Archives for January 2008

In December I mentioned that global warming may not be the only thing melting Greenland. Scientists have found at least one natural magma hotspot under the Arctic island that could be pitching in.

Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic may also contain active volcanoes.

Now we have reports relating to an article in Nature Geoscience:

Herald Tribune: ‘Antarctic volcanoes identified as a possible culprit in glacier melting’

Excerpt: Volcanically, Antarctica is a fairly quiet place. But sometime around 325 B.C., the researchers said, a hidden and still active volcano erupted, puncturing several hundred yards of ice above it.

The Nature Geoscience article:

Published online: 20 January 2008 | doi:10.1038/ngeo106

A recent volcanic eruption beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet

Hugh F. J. Corr & David G. Vaughan

Indirect evidence suggests that volcanic activity occurring beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet influences ice flow and sheet stability. However, only volcanoes that protrude through the ice sheet and those inferred from geophysical techniques have been mapped so far. Here we analyse radar data from the Hudson Mountains, West Antarctica, that contain reflections from within the ice that had previously been interpreted erroneously as the ice-sheet bed. We show that the reflections are present within an elliptical area of about 23,000 km2 that contains tephra from an explosive volcanic eruption. The tephra layer is thickest at a subglacial topographic high, which we term the Hudson Mountains Subglacial Volcano. The layer depth dates the eruption at 207 BC (+/-240 years), which matches exceptionally strong but previously unattributed conductivity signals in nearby ice cores. The layer contains 0.019–0.31 km3 of tephra, which implies a volcanic explosive index of 3–4. Production and episodic release of water from the volcano probably affected ice flow at the time of the eruption. Ongoing volcanic heat production may have implications for contemporary ice dynamics in this glacial system.

British Antarctic Survey, Natural Environment Research Council, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK

Hi Jennifer,

Five more scientists have been added to the over 400 scientists in the Minority Senate Report who dispute man-made global warming claims:

1. Physics professor Dr. Frederick Wolf of Keene State College in New Hampshire has taught meteorology and climatology courses for the past 25 years and will be undertaking a sabbatical project on global warming. Wolf recently declared he was skeptical of man-made climate fears. “Several things have contributed to my skepticism about global warming being due to human causes. We all know that the atmosphere is a very complicated system. Also, after studying climate, I am aware that there are cycles of warm and cold periods of varying lengths which are still not completely understood,” Wolf wrote EPW on January 10, 2008. “Also, many, many of the supporters (or believers) of human induced warming have not read the IPCC report AND Al Gore is NOT a climate scientist!” Wolf added. He also rejected the claim that most scientists agree mankind is driving a “climate crisis.” “I am impressed by the number of scientific colleagues who are naturally skeptical about the conclusion of human induced warming,” Wolf added.

2. Biologist Dr. Matthew Cronin, a research professor at the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, called predictions that future global warming would devastate polar bear populations “one extreme case hypothesis.” “We don’t know what the future ice conditions will be, as there is apparently considerable uncertainty in the sea ice models regarding the timing and extent of sea ice loss. Also, polar bear populations are generally healthy and have increased worldwide over the last few decades,” Cronin said in March 2007. “Recent declines in sea ice and indications that polar bears in some areas may be negatively impacted are cause for concern, but in my opinion do not warrant designation of the species as threatened with extinction,” Cronin said. “I believe that consideration of multiple hypotheses regarding the future of sea ice and polar bear populations would provide better science than reliance on one extreme case hypothesis of loss of sea ice and associated drastic declines in polar bear populations,” Cronin said.

3. Senior Meteorologist Dr. Wolfgang P. Thuene was a former analyst and forecaster for the German Weather Service in the field of synoptic meteorology and also worked for the German Environmental Protection Agency. Thuene currently works in the Ministry of Environment and Forests of Rheinland-Pfalz. In 2007, Thuene rejected the idea that mankind is driving global warming. “All temperature and weather observations indicate that the earth isn’t like a greenhouse and that there is in reality no ‘natural greenhouse effect’ which could warm up the earth by its own emitted energy and cause by re-emission a ‘global warming effect’. With or without atmosphere every body looses heat, gets inevitably colder. This natural fact, formulated by Sir Isaac Newton in his ‘cooling law’, led Sir James Dewar to the construction of the ‘Dewar flask’ to minimize heat losses from a vessel. But the most perfect thermos flask can’t avoid that the hot coffee really gets cold. The hypothesis of a natural and a man-made ‘greenhouse effect’, like eugenics, belongs to the category ‘scientific errors,” Thuene wrote on February 24, 2007.

“The infrared thermography is a smoking gun proof that the IPCC-hypothesis cannot be right. The atmosphere does not act like the glass of a greenhouse which primarily hinders the convection! The atmosphere has an open radiation window between 8 and 14 microns and is therefore transparent to infrared heat from the earth’s surface. This window cannot be closed by the distinctive absorption lines of CO2 at 4.3 and 15 microns. Because the atmosphere is not directly heated by the Sun but indirectly by the surface the earth loses warmth also by conduction with the air and much more effectively by vertical convection of the air to a very great part by evaporation and transpiration. Nearly thirty percent of the solar energy is used for evaporation and distributed as latent energy through the atmosphere,” Thuene wrote. “Summarizing we can say: Earth’s surface gains heat from the Sun, is warmed up and loses heat by infrared radiation. While the input of heat by solar radiation is restricted to the daytime hours, the outgoing terrestrial radiation is a nonstop process during day and night and depends only on the body temperature and the emissivity. Therefore after sunset the earth continuous to radiate and therefore cools off. Because the air is in physical contact with the ground it also cools off, the vertical temperature profile changes, and we get a so called surface inversion which inhibits convection,” Thuene explained.

4. Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor in Ohio and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at its headquarters office near Washington, DC. DeFayette, who earned a masters degree in Physical Chemistry, also worked at the NRC’s Regional Office near Chicago where he was a Director of the Enforcement staff. He also served as a consultant to the Department of Energy. DeFayette wrote a critique of former Vice President Al Gore’s book, An Inconvenient Truth, in 2007. “I freely admit I am a skeptic,” DeFayette told EPW on January 15, 2008. “I take umbrage in so-called ‘experts’ using data without checking their sources. My scientific background taught me to question things that do not appear to be right (e.g.-if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is). That is one reason I went to such detail in critiquing Gore’s book. I also strongly object to the IPCC and its use of so-called ‘experts,’” DeFayette explained.

In his March 14, 2007 critique of Gore, DeFayette dismissed Gore’s claim that “the survival of our civilization” is at stake. DeFayette wrote, “Nonsense! Civilization may one day cease to exist but it won’t be from global warming caused by CO2. I can think of many more promising scenarios such as disease, nuclear war; volcanic eruptions; ice ages; meteor impacts; solar heating.” DeFayette asserted that Gore’s book was “a political, not scientific, book. There is absolutely no discussion about the world’s climate history, effects of the sun, other planets, precession, eccentricity, etc.” DeFayette disputed Gore’s notion of a “consensus.” “Until a few months ago, scientists believed we had 9 planets, but now we have 8 because Pluto was demoted. In the 1600s scientists believed we lived in an earth-centered universe but Galileo disagreed and proved we lived in a sun-centered universe. At the time of Columbus, the scientific consensus was that the earth was flat but obviously that was wrong. In the late 18th century, ‘Neptunists’ were convinced that all of the rocks of the Earth’s crust had been precipitated from water and Robert Jameson, a British geologist, characterized the supporting evidence as ‘incontrovertible,’” DeFayette wrote. “In each of these cases there was ‘scientific consensus’ that eventually was rejected,” he added.

5. Nuclear Physicist and Chemical Engineer Dr. Philip Lloyd, a UN IPCC co-coordinating lead author on the Technical Report on Carbon Capture & Storage, was in charge of South Africa’s Chamber of Mines’ Metallurgy Laboratory and was a former professor at University of Witwatersrand where he established a course in environmental chemical engineering. Lloyd has served as President of the South African Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Federation of Societies of Professional Engineers, and the Associated Scientific and Technical Societies of Southern Africa. Lloyd, who has authored over 150 refereed publications, currently serves as an honorary research fellow with the Energy Research Centre at the University of Cape Town.

Lloyd rejects man-made climate fears. “I have grave difficulties in finding any but the most circumstantial evidence for any human impact on the climate,” Lloyd wrote to EPW on January 18, 2008. “The quantity of CO2 we produce is insignificant in terms of the natural circulation between air, water and soil. I have tried numerous tests for radiative effects, and all have failed. I have tried to develop an isotopic method for identifying stable C12 (from fossil fuels) and merely ended up understanding the difference between the major plant chemistries and their differing ability to use the different isotopes. I have studied the ice core record, in detail, and am concerned that those who claim to have a model of our climate future haven’t a clue about the forces driving our climate past,” Lloyd wrote. “I am particularly concerned that the rigor of science seems to have been sacrificed on an altar of fundraising. I am doing a detailed assessment of the IPCC reports and the Summaries for Policy Makers, identifying the way in which the Summaries have distorted the science. I have found examples of a Summary saying precisely the opposite of what the scientists said,” he concluded.

Cheers,
Marc Morano

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This is the fourth post in a series on the US Senate Minority Report, you can read earlier blog posts here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

You can link to the report entitled ‘Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007’
released on December 20, 2007 by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (Minority) and link to associated media here: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport

Recently I have encountered a couple of prominent believers in a carbon dioxide driven climate catastrophe, who see democracy as an obstacle to reducing emissions.

Mayer Hillman is 76 years old and he is still senior fellow emeritus at the left-leaning Policy Studies Institute ‘think tank.’ For 40 years he has campaigned against road transport. He recently persuaded the editor of Local Transport Today (LTT) to interview him. The result was a revealing 3-page interview in the 6th December 2007 issue entitled, ‘Plan to save the planet, but is anyone willing to pay the price?’ Perhaps it is no surprise that he has latched onto climate change as a means to his end. To be fair though, this is a position he adopted in 1990, long before carbon dioxide emissions impacted on transport policy. Hillman takes the familiar line of scientific consensus about a forthcoming climate catastrophe. He sees carbon rationing, with an allowance of one tonne of CO2 emissions per year, per person, bringing an end to long distance travel by air, rail or car. Hillman goes on to say, “When the chips are down I think democracy is a less important goal than is the protection of the planet from the death of life. Rationing has to be imposed on people whether they like it or not.” The interview can be accessed via a simple registration for a week’s free trial of LTT. My edited response was published in the 20th December issue. The unedited version written with much input from John McLean is reproduced in full below:

Mayer Hillman (interview, LTT 6th December) makes Al Gore look like a climate sceptic. Hillman wants to abolish democracy in favour of a carbon dictatorship and introduce carbon rationing/personal carbon trading in order to achieve wealth redistribution. The rationing of carbon emissions is a throwback to the communist era of dictating how an individual’s life should be lived. One can almost imagine the carbon police rounding up transgressors and throwing them in a carbon Gulag. His statements that democracy should give way to an authoritarian government are ludicrous. When challenged, he modified that to saying that all political parties should take an identical position on climate so that the voting public have no choice. Unfortunately, this is already happening with the 3 main parties; consensus is a tool of dictatorship rather than democracy. He also wants to end travel by car and air. The economy would be destroyed simply because the UK produces 2% of global man-made carbon dioxide emissions, with transport being responsible for just 20% of the 2%. Drivers already pay fuel tax in excess of £240 per tonne of CO2 emitted. In reference to talking to a future generation Hillman repeats his assertion about the evidence for man-made warming being clear, but he fails to produce any meaningful evidence. I suppose that’s no surprise when the IPCC couldn’t produce much either (see http://mclean.ch/climate/IPCC_evidence.pdf).

Atmospheric Methane levels are stable or falling, and Methane has a ‘half-life’ of only 7 years in the atmosphere. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 50 to 200 years according to DEFRA, and has not been shown to cause catastrophic global warming. The claims about climate scientists saying that 400 or 430 ppmv is a “point of no return” are baseless. We do not have only a few years before the planet reaches its capacity to absorb CO2. If we look at the estimated anthropogenic emissions and the measured increases in CO2 we find that about 50% of emissions are absorbed. The claim that 430ppmv is the “maximum which should be considered safe” to prevent “uncontrollable positive feedback” is unsupported by any evidence. Rises in CO2 have lagged behind temperature rises during the earth’s geological history. For 27 of the past 50 years there has been no correlation between CO2 and global temperatures. Despite atmospheric CO2 levels being many times higher in the past, there has been no ‘runaway warming,’ suggesting that there are strong ‘negative feedbacks’ that operate as a ‘planetary thermostat’ to offset any ‘positive feedbacks’ via increased water vapour. More evidence for negative feedback due to the thinning of heat-trapping cirrus clouds comes from a recent publication by Spencer et al (2007) that was ignored by the media.

A new study just published in December by Douglass et al concludes that, “The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming. Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that Greenhouse models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapour, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide.”

The ultimate test of the mythical warming power of CO2 is about to begin as solar activity is expected to show a big fall in the coming decades. The flawed metric of a ‘global average surface temperature,’ which contains a warm bias, reached an El Nino driven peak in 1998. According to Roger Pielke Sr, “a change in heat in Joules that is the proper metric, not the surface temperature, and any accumulation of Joules since 2004 has been quite small, such that global warming has essentially stopped, at least for now. This lack of warming is consistent with the absence of lower tropospheric warming in the atmosphere since about 2003.“

We can also put other alarmist claims into perspective. The recent record low levels of Arctic Sea Ice (since satellite records began in 1979) can’t be explained by temperature change alone. Arctic wind anomolies are also implicated as part of a global pattern of exceptional summer circulation. Also, the media didn’t report the simultaneous record high levels of Antarctic Sea Ice. Wöppelmann et al claim a mean sea level rise of about 1.3mm per year in the last 100 years, and that the rise for 1993 to 2003 is “well within normal fluctuations.” The attempts to link hurricanes and global warming, which resulted in hurricane expert Chris Landsea resigning from the IPCC, have fizzled out following two quiet seasons. Most European glaciers have been in retreat from about 1870 and the majority of global glaciers have little or no monitoring record. Hillman makes very non-specific assertions about these situations. Millions of people being steadily displaced and dying of drought? I am unaware of any people who have been displaced. What drought is he referring to? El Nino and La Nina events cause a shift in rainfall patterns and that might be the entire cause.

Hillman seems very focused on the negative effects of global warming. Who is he to dictate that a certain temperature is acceptable? Contrast the claimed 2000 UK deaths due to the heat wave of 2003, with the yearly excess winter deaths of 25,000 to 45,000.

Hillman trots out the hoary old claim that sceptics are in the pay of oil companies but seems unaware of the implications of that comment. Firstly he is saying that scientists can be bought and their research findings somehow dictated for their “employers”. Secondly he conveniently forgets the trough of money that pro-man-made global warming scientists fight over. It is a trough that runs to billions of pounds every year, but admitted competition for the money is tough because the IPCC have dictated the direction of climate research. Climate scientists who wish to ensure future access to that funding pool know that they must produce papers, which are “acceptable” to the man-made global warming fraternity.

Pielke’s comments about a conflict of interest are correct (see http://mclean.ch/climate/SPPI-disband_the_IPCC.pdf ) and this apparently makes Hillman slightly subdued prior to showing his acceptance of one of the most blatant situations of a conflict of interest in the IPCC’s history – the lead author of a chapter of an IPCC report vigorously promoting his own “hockey stick” temperature graph.

The “hockey stick” has been soundly discredited and is absent from the IPCC 4th Assessment Report – so much for it being evidence. It is surely up to those who propose a hypothesis to produce evidence to support their claims; those who question the hypothesis are not required to prove their case. Hillman, like many others, has tried to replace the “innocent until proven guilty” dogma with a “guilty until proven innocent”. It’s a common ploy when one’s own evidence is pitifully weak. His knowledge of matters such as the hockey stick is sadly dated but his inability to recognise the play of vested interests is even worse.

Hillman also attacks Bjorn Lomborg as being “dangerous” for his belief that Kyoto style policies are futile, yet a recent article published in the journal Nature by Prins and Rayner arrives at the same conclusion. The development of secure energy sources and the adaptation to inevitable climate change is the way forward. The huge economic and social price that Hillman demands is not worth paying, as it is unlikely to make any detectable difference to the Earth’s constantly changing climate. As Czech president Vaclav Klaus says, freedom, not climate, is under threat

Regards,

Paul Biggs

David Shearman is Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Hon Visiting Fellow, Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide and Hon Secretary, Doctors for the Environment Australia. He is co-author, with Joseph Wayne Smith, of the book: The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy.

Shearman has written an article for Online Opinion (OLO), Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate, entitled: ‘Climate change, is democracy enough?’ He seems to be thinking much along the same lines as Mayer Hillman. In extracts from his article he writes:

“In Australia, a surfeit of democracy carries much responsibility for the demise of the Murray Darling River, where debate has replaced action.” One for Jen to respond to perhaps!

On China’s plan to ban plastic shopping bags, he says:

“The Chinese decision on shopping bags is authoritarian and contrasts with the voluntary non-effective solutions put forward in most Western democracies. We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions. It is not that we do not tolerate such decisions in the very heart of our society, in wide range of enterprises from corporate empires to emergency and intensive care units. If we do not act urgently we may find we have chosen total liberty rather than life.”

Read the entire article here.