whale Sanctuary, and a large proportion of the females to be pregnant.

HSI will ask the Federal Court to order a stop to the carnage in the Australian Whale Sanctuary once and for all.

End Media entitled ‘Japan killed 263 pregnant whales in Antarctic waters – HSI back in the Federal Court’
dated 24th July.

Japanese whalers respond:

“The Humane Society International (Australia) demonstrates its ignorance and lack of understanding of marine science with its latest claims, the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo said today.

“Humane Society is ignorant, displays a unique lack of understanding of whale management and, unfortunately, plays on an equally ignorant media to manipulate the Australian and New Zealand public,” the Director General of the ICR, Mr Minoru Morimoto, said today.

“It is widely well known that the Antarctic minke whale population has increased more than the pre-commercial whaling era and is currently in a very healthy condition, with over 90 percent of the mature female whales becoming pregnant year to year. This consistent reproduction provides strong reassurance the population will easily sustain an annual commercial quota.”

Of the 286 mature females, 262 or 91.6 percent were pregnant. The remaining 24 were non-pregnant mature minke whales.

The research employs a random sampling method and the sampling of pregnant whales is taken into account under the JARPA II research program, in line with the International Whaling Commission’s Revised Management Procedure, which is a risk-averse method for calculating sustainable catch quotas.

In 1990, the International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee agreed an abundance estimate of 760,000 Antarctic minke whales. That figure is currently under review but even if the abundance estimate is lower, the stock condition is very healthy and the taking of 850 minke whales poses no risk.

The breakdown of Antarctic minke whales sampled in Japan’s latest research program is outlined below.
• Total: 503 (Male: 154; Female: 349)
• Immature, non-reproducing females: 63; mature females 286 (Pregnant mature females 262 or 91.6 percent; non-pregnant mature females, 24 or 8.4 percent.)

End media release from the Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo entitled HUMANE SOCIETY DEMONSTRATES IGNORANCE dated 25th July 2007

Lewis crofters fight wind farm

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Scotland’s Hebridean Isle of Lewis is a beautiful place, noted for its wetland habitats and Golden Eagles. The Standing Stones of Callanish are an ancient monument erected around 3000 years ago, hewn from billion year old rock. By 1857 peat had grown across the site to a height of 6 feet, and was cleared. This is evidence for climate change. When the stones were erected the climate was too dry and warm for peat to grow. By 800 BC peat had been growing for 500 years. Lewis is now a place where evidence of past climate change meets the environmental consequences of concerns over current warming, in the form of wind energy. The UK has only built 200 miles of motorway in the past 10 years, yet hundreds of miles of road could be built on Lewis just to service wind farms.

The Scottish Wildlife Trust released this PR on 2nd February 2007:

World Wetlands Day plea to leave Lewis alone
The Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) on World Wetlands Day (Friday 2 February 2007) urged the public to help prevent irreversible damage to one of Scotland’s most important wetland sites. Proposed plans for an industrial scale wind farm on the Isle of Lewis are being considered that will destroy some of the most extensive and intact areas of blanket bog on the planet. Objections to the proposal must be lodged by Monday 5 February 2007. In December 2004, SWT objected to the installation of 234 turbines and construction of 104 miles of road on the Isle of Lewis. Despite huge outcry from environmental organisations and the local community, developers (Lewis Wind Power: British Energy/AMEC) resubmitted plans just before Christmas 2006 (12 December 2006) for 181 wind turbines each 140 metres high and 88 miles of road network on an area designated for its special wildlife. Stuart Brooks, SWT’s Head of Conservation said: “While the Scottish Wildlife Trust supports the use of renewable energy alternatives, this is the last place the Scottish Executive should be considering an application. Lewis is one of the best sites for wildlife in Britain.” “It is not just the wind turbines that are the problem. More lasting environmental impacts will be caused by the infrastructure to support the wind farm such as cabling underground, turbine foundations, roads and electrical substations. Peat takes thousands of years to mature and is an effective mechanism for fixing and storing carbon. If peat bogs are damaged they can release this stored carbon as carbon dioxide adding to global warming.” He continued: “Lewis peatlands has been awarded the highest levels of protection through the Ramsar Convention and European Habitat Regulations. Damaging them in this way contravenes and undermines the legislation set up to protect them. Should this application go ahead, the development will have significant impacts on wildlife particular birds such as the golden plover and the dunlin that breed on the site. On World Wetland Days, we are asking people to support our objection to this proposal by sending an objection letter or email to the Scottish Executive.”

Now more than 700 Lewis crofters face a court battle to keep their land as they fight plans for one of Scotland’s biggest proposed wind farms.

A note from Dina:

The indigenous people of Lewis have a specific and very emotive attachment to their land, which is also the common grazings on which Lewis Wind Power plans to build their 181 monoliths etc. We also now have a third wind farm application on the desks of the Scottish Executive, to add to the LWP scheme, and the Eisgein one for 55 turbines on the Eisgein estate in South Lochs. The Pairc wind farm application has just been submitted by Scottish and Southern Energy, for another 57 gigantic (145 metres) wind turbines, also in South Lochs. There are now applications submitted to planning for around 300 wind turbines on this island, it is an abomination, and an insult to the integrity and honesty of particularly the rural communities of Lewis, who would suffer if any of these projects were consented, but whose voices, united in protest and opposition, have been silenced whenever the officials found it possible to do so. But now the crofters, whose land is required to build the LWP scheme have spoken out loud and strong, and they will not flinch from that position no matter what is thrown at them!

Regards

Dina

More links:

Crofters’ legal vow on wind farm

Wind farm ‘is threat to eagles’

Wind farm ‘hits eagle numbers’

Government Misrepresents Extent of Land Clearing: A Note from Ian Mott

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The latest satellite (SLATS) data on Queensland clearing is now available and it provides an interesting insight into how data can be presented in a way that is quite remote from the truth on the ground. The report, Landcover Change in Queensland 2004-2005 can be seen at www.nrw.qld.gov.au/slats

The annual average area cleared in the period was 351,000ha of which 172,000ha (49%) was remnant vegetation with the remaining 179,000ha (51%) being non-remnant woody regrowth. When this was broken down into Carnahan vegetation classes some 193,000ha (55%) was of a type that would not be included within the meaning of forest under the National Forest Inventory. That is, it was “Tussocky or Tufted Grasses” and other vegetation types that have less than 10% foliage cover and are less than 2 metres tall. This presentation still does not allow us to determine what proportion of the 158,000ha (44.7%) cleared remnant vegetation was actually non-forest vegetation types that may actually benefit from tree removal to restore the grassland/shrub ecosystems.

The report has fine tuned a previous practice of breaking the data into relevant grid squares with a colour code to indicate the area of land cleared in each square. Previous reports have used 30′ X 30′ (Lat/Long) grid cells that covered an area of approximately 280,000 hectares with codes indicating cleared area from <100ha to >5000ha for each cell. This produced a map with numerous lurid dark tones but which told us very little, other than the fact that somewhere within a square measuring 53km by 53km was somewhere between 0.01km2 and 50km2 of clearing.

This has now been broken up into 7’30” X 7’30” (Lat/Long) grid cells that cover approximately 17,500 hectares but these still retain the same colour codes for the same cleared area categories and produce a map with lots of little coloured squares that give the appearance of widespread clearing activity. These can be seen at Figure 8 P18 of the current report.

But the most interesting aspect of this presentation is what it does not tell us about the clearing. The graphic below is an enlargement of a 700,000 hectare scene to the west of Charleville which is recorded as one of the hotbeds of clearing in 2004-2005.

The lower presentation is an enlargement of the SLATS Report while the upper presentation indicates the information that is readily available and could be incorporated into the presentation if the political masters were willing to provide a budget for the truth.

Each of the grid squares has been broken up into 700 smaller squares of 25 hectares each (25 across and 28 down) so we are able to show the actual area of pasture, remnant, and woody regrowth in each grid cell. This then enables one to show each years clearing activity in the respective proportions of regrowth and remnant clearing. More importantly, it allows the viewer to gain an understanding of the relevance of that clearing in relation to the local landscape. Obviously, a large amount of clearing in a cell with a low level of remnant (eg. at E2 below) is of more concern than a cleared fence line in a cell with 75% woody remnant vegetation cover.

When the actual clearing is presented in direct spatial proportion to the area of the grid cell and the area of woody vegetation, we get a much more honest appreciation of what is taking place.

Charleville Remnant B.jpg

Of the approximately 3,450 grid cells indicating clearing activity in the report, more than 3,300 of them were in the two least cleared categories, showing cleared areas from 0 <100ha and 100 <500ha in each cell. The remaining 147 cells were easier to count and, after allocating a modal value in each class, we were able to determine that approximately half of all clearing, some 175,000ha, was cleared from these few cells. After allowing for a modal value of 300ha in the second lowest category and a roughly estimated proportion of 9% (or 300) of the 3300 remaining cells being in the second lowest category this indicated that another 90,000ha of clearing took place in the second lowest category. And this left only about 86,000ha of clearing taking place on the remaining 3000 cells at an average area of only 28 hectares per cell.

When that 28ha of clearing is proportionately represented on our improved data presentation below it would occupy just one of the 700 small squares in the cell. And when viewed in proper proportion it then becomes clear that the overwhelming majority of the scenes where some clearing has taken place, that clearing is of extremely marginal ecological impact. Indeed, it is at a level that would be barely detectable with the naked eye.

But it is in the allocation of this clearing (or current absence of it) between remnant and non-remnant at the grid cell level that provides the real “smoking gun” of systematic institutional deception. This is because a 28ha clearing event on an inland property is more than likely to be either fodder harvesting for stock or clearing for a fence line etc. And we know that mulga pulling for stockfeed is done on a long term rotational basis of 15 to 25 years. And that interval is more than sufficient for past regrowth to return to remnant status, being more than 70% of “normal” height. This provides grounds for informed speculation as to what proportion of remnant clearing, the assumed worst impact, is actually concentrated in small events of minimal consequence while the major events are primarily of non-remnant woody weeds.

We won’t actually know for sure unless we demand that this information, that is already at hand, be presented in a manner that properly informs the community. Anything less is serious misrepresentation by omission.

Ian Mott

Radiative forcing due to land use change in southwest Australia

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Having seen Ian Mott’s note on land change, I though I would post this paper suggesting that climate models and therefore the IPCC underestimate the effects of land use change on climate:

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112, D09117, doi:10.1029/2006JD007505, 2007

Observational estimates of radiative forcing due to land use change in southwest Australia

Abstract

Radiative forcing associated with land use change is largely derived from global circulation models (GCM), and the accuracy of these estimates depends on the robustness of the vegetation characterization used in the GCMs. In this study, we use observations from the Clouds and Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) instrument on board the Terra satellite to report top-of-the-atmosphere (TOA) radiative forcing values associated with clearing of native vegetation for agricultural purposes in southwest Australia. Over agricultural areas, observations show consistently higher shortwave fluxes at the TOA compared to native vegetation, especially during the time period between harvest and planting. Estimates using CERES observations show that over a specific area originally covered by native vegetation, replacement of half the area by croplands results in a diurnally averaged shortwave radiative forcing of approximately −7 W m−2. GCM-derived estimates for areas with 30% or more croplands range from −1 to −2 W m−2 compared to observational estimate of −4.2 W m−2, thus significantly underestimating radiative forcing due to land use change by a factor of 2 or more. Two potential reasons for this underestimation are incorrect specification of the multiyear land use change scenario and the inaccurate prescription of seasonal cycles of crops in GCMs.

Received 12 May 2006; accepted 22 November 2006; published 15 May 2007.

Keywords: Australia; land use change; radiative forcing.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006JD007505.shtml