Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Climate & Climate Change

Australian Skeptic Bets $US6,000 That Warming Will Cool

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Hi Jennifer,

I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry (Google on “FullCAM”).

When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause.

I am now skeptical and have recently bet $US6,000 that the warming trend will weaken
soon.

As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Read more by clicking here http://tinyurl.com/3dbbrb or here http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2007/04/climate-skeptics-guest-post-why-david.html

Cheers,
David Evans

Latest IPCC Climate Change Report

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It was all over ABC news yesterday that Australia’s magnificent Great Barrier Reef is in “real danger of disappearing in 20 years”

The journalist, Elizabeth Jackson, was extrapolating from a new United Nation’s 23-page summary of a report on climate change.

This is the second summary report from the United Nation’s this year with the first summary report released in Paris on the 2nd February (blog post and comment on first report here).

The new summary report doesn’t say the reef will disappear at all, but it does paint a bleak picture. There only appears to be one reference to the Great Barrier Reef and the text reads:

“Significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some ecologically-rich sites including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland Wet Tropics. Other sites at risk include Kakadu wetlands, south-west Australia, sub-Antarctic islands and the alpine areas of both countries.”

There is also comment more generally about reefs including:

“Increases in sea surface temperature of about 1 to 3°C are projected to result in more frequent coral bleaching events and widespread mortality, unless there is thermal adaptation or acclimatisation by corals. [emphasis added]

“Mangroves and coral reefs are projected to be further degraded, with additional consequences for fisheries and tourism.

“For example, current stresses on some coral reefs include marine pollution and chemical runoff from agriculture as well as increases in water temperature and ocean acidification.

“As a consequence of intense tropical cyclone activity: damage to coral reefs.” [end of quotes]

I’m still not convinced destructive fishing practices and pollution aren’t a greater risk to the world’s reefs than climate change as detailed in my controversial opinion piece written for The Australian some months ago.

The new summary sets out all the key policy-relevant findings of the Fourth Assessment of Working Group II of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Assessment is of, “current scientific understanding of impacts of climate change on natural, managed and human systems, the capacity of these systems to adapt and their vulnerability. It builds upon past IPCC assessments and incorporates new knowledge gained since the Third Assessment”.

While much of the report is about what ‘could’ happen to the environment given global warming. It is interesting to note what is included in the section on current knowledge about observed impacts of climate change on the natural environment:

“With regard to changes in snow, ice and frozen ground (including permafrost), there is high confidence that natural systems are affected. Examples are:
• enlargement and increased numbers of glacial lakes;
• increasing ground instability in permafrost regions, and rock avalanches in mountain regions;
• changes in some Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems, including those in sea-ice biomes, and also
predators high in the food chain.

Based on growing evidence, there is high confidence that the following types of hydrological systems are being affected around the world:
• increased run-off and earlier spring peak discharge in many glacier- and snow-fed rivers;
• warming of lakes and rivers in many regions, with effects on thermal structure and water quality.

There is very high confidence, based on more evidence from a wider range of species, that recent warming is strongly affecting terrestrial biological systems, including such changes as:
• earlier timing of spring events, such as leaf-unfolding, bird migration and egg-laying;
• poleward and upward shifts in ranges in plant and animal species.

Based on satellite observations since the early 1980s, there is high confidence that there has been a trend in many regions towards earlier ‘greening’5 of vegetation in the spring linked to longer thermal growing seasons due to recent warming.

There is high confidence, based on substantial new evidence, that observed changes in marine and freshwater biological systems are associated with rising water temperatures, as well as related changes in ice cover, salinity, oxygen levels and circulation.

These include:
• shifts in ranges and changes in algal, plankton and fish abundance in high-latitude ocean;
• increases in algal and zooplankton abundance in high-latitude and high-altitude lakes;
• range changes and earlier migrations of fish in rivers.

The uptake of anthropogenic carbon since 1750 has led to the ocean becoming more acidic with an average decrease in pH of 0.1 units [IPCC Working Group I Fourth Assessment]. However, the effects of observed ocean acidification on the marine biosphere are as yet undocumented.” [end of quote]

There is no specific reference to coral reefs in the “observed impacts” section. The comment that there is no evidence of ocean acidification affecting the marine biosphere presumably includes no impact on coral reefs.

In summary the report, like most climate change reports from the United Nations, includes relatively unspectacular observed impacts, is big on all the bad things that could happen, and the Australian media blow this out of all proportion, this time including comment that the Great Barrier Reef could disappear in 20 years.

How Much Money for Climate Change Research in Australia?

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According to science writer, Julian Cribb, “climate change has unleashed the biggest academic gold rush in recent history, with state and federal governments splashing tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars around almost weekly on new projects and research centres – a classic Australian response to decades of indolence, neglect and bad planning.”

In the article entitled ‘When drought spells cash’ he lists the following recent projects

• the Federal and Victorian governments have poured $100 million into a clean brown coal project;
• the New South Wales Government announced it would spend $22 million on two pilot clean coal projects;
• Victoria has begun work on a $30 million underground carbon storage project;
• SA is spending $800,000 on a wind tunnel to improve wind turbine performance and a further $200,000 on various clean energy projects;
• Queensland has put $9 million into a Climate Centre of Excellence;
• the University of NSW has announced a new $6 million national climate change research centre;
• the Australian National University has created the Fenner School for Environment & Society for research into areas including climate change and water;
• Adelaide University has launched a Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability;
• Griffith University has signed an agreement with the Government of Indonesia to study the regional impact of climate change; and
• the University of Ballarat has launched a project in community-owned renewable energy.

The article goes on to suggest that agriculture has missed out, “In all the excitement the area most affected by climate change – agriculture, and the science that backs it – has largely remained like Cinderella.”

I’m not so sure. Isn’t there a pile of money for agriculture in the $10 billion plan for water security, including money for research?

And I image the above list for Australia is incomplete?

And how much is spent worldwide on climate change research?

US Supreme Court Rules on C02

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“The US supreme court yesterday issued a landmark ruling in favour of environmentalists and against George Bush’s stance on global warming. The court judged that the federal Environmental Protection Agency had the power through a clean air law to restrict exhaust emissions, and told the agency to re-examine the issue.

“The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups frustrated with the Bush administration’s lack of action. Individual states, led by California, have been imposing regulations of their own. Car makers, public utilities, and others responsible for carbon dioxide emissions opposed the lawsuit.

“The court found that the scientific evidence shows that global warming is not some future threat, but is already having serious impacts in the United States. This will be a huge turning point in federal policy. The administration massively overreached in refusing to cut global warming pollution from cars when the Clean Air Act explicitly requires it to act…

Read the article ‘US supreme court overrules Bush’s refusal to restrict C02’ by Ewen MacAskill in The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2048760,00.html

Measuring Atmospheric C02: Paul Williams Reviews the Controversial New Paper by Ernest-Georg Beck

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Hi Jennifer,

The recent paper by Ernst-Georg Beck, ‘180 Years of Atmospheric C02 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods’
and his supporting data has been discussed here. Briefly, Beck looks at historical records of atmospheric CO2 measurements since 1812, and finds that many scientists recorded measurements much greater than the 290 parts per million (ppm) which has been accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as being the pre-industrial level of atmospheric CO2, before the increasing usage of fossil fuels began to raise atmospheric CO2.

This raises a number of questions. How accurate are the old measurements? Were they contaminated by nearby sources of CO2 emissions? How did the IPCC come to accept 290 ppm as the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 level?

On the question of accuracy, Beck mentions three methods of measuring CO2, and explains that the apparatus used was calibrated against gas with a known CO2 content, and scientists also calibrated their apparatus against the equipment of other scientists. The accuracy of the most common technique, the Pettenkofer process, is +/- 3%. Obviously this is much less accurate than modern methods, but still enough to be confident that the results are not wildly inaccurate by tens or hundreds of parts per million.

Could the samples have been contaminated, such as by war activity, industrial processes, or other local sources of CO2? It is certainly possible. For example, a series of 25,000 measurements taken at Giessen, Germany, between 1939 and 1941, averaged 438.5 ppm. The influence of a city is estimated to be between 10 and 70 ppm increase in CO2 levels. Even allowing a 70 ppm increase for the proximity of the city gives a background level of about 370ppm, comparable to present day levels, but much higher than is generally thought to have occurred at that time.

Other sites are unlikely to have been contaminated. Lockhart and Court found CO2 levels in Antarctica between 200 and 1700 ppm, in 1940 and 1941. Hock, et al found CO2 levels averaging 400 ppm between 1947 and 1949 at Point Barrow in northern Alaska. Once again, these are much higher than the generally accepted values of that time.

So how did the pre-industrial figure come to be accepted as 290 ppm? As mentioned in Beck’s paper, Guy Callendar, a British engineer and scientist, was influential. He examined 19th and 20th century CO2 measurements and rejected those he considered inaccurate, the ones he selected leading him to conclude that the pre-industrial CO2 level was about 290 ppm (G. S. Callendar, “The Composition of the Atmosphere through the Ages,” The Meteorological Magazine,vol. 74, No. 878, March 1939, pp. 33-39.). Callendar was a proponent of the theory that CO2 emissions from industrial activity would raise global temperatures, and had written a paper to that effect in 1938, at a time when Europe had just experienced five warm years.

Among the criteria that Callendar used to reject measurements, were any that deviated by 10% or more from the average of the region, and any taken for special purposes such as such as “biological, soil air, atmospheric pollution”. The first criteria is a rather circular argument, while the second seems to ignore the accuracy of the results. Whatever the validity of these exclusions, it turned out that the mean of 19th century samples he included was 292 ppm. The mean of the samples he had available to include was 335 ppm.

Not everyone agreed with Callendar. Giles Slocum pointed out in 1955 that Callendar’s exclusions from the 19th century data were mostly higher than the ones he included, while those from the 20th century that he excluded were lower than the ones he included, in line with his theory that CO2 levels had risen and were causing increased temperatures. As Slocum diplomatically put it ” Much seems to depend on the objectivity of Callendar’s decisions as to which data to keep.”

The other official source of pre-industrial CO2 levels is, of course, ice core readings. Not everyone is happy with those either, as I will show in a later post.

Beck shows, in figure 14, that CO2 levels and temperature are correlated, if the historical CO2 measurements are used instead of the IPCC approved figures. This figure also shows that the chemical measurement of CO2, which ended about 1957, matches well with the Mauna Loa measurements, which began in 1958, with readings of about 315 ppm.

So were pre-industrial CO2 levels stable until Industrial Man disturbed the balance, or has there always been an ebb and flow? Beck’s paper certainly raises some interesting questions.

Regards,
Paul Williams
Adelaide, South Australia