Climate & Climate Change

Bob Foster, member of the Lavoisier Group and reader of this blog, claims the sun drives climate and the next little ice age will be in 2030.

Following is an edited and illustrated extract from a longer piece at Warwick Hughes’ blog, click here.

“The Sun is the primary long-term driver of climate. Solar activity can be predicted, and if the Sun keeps playing by the rules, the next Little Ice Age cold period will be fully developed by 2030, Figure 1.

(from Theodor Landscheidt 2003, New little Ice Age instead of global warming, Energy & Environment v. 14 no 2,3 pp.327-50. The paper is available at http://bourabai.narod.ru/landscheidt/new-e.htm )

Variable upwelling of cold water in the equatorial eastern Pacific is the primary driver of climate at the decadal level. Inflection points in the length-of-day (LOD) trend correlate with regime changes to more or less cold-water upwelling, and LOD trend reversals correlate with planetary inertial forcing of the Sun, Figure 2.

(from Theodor Landscheidt )

This second graph shows the relationship between inflection points in the LOD trend and zero phases in the rotary force applied by the giant outer (Jovian) planets to the Sun.

“Darwin is preparing to weather the most intense storm ever seen in Australia’s northern waters, with winds of 350 kilometres an hour at the core of cyclone Monica. The category 5 storm is less than 400 kilometres from the Northern Territory capital, ” according to ABC Online.

Some time ago I discovered Jeff Master’s Wunderblog with everything you ever wanted to know about the next hurricane about to hit Florida, and then today I discovered he also covers Australia.

This is what he had to say about Monica and this year’s cyclone season in northern Australia:

“Australia’s hurricane season continues its parade of unusually intense storms this year with the intensification of Cyclone Monica today into a huge Category 5 storm. The 12 GMT advisory this morning from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center put Monica at 165 mph sustained winds and a 892 mb pressure, making it second most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere. The most intense Southern Hemisphere cyclone on record was Cyclone Zoe of 2003, which had a 879 mb pressure. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology puts Monica’s pressure at 905 mb, which would make it the fifth strongest cyclone on record. Reliable records of cyclone intensity only go back to the mid-1980s in the Southern Hemisphere, but two of top five strongest hurricanes ever recorded there have occurred this year–Tropical Cyclone Glenda (898 mb) from March, and now Monica.

What’s really extraordinary about Monica is that she came so late in the season–tropical cyclone season is usually over by late April in the Southern Hemisphere. Monica’s formation echoes what happened in the Atlantic last year, with the intensification of Hurricane Wilma to a record 882 mb pressure very late in the hurricane season–October 19. When one adds in the $1 billion in devastation wrought in Queensland by Category 4 Cyclone Larry (915 mb) in March, Australians must feel like residents of hurricane alley in the Atlantic did last year, when three of the six strongest hurricanes on record occurred, causing the most damage ever–what’s going on with the weather?

However, be reminded that the Northern Hemisphere Pacific Ocean had a very below-normal tropical cyclone season last year, and the Indian Ocean also had below normal activity.”

In response to a letter in the Telegraph on 19th April from the President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees of Ludlow, asserting that the evidence for human-caused global warming “is now compelling”, 41 scientists have written to the same newspaper contradicting Lord Rees. Published in the the Telegraph today, the letter claims:

1. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise’, and

2. Observational evidence does not support today’s computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.

This is the third ‘climate change consensus’ letter in as many weeks, click here for links to previous letters.

Edward Celiz from Bodham Halt, Norfolk, has written to the newspaper complaining that:

“If I read another word about climate change, I shall go mad. Of course the climate is changing. That is what climate does, and has done so for billions of years. Do these scare-mongering pseudo-scientists really believe that puny man can control the unimaginable forces of nature by sticking a windmill on his roof, throwing away his fridge and planting a few trees?

Global warming? Perhaps, but what’s the betting that in a few years they will be telling us that they have got it wrong? That, in fact, the earth is getting colder?

My advice? Leave it to God.”

And I’m an atheist.

Not so long ago I republished a letter from 60 ‘global warming skeptics’ who wrote to the new Prime Minister of Canada asking for more public consultation on climate change issues and explaining that climate change can be natural, click here to read the blog piece.

Now 90 ‘global warming believers’ have written to the PM of Canada:

An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Canada on Climate Change Science

April 18 2006

The Right Honourable Stephen Harper, P.C., M.P.

Prime Minister of Canada

Ottawa, ON K1A 0A3

Dear Prime Minister:

As climate science leaders from the academic, public and private sectors across Canada, we wish to convey our views on the current state of knowledge of climate change and to call upon you to provide national leadership in addressing the issue. The scientific views we express are shared by the vast majority of the national and international climate science community.

We concur with the climate science assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2001, which has also been supported by the Royal Society of Canada and the national academies of science of all G-8 countries, as well as those of China, India and Brazil. We endorse the conclusions of the IPCC assessment that “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities” and of the 2005 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment that “Arctic temperatures have risen at almost twice the rate of those in the rest of the world over the past few decades”.

Climate variability and change is a global issue and the international IPCC process for assessment of climate science, with its rigorous scientific peer review processes, is the appropriate mechanism for assessing what is known and not known about climate science. Many Canadian climate scientists are participating in the preparation of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report which will be completed in 2007.

The following points emerge from the assessments and ongoing research by respected Canadian and international researchers:
• There is increasingly unambiguous evidence of changing climate in Canada and around the world.
• There will be increasing impacts of climate change on Canada’s natural ecosystems and on our socio-economic activities.
• Advances in climate science since the 2001 IPCC Assessment have provided more evidence supporting the need for action and development of a strategy for adaptation to projected changes.
• Canada needs a national climate change strategy with continued investments in research to track the rate and nature of changes, understand what is happening, to refine projections of changes induced by anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases and to analyse opportunities and threats presented by these changes.

We have supplied justification and more detail for each of these points in the accompanying documentation.

We urge you and your government to develop an effective national strategy to deal with the many important aspects of climate that will affect both Canada and the rest of the world in the near future. We believe that sound policy requires good scientific input.

We would be pleased to provide a scientific briefing and further support, clarification and information at any time.

Yours sincerely:

Signed by 90 Canadian climate science leaders from the academic, public and private sectors across the country.

For a list of the science leaders and also supporting background information click here.

And there is editorial comment at CNC, click here and more opinion at Canada’s National Post, click here.

Following my blog post titled ‘Richard Lindzen on Hockey Sticks’ there was some discussion about Richard Tol’s views on various issues relating to economics and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Various commentators at the thread where quoting Dr Tol in support of their position. Dr Tol has provided the following response:

“Ian Castles and William Connelley had a discussion about what I said and did not say. Here is my version.

If one assumes convergence of per capita income, and one measures income in purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates, then projections of global carbon dioxide emissions are lower than in case one measures income in market exchange rates (MER).

This is the original Castles and Henderson critique of IPCC SRES.

However, emission intensities are also assumed to converge, which partly offsets the above effect.

This was pointed out by Manne and Richels, and by Alfsen and Holtsmark, while Castles and Henderson admitted their initial omission.

As a result, switching from MER to PPP reduces global carbon dioxide emissions, but by an amount that is small compared to the uncertainty about future emissions.

That is, if one is interested in long-term, global climate change, the Castles and Henderson critique is of minor importance.

However, one should worry about the fact that the IPCC, first, made a very basic error and, second, is unable to admit that and correct its way.

If one is interested in climate policy, the Castles and Henderson critique does matter, because the small drop in global emissions is almost entirely due to China and India. The OECD thus shoulders a larger part of the responsibility. The argument of the US Senate, that climate policy without China makes no sense, cuts less wood.

If one is interested in climate impacts, the Castles and Henderson critique does matter, because projected economic growth is slower in developing countries, and vulnerability is larger as a result. Although warming would be slower, impacts may in fact be larger.

If one is interested in regional climate change, the Castles and Henderson critique does matter, because future emissions of sulphur would be different as well, probably higher.

In sum, Castles and Henderson raise five issues, only one of which is of minor importance.

By the way, my reading of the state-of-the-art in economics is that (a) income should be measured in PPP nor MER; (b) there is neither theoretical nor empirical support for the assumption of unconditional income convergence; (c) there is limited empirical support for the assumption on energy intensity convergence.

Richard Tol”

Dr Tol is the Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change in the Departments of Geosciences and Economics at the Hamburg University, Hamburg, Germany.

A new movie about global warming titled ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ based on former US Vice President Al Gore’s personal journey of discovery will be out soon.

Produced by Paramount Classics the trailer has already been released, click here to watch.

I received the link with the note: “In a macabre way, this is gripping and the absolute epitome of the propaganda-maker’s art.”

Interestingly Al Gore makes comment in the trailer that global warming is not a political issue, it is a moral issue.

I heard sociologist and public commentator Frank Furedi speak at the Brisbane Ideas Festival late March, and he commented that global warming was not a moral issue, but a technological issue.

I tend to agree wtih Furedi, once we move beyond fossil fuels as a main source of energy, carbon dioxide emissions will nolonger be the issue they are now.

But Al Gore and others will keep pushing the moral arguement. And as I have previously mentioned at this blog, click here, there will be a book out also called ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ by Al Gore and Al Gore is working with major environment groups in the US on a new consortium with the aim of running a “campaign of public persuasion” about global warming and its consequences.