Climate & Climate Change

Dr. Roy Spencer from The University of Alabama at Huntsville will be presenting a special seminar at CU Boulder in the CIRES Auditorium on Thursday, July 17th, based on the Journal of Climate paper (in press):

Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, 2008: Feedback vs. Chaotic Radiative Forcing: “Smoking Gun” Evidence for an Insensitive Climate System?

Abstract

“A simple model and satellite observations are used to demonstrate that previous diagnoses of climate feedbacks from the satellite record have a strong bias in the direction of high climate sensitivity (positive feedback). The source of the bias is chaotic radiative forcing generated within the climate system, most likely due to low clouds. Through analysis of frequency histograms of local regression slopes computed throughout the low-pass filtered time series of temperature and total (reflected shortwave SW and emitted longwave LW) radiative fluxes, the radiative forcing signal is shown to have a unique signature separate from the feedback signature. The global oceanic averages of satellite CERES data during 2000 through 2005 reveal a net (SW+LW) feedback parameter of around 8 W m-2 K-1. This strong negative feedback signal exists independent of the low-pass filter time scale, from 10 day to 2 years. In stark contrast, IPCC AR4 models analyzed with the same method all exhibit positive feedbacks of various strengths. It is suggested that the unrealistically high sensitivity of the climate models is the result of a misinterpretation of the co-variability of clouds and temperature when specifying cloud parameterizations. Since only radiative feedback has been assumed in feedback analysis of natural variability (clouds being forced by temperature), the presence of chaotic radiative forcing of temperature by clouds causes the false appearance of positive feedback. In short, cause and effect have been confused. Finally, if such a strong negative feedback has indeed been operating on multi-decadal time scales, this means that the radiative forcing from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is not nearly strong enough to explain the 1°C warming in the last century.”

The pdf of the ms powerpoint presentation is here.

Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News: Special Guest Seminar at CU by Roy Spencer, July 17, 2008:Global Warming: Recent Evidence for Reduced Climate Sensitivity

A top Democrat told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol Thursday that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the “black hawk down” battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels.

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House (Select) Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, also equated the drive for global warming legislation with the drive for women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But one global warming expert from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) told Cybercast News Service that such a remark reveals Markey’s ignorance on the subject of global warming.

CNSNews.com: Global Warming Led to ‘Black Hawk Down,’ Congressman Says

It may not be the most profound effect of global warming, but it could be the most painful: Climate change could bring a sharp increase in cases of kidney stones in Illinois and other Midwestern states, according to a new study.

Linking climate change to kidney stones seems odd, but it’s based on the solid medical finding that people in warm regions develop the condition at increased rates. Sweating in warm weather removes fluid from the body and increases the salt concentration in urine, which can spur the growth of kidney stones.

By the year 2050, the new report estimates that a large chunk of Illinois will fall within America’s “kidney-stone belt,” which currently includes only Southern states. The Chicago area alone would see up to 100,000 extra cases each year, according to the report published Monday in a widely respected journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

chicagotribune.com: Global warming to spark rise in kidney stone cases, study says

I’m not sure if John Brignell has these latest consequences of global warming on his ‘warm list’ – A complete list of things caused by global warming.

Global Warming – the cause of everything and every weather event is ‘consistent‘ with climate models.

Physics and Society, in its July 2008 quarterly edition, has published a paper by Christopher Monckton entitled Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered, which exposes the IPCC’s strange method of calculating the effect of CO2 on temperature and suggests that in response to a CO2 doubling global temperature may rise by as little as 0.6 C.

Abstract:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions probably caused more than half of the “global warming” of the past 50 years and would cause further rapid warming. However, global mean surface temperature has not risen since 1998 and may have fallen since late 2001. The present analysis suggests that the failure of the IPCC’s models to predict this and many other climatic phenomena arises from defects in its evaluation of the three factors whose product is climate sensitivity:

1. Radiative forcing ΔF;
2. The no-feedbacks climate sensitivity parameter κ; and
3. The feedback multiplier ƒ.

Some reasons why the IPCC’s estimates may be excessive and unsafe are explained. More importantly, the conclusion is that, perhaps, there is no “climate crisis”, and that currently-fashionable efforts by governments to reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions are pointless, may be ill-conceived, and could even be harmful.

Physics & Society: July 2008, Volume 37, Number 3

Full Paper at http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm

Physics and Society is the quarterly of the Forum on Physics and Society, a division of the American Physical Society. It presents letters, commentary, book reviews and reviewed articles on the relations of physics and the physics community to government and society. It also carries news of the Forum and provides a medium for Forum members to exchange ideas. Opinions expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the APS or of the Forum.

As a dissenting physicist, I simply can no longer buy the notion that CO2 produces any significant warming of the atmosphere at any rate.

I’ve studied the atomic absorption physics to death, from John Nicol’s extensive development to the much longer winded dissertation by Gerlich & Tscheuschner and everything in between, it simply doesn’t add up.

Even if every single IR photon absorbed by a CO2 molecule were magically transformed into purely thermal translational modes , the pitifully small quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t add up to much additional heat. And if the aforementioned magical 100% transformation from radiation into “heat” were true, then all arguments concerning re-emission ( source of all the wonderful “greenhouse effect” cartoons with their arrows flying in all directions ) are out the window.

More and more, I am becoming convinced that atmospheric heating is primarily by thermal conduction from the surface, whose temperature is determined primarily by solar absorption. I get a lot of email from laymen seeking simple answers ( I’m sure you all do as well ). My simple reply goes like this:

1. The sun heats the earth.
2. The earth heats the atmosphere
3. After the sun sets, the atmosphere cools back down

With a parting comment: If we were to have 96 continuous hours without sunlight, temperatures would likely be below freezing over all the world’s land masses. The warmest place you could find would be to take a swim in the nearest ocean. There is no physical process in the atmosphere which “traps” heat. The so-called “greenhouse effect ” is a myth.

Jim Peden

Jim is Webmaster of Middlebury Networks and Editor of the Middlebury Community Network, spent some of his earlier years as an Atmospheric Physicist at the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and Extranuclear Laboratories in Blawnox, Pennsylvania, studying ion-molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere. As a student, he was elected to both the National Physics Honor Society and the National Mathematics Honor Fraternity, and was President of the Student Section of the American Institute of Physics. He was a founding member of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. His thesis on charge transfer reactions in the upper atmosphere was co-published in part in the prestigious Journal of Chemical Physics. The results obtained by himself and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh remain today as the gold standard in the AstroChemistry Database. He was a co-developer of the Modulated Beam Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer, declared one of the “100 Most Significant Technical Developments of the Year” and displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

GOODBYE air pollution and smoky chimneys, hello brighter days. That’s been the trend in Europe for the past three decades – but unfortunately cleaning up the skies has allowed more of the sun’s rays to pierce the atmosphere, contributing to at least half the warming that has occurred.

New Scientist Environment: ‘Cleaner skies explain surprise rate of warming’

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. environmental regulators quietly published a draft study on Thursday that linked global warming to higher levels of smog that could harm human health, a report green groups said stood in contrast to the Bush Administration’s slow movement on climate change.

The draft report published by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Federal Register said, “Climate change has the potential to produce significant increases in near-surface (ozone) concentrations in many areas of the U.S.”

Reuters Environment: ‘Study links global warming to more smog’

The Indian Government has produced a climate report entitled: ‘National Action Plan on Climate Change.’ Section 1.4 deals with ‘Observed Changes in Climate and Weather Events in India’ and states that, “No firm link between the documented changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established:”

The report also made clear that India has no plans to cut back energy usage. “It is obvious that India needs to substantially increase its per capita energy consumption to provide a minimally acceptable level of wellbeing to its people. […] India is determined that its per capita greenhouse gas emissions will at no point exceed that of developed countries.”

US Senate EPW Committee: India Issues Report Challenging Global Warming Fears