Climate & Climate Change

It was all over local radio here in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, this morning … that it was the coldest May morning ever, with temperatures down to -2C. That’s cold for subtropical Brisbane.

As I sat shivering in my little wooden house with no central heating or insulation, I was trying to reconcile this one off measurement and the colour of my hands, with new information on the Bureau of Meterology (BOM) website that says global warming is real, is here now, and that on average its a whole degree warmer in Australia.

Indeed, according to the Bureau:

“Australia and the globe are experiencing rapid climate change. Since the middle of the 20th century, Australian temperatures have, on average, risen by about 1°C with an increase in the frequency of heatwaves and a decrease in the numbers of frosts and cold days.”

But what is perhaps more interesting than this cold May morning in this world of global warming, is that most of the rest of the world has on average, according to NASA, only warmed by 0.6C over the last 30 years or so. I thought the IPCC models said that it was going to get warmer on average in the northern hemisphere before it got warmer down here?

I’ve just found that comment from Gavin at an earlier thread which I interpreted, along with figure 18, to mean it should, in general, not warm as much here in Australia, as it will in the rest of the world, at least not for the moment:

“The basic mistake is to assume that hemispheric temperatures follow hemispheric forcings proportionately. This is incorrect. The biggest factor is the amount of oceans and the effective mixing depths in the southern oceans. This gives a much larger effective heat capacity in the south and so in any transient case the warming is always delayed in the south. This is actually exactly what climate models show. See http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/notyet/2005_submitted_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
(fig 18 for instance).”

In summary, according to the models from our best scientists it is going to get warmer on average in the northern hemisphere before it gets warmer in the southern hemisphere, but according to the Australian Bureau of Meterology (BOM) its a whole degree on average warmer here in Australia in the southern hemisphere when, on average, its only 0.6C warmer over the whole world.

And I just wish it would warm up a bit, today, here in Brisbane.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced two advertisements promoting carbon dioxide (C02) — that’s right promoting C02 — for American television. To watch the video’s click here.

The key theme is that C02 is life giving and not a pollutant. The fact that we breathe C02 out, and plants breathe C02 in, is repeated.

No reference is made to the elevated levels of C02 in the atmosphere as a consequence of the burning of fossil fuels. Is it on this basis that C02 has been labelled a pollutant? What is the definition of a pollutant? According to my dictionary it is something that “contaminates”.

I think I could mount an argument for both sides of this debate.

Beyond the elevated levels of carbon dioxide are going to change climate argument, it could be argued as long as it comes out of a car exhaust or chimney stack it is unnatural and therefore a pollutant regardless of concentration.

On the C02 is natural, “we call it life” side, I would ask the question what is the “correct” concentration of atmospheric C02?

Is climate change a moral issue, as much as a scientific issue?

Over at Real Climate the response to the videos has been more emotional than analytical, click here for the post. Though they make some good points regarding the second video and what’s happening to the world’s glaciers:

“They only discuss one scientific point which relates to whether ‘glaciers are melting’. Unsurprisingly, they don’t discuss the dramatic evidence of tropical glacier melting, the almost worldwide retreat of other mountain glaciers, the rapid acceleration of fringing glaciers on Greenland or the Antarctic peninsula. Neither do they mention that the preliminary gravity measurements imply that both Antarctica and Greenland appear to be net contributors to sea level rise. No. The only studies that they highlight are ones which demonstrate that in the interior of the ice shelves, there is actually some accumulation of snow (which clearly balances some of the fringing loss). These studies actually confirm climate model predictions that as the poles warm, water vapour there will increase and so, in general, will precipitation. In the extreme environments of the central ice sheets, it will not get warm enough to rain and so snowfall and accumulation are expected to increase.

To be sure, calculating the net balance of the ice sheets is difficult and given the uncertainties of different techniques (altimeters, gravity measurements, interferometers etc.) and the shortness of many of the records, it’s difficult to make very definitive statements about the present day situation. Our sense of the data is that Greenland is probably losing mass – the rapid wasting around the edge is larger than the accumulation in the center, whereas Antarctica in toto is a more difficult call.”

Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are thought to be responsible for the elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are thought to be driving global warming. The Kyoto Protocol has been considered an important first step in reducing emissions with European nations agreeing to cap emissions under a trading scheme.

Here’s how it was explained before the market was launched:

“The Kyoto Protocol established clear targets for reducing the greenhouse gases that are to blame for global warming, and flexible and market-based instruments with which to achieve these objectives.

An effective emissions trading system can be a key tool for dealing with climate change. From January 2005, the European Union hopes to have in place the world’s biggest and most effective emissions trading scheme, covering over 12,000 energy-producing and energy-intensive plants across the EU. The scheme will offer businesses a cost-effective way of both reducing their emissions and covering the bill for action to help prevent climate change.

How does emissions trading work? Basically, each Member State agrees a national allocation plan (NAP) setting out the total amount of CO2 its operators can produce. Each plan should be based on a national commitment to reduce emissions in line with the Kyoto agreement. Companies then have the right to trade their allowances either directly with each other or via a broker, bank or other intermediary. Over time, emissions trading exchanges are expected to develop.

… Of course, the scheme’s effectiveness in cutting greenhouse gas emissions depends on the level of trust participants place in it. “

It seems the British were one of the few honest nations, at least they are not now being accused of underestimating their emissions.

The price of carbon was in free fall some weeks ago when it became apparent that many European nations had overestimated their emissions. At least an initial overestimation, rather than a big saving, is the reason now claimed for the surplus of carbon credits which has resulted in a halving of the price of carbon on the new market in just over two weeks, click here for my previous blog post.

Today was the day the European Union was expected to announce the overall difference between emissions and “emissions” and according to Reuters:

“EU emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in 2005 were 44 million tonnes below a quota of 1.829 billion tonnes under the European Union’s carbon trading scheme …

The figures confirmed a Reuters report on Friday that most EU members undershot their limits for greenhouse gas emissions, suggesting the bloc had been far too generous in handing out permits to pollute.

Top polluter Germany moved swiftly to say it would make retroactive cuts to its 2005 allocation of allowances to emit carbon dioxide after European Union figures showed a 21 million tonne — or four percent — German undershoot.”

British companies say they will sue.

According to The Guardian:

“While CO2 emissions in Germany, the EU’s biggest polluter, fell 25.5m tonnes short of levels allowed under the ETS, Britain’s were 31.3m tonnes above its allowances in 2005, the first full year of its operation. Overall EU emissions were 59.2m tonnes short.

[And I thought someone might consider this good news.]

The five UK companies suing the commission at Europe’s second highest court, the court of first instance (CFI), the Guardian has learned, are RWE npower, Scottish Power, Scottish & Southern Energy, International Power and Drax, owner and operator of Europe’s biggest coal-fired plant in north Yorkshire. They are demanding the reinstatement of 20m tonnes of extra emissions rejected by Brussels. Their action, which has come after the government dropped its own legal proceedings against the commission, is expected to be followed later this year by renewed court action between Britain and Brussels because Whitehall is refusing to meet the June 30 deadline imposed by the ETS for submitting its national allocation plan (NAP) for CO2 permits for the period 2008-2012 and has offered the end of the year instead.

… It is understood that the five want the court to uphold the principle of “the accurate baseline” – or allowing governments that submit provisional estimates of emissions to revise these in the light of fresh evidence. Their group also argues that the commission’s reasons for rejecting the UK’s amended NAP had already been rejected by the court.”

So it seems the success of an artificial trading system is dependent on everyone being more British?

Some (not all) global warming skeptics complain that the IPCC doesn’t adequately acknowledge the influence of the sun, including sunspot cycles, on climate.

There is new information at the NASA website about recent past and future solar activity including the prediction that “Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries.”

I can’t say that the graph tracks Australian temperatures or troposphere temperatures very well at all, but then I am not sure atmospheric C02 does either.

The NASA website explains sunspot activity but makes no link to global warming:

“The Sun’s Great Conveyor Belt has slowed to a record-low crawl, according to research by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. “It’s off the bottom of the charts,” he says. “This has important repercussions for future solar activity.”

The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to perform one complete circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle, and that’s why the slowdown is important.

… On the other hand, they will have to worry more about cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are high-energy particles from deep space; they penetrate metal, plastic, flesh and bone. Astronauts exposed to cosmic rays develop an increased risk of cancer, cataracts and other maladies. Ironically, solar explosions, which produce their own deadly radiation, sweep away the even deadlier cosmic rays. As flares subside, cosmic rays intensify—yin, yang.

Hathaway’s prediction should not be confused with another recent forecast: A team led by physicist Mausumi Dikpata of NCAR has predicted that Cycle 24, peaking in 2011 or 2012, will be intense. Hathaway agrees: “Cycle 24 will be strong. Cycle 25 will be weak. Both of these predictions are based on the observed behavior of the conveyor belt.”

How do you observe a belt that plunges 200,000 km below the surface of the sun?

“We do it using sunspots,” Hathaway explains. Sunspots are magnetic knots that bubble up from the base of the conveyor belt, eventually popping through the surface of the sun. Astronomers have long known that sunspots have a tendency to drift—from mid solar latitudes toward the sun’s equator. According to current thinking, this drift is caused by the motion of the conveyor belt. “By measuring the drift of sunspot groups,” says Hathaway, “we indirectly measure the speed of the belt.”

I was back at the Future Summit today listening to more speakers lament climate change and how it is going to be drier and warmer in the future. Tom Hatten from CSIRO could have spoken about the science, but he also deferred to perceptions commenting that “climate change scenarios are now widely accepted” – as though this makes them right.

Then I came home to an email from a reader of this blog with a link to a report published by the New South Wales Parliamentary Library in February that does make reference to the science and that does acknowledge that the evidence is not straight forward concluding with the following text (pg 75):

“In October 2005 the Federal Minister for the Environment stated that the debate on climate change is over: “There is a very small handful of what we call skeptics who, in the face of seeing all of the evidence about carbon increases and all of the evidence about impacts on the climate, would still say that it’s only natural variability that is causing it. … I think the Australian Government owes it to the public to tell it like it is – it is a very serious threat to
Australia.”

In NSW, Premier Iemma, in a November 2005 speech announcing a new environmental agenda, stated:
2005 is the year that climate change hit home. Australia had its warmest year on record. Brazil had its first ever hurricane. Siberia’s permafrost showed signs of melting. America had a record hurricane season that devastated an entire city. For NSW, global warming means longer and more destructive bushfire seasons, prolonged
drought and harsher storm seasons. These trends threaten not only our environment but also our tourism and farming industries. While John Howard continues to hold out against Kyoto, NSW is getting on with the task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

In fact, we [New South Wales] were the first government in Australia to set greenhouse targets. We’ve pledged to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 60 percent by 2050. And to cut emissions to year 2000 levels within the next two decades.

This paper has presented the ‘consensus’ science about climate change, as well as the evidence and comments of those who are more skeptical, or cautious. It is apparent that whilst those who believe in the ‘consensus’ science reject the ideas of the skeptics, the science is not as ‘black and white’ as they would have us believe. Some argue that while the greenhouse effect cannot be ignored, the impact is not as apocalyptic as has been claimed.

The difficulty for governments of course, is to use this conflicting science to develop public policy.”

Of course the governments, and some scientists, have mostly choosen to ignore the evidence and just focus on “the consensus”. But as Aldous Huxley has written, just because facts are ignored it doesn’t make them go away.

You can read the full report here:

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/publications.nsf/0/fb07f849fcba7b76ca2571150023166e/$FILE/climate%20change%20and%20index.pdf .

Last August I posted a comment at this blog titled ‘The Troposphere is Warming’, in which I explained that, in accordance with global warming models, and according to a series of papers in the journal Science, the lower troposphere was warming.

Yesterday Vincent Grey sent me the following graph from the oh-so-not confidential IPCC report on the physical basis for global warming, as reviewed in a recent volume of Nature but not to be published until February next year, click here for a background briefing.

Vincent Grey interpretes this graph as showing no evidence of warming. As posted yesterday he has commented that:

“The satellite measurements show no temperature change between 1979 and 1997, but is then followed by a large sharp peak in 1998 because of the El Nino ocean event of that year, and since 2001 has shown a modest warm spell.”

What is also interesting is that the two cool periods follow volcanic activity – El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991.

I wonder if any volcanos are likely to erupt in the next few years?

I find the graph fascinating.

It doesn’t suggest to me a really close correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels that have been showing a consistent rising trend over this time period, and the temperature in the lower troposphere?