Climate & Climate Change

According to Kurt Volker, US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs speaking in Berlin a couple of days ago, the US is doing more than its bit to reduce greenhouse gas emmission infact:

“The United States, and this Administration, care deeply about climate change. We agree that human activity contributes to global warming. We support the recent IPCC report, in which U.S. scientists played a leading role.
We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We have made tremendous investments in reducing emissions. We are working multilaterally to do so. We are continuing these efforts.

These efforts are producing results that stand up favorably against anyone in the world.
Just because we haven’t joined the Kyoto Protocol doesn’t make any of these statements less true.”

Furthermore, according to Mr Volker:

“Now, I know there is a deeply held view among many in Europe that the U.S. Government doesn’t get it. That we don’t care about climate change, that we are doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and that Europe, while perhaps not perfect, is doing a far better job of tackling the issue than the United States. This proposition–no matter how simple, no matter how widely held, and no matter how much it fits a pop-culture “blame-the-United States” paradigm–is completely wrong, on every point…

Read the full speech entitled ‘Post-Kyoto Surprise: America’s Quiet Efforts to Cut Greenhouse Gases Are Producing Results’ here: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/80465.htm

Now does he have a point, or not?

Danish physicist, Henrik Svensmark, is a bit different from your average climate change skeptics. He has an alternative theory of climate change and he has just written a book about it.

Published this week by Icon books, but not yet available at Amazons, it is called ‘The Chilling Stars – A New Theory of Climate Change’ and its apparently all about cosmic rays.

According to the book’s co-author and former editor of New Scientist, Nigel Calder, the new theory can explain why Antarctica is not warming. Indeed the most recent ‘summary’ from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that while temperatures have increased by almost twice the global average at the Arctic, there has been no warming at the Antarctic.

I’ve always been fascinated by bits of information that don’t fit neatly within an accepted theory, i.e. no warming trend at the Antarctic, and I’m always intrigued when there is a new theory to explain the apparent anomaly.

Anyway, along with the book there is a new journal paper by Dr Svensmark ‘Cosmoclimatology: A New Theory Emerges’ in Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 48 Issue 1, February 2007.

The abstract states: Changes in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays alter the Earth’s cloudiness. A recent experiment has shown how electrons liberated by cosmic rays assist in making aerosols, the building blocks of cloud condensation nuclei, while anomalous climatic trends in Antarctica confirm the role of clouds in helping to drive climate change. Variations in the cosmic-ray influx due to solar magnetic activity account well for climatic fluctuations on decadal, centennial and millennial timescales. Over longer intervals, the changing galactic environment of the solar system has had dramatic consequences, including Snowball Earth episodes. A new contribution to the faint young Sun paradox is also on offer.

Here’s an opinion piece from the Sunday Times Online entitled ‘An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change’ by Nigel Calder which includes comment that:

“Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.”

Read the complete article here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece.

The issue was previously discussed at this blog here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001674.html

Sir Richard Branson is offerering a prize of $32 million to the inventor who can come up with a design which removes harmful greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Great idea?

What about genetically modified diatoms designed to consume more carbon dioxide for every tonne of iron dumped in Antarctic waters?

We could stop fertilizing them when carbon dioxide levels were low enough?

OK! So you don’t like the idea. Got a better one?

There will be a federal election in Australia later this year and the leader of the Labor opposition, Kevin Rudd, has indicated he plans to make climate change a key issue.

There has been a big change in public opinion in Australia over the last year particularly following Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. Various opinion polls suggest that Australians are increasingly concerned about global warming and they want something done.

Until the last couple of days the general impression from the mainstream media has been that the Prime Minister, John Howard, is politically very vulnerable on this issue because he is seen as something of a climate change skeptic, though he describes himself as a climate change realist.

But could the issue end-up working against the Labor party in the same way the Tasmanian forestry issues worked against former Labor leader Mark Latham just before the last federal election by alienating blue-collar workers?

Graham Young explored the issue at his blog two days ago in a piece entitled ‘Climate Change Could Work Against Rudd’:

“Rudd is an enthusiast for all things AGW, which is where Howard’s potential benefit lies. If he is going to win the next election Howard needs to renew his compact with blue-collar Australia. He can do this by painting Rudd as a trendy inner-city elitist who wants to impose every currently fashionable notion on Australians, whether or not they work.

Amongst these notions is ratifying the Kyoto protocol. Yesterday’s announcement by the Chinese government that while they accept greenhouse gases are a problem, they don’t intend to stop building CO2 emitting power stations because they can’t afford to, shows just what a political problem it is.”

Then today on the front page of The Australian in an article ‘Nervous Labor Moves to Reassure the Coal Industry’ Joseph Kerr and Matthew Warren write:

“Opposition frontbenchers yesterday insisted the future of the coal industry was safe, amid fears within the party that an aggressive stance on climate change could unsettle mining and power workers, becoming a potent election liability.

Still living with the political fallout of the disastrous timber policy pushed by former leader Mark Latham – which alienated blue-collar workers on the eve of the 2004 election – Labor yesterday rounded on Australian of the Year Tim Flannery as “irresponsible” for his plan to close the coal industry, calling it a recipe for massive job losses.
Some elements within Labor fear that by appearing too bullish on climate change, the party could raise concerns among workers that jobs will be sacrificed to the environment. This could push workers’ votes towards an economically hard-nosed Howard Government. Others want their colleagues who represent mining seats to be more vocal.

New Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull last night warned, during his first live television debate with Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett, that Labor’s climate change policies risked “enormous damage to jobs”. Mr Turnbull accused Labor of scaremongering on climate change, but Mr Garrett used the debate on the ABC’s 7.30 Report to accuse the Howard Government of failing to respond to the “crisis” of global warming.”

Some saw the announcement of climate change crusader Tim Flannery as Australian of the Year as a potential disaster for John Howard because he will keep global warming as an issue in the spot-light during this election year. But the appointment may in fact work to the Prime Minister’s advantage particularly if Tim Flannery continues to suggest Australia close down its coal-fired power stations and the Labor party forced to defined the industry and its policies.

In the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ Al Gore falsely claims that all climate change skeptics are in the pay of big oil.

Just last week there were more false claims inparticular claims that the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is recruiting skeptics with bribes of $10,000 to scientists who will dispute the findings of a recent summary document published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Online journal TCS Daily has published a piece by Nick Schultz entitled ‘I Want to Demand This Freedom for Future Generations’ explaining and defending the actions of the American Enterprise Institute which he describes as paying scientists to “highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC process, especially as it bears on potential policy responses to climate change.”

There are some interesting comments following the article by Schultz incuding this one:

“What we see right now is climate scientists, perhaps even the vast majority of them, bringing their data and models, finding political allies, and demanding a solution that will be unquestionably economically costly. Skepticism is not just about the data or models. It is about incentives, consequences, and even motivations… I respect the data and the models. [But] before we apply them in a political context though, I want to see the scientists sweat a lot.”

There is certainly a need for proper scrutiny of the various IPCC summaries and reports and also the the likely consequences of the various actions proposed by government economists and scientists to curb greenhouse emissions. But most of the world’s politicians and journalists seem happy to just accept the findings. For example, has the new review from the Fraser Institute, which to some extent sets out to expose the strengths and weaknesses of the new IPCC report, been acknowledged in the mainstream media at all?

And what is opinion from a skeptic worth and who should pay for it?

Graham Young, the editor of e-journal On Line Opinion, wrote at his blog last year, “Isn’t it a pity that we have to rely on oil companies to finance the devil’s advocate position on global warming?”

I’m not sure that any of the scientists interviewed by Lawrence Solomon for a series of articles in the Financial Post entitled ‘The Deniers’ have anything to do with oil companies, but I think Graham Young nevertheless makes a good point.

Anyway, there are apparently 10 articles by Lawrence Solomon purportedly on scientists who “buck the conventional wisdom on climate science” but I have only been able to find the following four:

1. Will the sun cool us?
Friday, January 12, 2007

The science is settled” on climate change, say most scientists in the field. They believe that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are heating the globe to dangerous levels and that, in the coming decades, steadily increasing temperatures will melt the polar ice caps and flood the world’s low-lying coastal areas.

Don’t tell that to Nigel Weiss, Professor Emeritus at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, past President of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a scientist as honoured as they come. The science is anything but settled, he observes, except for one virtual certainty: The world is about to enter a cooling period.

Read the complete text here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=5c8d30c6-9d77-4ccc-99d9-c3a095750cdc

2. The limits of predictability
Friday, January 19, 2007

When Frans Nieuwstadt, a distinguished Dutch meteorologist, engineer, editor and professor, died in 2005, his obituary recounted seminal events in his accomplished life. Among the experiences worthy of mention: Nieuwstadt had studied under the celebrated professor, Henk Tennekes, and along with other colleagues had been instrumental in convincing Tennekes to return to Europe in 1978 to become director of research at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and later chairman of the august Scientific Advisory Committee of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts…

Tennekes became more than an inspiration for his students and a model for other scientists, however. He also became an object lesson in the limits of scientific inquiry. Because his critiques of climate science ran afoul of the orthodoxy required by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, he was forced to leave. Lesser scientists, seeing that even a man of Tennekes’s reputation was not free to voice dissent, learned their lesson. Ever since, most scientists who harbour doubts about climate science bite their tongues and keep their heads down.

Read the complete text here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=f53da8fc-4ece-455c-9591-a51c6fe18f97

3. Look to Mars for the truth on global warming
Friday, January 26, 2007

Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.

“One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age,” NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency’s Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. “In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated.” With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.

NASA’s findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo — at the pinnacle of Russia’s space-oriented scientific establishment — is one of the world’s best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo’s space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world’s chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.

Read the complete article here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/archives/story.html?id=eabbe10d-3891-41eb-9ee1-a59b71743bec&p=1

4. The real deal?
Against the grain: Some scientists deny global warming exists
Friday, February 02, 2007

Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, one of Israel’s top young scientists, describes the logic that led him — and most everyone else — to conclude that SUVs, coal plants and other things man-made cause global warming…

Dr. Shariv’s digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence — only speculation — that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change– the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming — is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence.

Read the complete text: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=156df7e6-d490-41c9-8b1f-106fef8763c6&k=0

So what is opinion from a climate change skeptic worth and who should pay for it?