Hi All,
I find myself ‘between blogs’ at the moment – www.climateresearchnews.com isn’t ready yet, so I have set up a temporary blog:
http://climaterealist.blogspot.com/
You might be intersted in the latest post:
‘United States and Caribbean tropical cyclone activity related to the solar cycle.’
http://climaterealist.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-paper-us-hurricane-counts-are.html
Regards,
Paul Biggs
IS the ongoing drought in the Murray-Darling Basin affected by climate change? The simple answer is that there is no evidence that CO2 has had any significant role. Like it or not, that is the science.
In fact, the drought was caused by an entirely natural phenomenon: the 2002 El Nino event. This led to particularly low rainfalls across eastern Australia. The subsequent years were either neutral or weak El Nino conditions. Significantly, neutral conditions are not sufficient to break a drought. In 2006, we had a return to El Nino conditions which further exacerbated the drought. What we didn’t have was a strong La Nina.
Last year finally brought a La Nina event but it was relatively weak. It produced a number of major storm events in coastal areas and some useful rainfall in the Murray-Darling basin and elsewhere. Approximately half of NSW drought-declared areas were lifted out of drought (albeit into “marginal” status) and Sydney’s water supply doubled in the space of a few months.
This was the first rain-bearing La Nina since 1999 but proved insufficient to break the drought. In short, the drought was initiated by El Nino, protracted by further El Nino events and perhaps more importantly, the absence of substantial La Nina events.
Despite the known causes of the drought, many have claimed that CO2 emissions are to blame. There have been arguments put forward to justify this claim, all eagerly adopted by various groups, but none of which have serious merit.
A key claim is that the multiple occurrence of El Nino is a sign of climate change. This is speculative at best. Recent analysis showed the nine-year absence of La Nina was not unusual. In fact long-term records demonstrate alternating periods of 20-40 years where El Nino is dominant, followed by similarly extended periods where La Nina dominates. Ominously, the data demonstrates that it is possible to go 14-15 years without any La Nina events. The consequent drought would be devastating but entirely natural.
The observation that El Nino and La Nina events cluster on 20-40 year, multi-decadal timescales is an important one. It demonstrates that Australia should always expect major changes in climate as a function of natural variability. When viewed in this light, the drought is most likely a recurring feature of the Australian climate.
A more recent claim is that higher temperatures are leading to increased evaporation of moisture. The weather bureau acknowledges that rainfall from September 2001 until now has not been the lowest recorded, however much has been made of the fact that consequent inflows have been the lowest. It has been claimed increased evaporation, driven by climate change, can make up this discrepancy. Indeed, Wendy Craik, the chief executive of the Murray Darling Basin Commission has stated that temperatures were warmer, leading to more evaporation and drier catchments.
This is disturbing to hear from the head of the MDBC, as it is completely at odds with the known physics of evaporation. While it sounds intuitively correct, it is wrong.
When soil contains high moisture content, much of the sun’s energy is used in evaporation. Consequently, there is limited heating of the surface. When soil moisture content is low (as occurs during drought) nearly all of that energy is converted into heating the surface, and air temperatures rise significantly. Consequently, higher temperatures are due to the lack of evaporation, not a cause of significantly higher evaporation.
Cloud cover also provides a major control on air temperatures. El Nino delivers less rainfall but also less cloud cover. This has a major impact on the amount of the sun’s energy reaching land; far greater than the trivial increase in radiant energy caused by increased CO2. Again, in the absence of soil moisture, air temperatures increase.
These are known and accepted processes of environmental physics and are not contentious. They are ignored because they detract from the simple message that we should sign up to the concept of “dangerous climate change” and an emissions trading scheme. After all, who would pay for carbon emissions if they were not proven to be detrimental? Who would provide extra funds for climate change science if it wasn’t a proven significant factor compared to natural climatic variability?
None of the above is to say that CO2 is not having some effect; the atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen and this is largely attributable to anthropogenic emissions. CO2 is a radiatively-active gas and leads
to a minor increase in downward radiation. However, there is no evidence that this is in any way significant, especially when compared to the naturally varying processes that dominate rainfall variability and evaporation.
We do know why inflows are so low and why various ecosystems of the Murray-Darling are in crisis: the system is over-allocated and has experienced a growth in groundwater extraction and in the number of farm dams preventing rainfall from becoming run-off. This is due to a failure of planning, management and leadership from the relevant authorities. Under these conditions, when a prolonged drought strikes, the system collapses.
This is a man-made problem but not one that is attributable to CO2.
Craik is not alone in her desire to view CO2-induced climate change as proven and affecting the drought. Numerous politicians, environmentalists and especially scientists have made spectacular leaps of faith in their adherence to the doctrine of climate change over recent years, too many to document here. However, the most literally fantastic claim on climate change must go to Kevin Rudd, who has guaranteed that rainfall will decline over coming decades; one can only assume he’s based his view on deficient climate models and bad advice.
Perhaps our leading climate authorities who have played such a prominent role in fomenting speculation about climate change, and who apparently adhere to the notion that climate is amenable to prediction, should also point out that these models cannot reproduce the observed multi-decadal variability of El Nino and La Nina in anything like a realistic manner.
Given the uncertainty of El Nino and La Nina behaviour, one clearly cannot predict the future. There is no direct evidence of CO2 impacts on the drought, nor is there any rational basis for predicting rainfall in 30 years time. One just hopes that sensible and sustainable management from our leaders will enable struggling rural communities to weather the vagaries of climatic and political extremes.
Steward Franks
Newcastle, Australia
Stewart Franks is a hydroclimatologist and an associate professor at the University of Newcastle School of Engineering. He is president-elect of the International Commission on the Coupled Land – Atmosphere System.
This article has been republished from The Australian with permission from the author.
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Emissions not making rivers run dry, The Australian, Stewart Franks, September 12, 2008
The accusation of a lack of peer review (PR) by those who mount arguments against anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is at the heart of the elitism, consensus and ad hominem approach used by many supporters of AGW.
It is a red herring. Science should be like the Law; transparent and universally accessible.
It should not be used by specialists to dominate the general populace, or to promulgate ideological based alterations to the social and economic structure. Nor should it be used to stifle debate because, apart from anything else, the importance of science is diminished by such oppression. Because the AGW advocates have used such tactics, and been supported by a sizeable proportion of the mainstream media, the importance of blogs has grown. Their importance has also been highlighted by the degree of vitriol leveled at anti-AGW sites.
Most of all the PR argument is simply wrong.
As a layman my AGW education curve has been steep. But it has been informed by a number of peer reviewed papers which have provided substantial critiques of AGW. In the interest of providing a rebuttal to the insidious PR stigma I present my ‘top 10’ papers which mount arguments against AGW, nine of them peer-reviewed.
I have had to exclude a number of valuable articles; the McLean and Quirk paper on the Great Pacific Climate Change was my first exposure to the misrepresentation of temperature base periods; the first Beck paper is a notable exclusion; the castigation against Beck was particularly condescending and elitist, no doubt because he does not have a PhD; likewise none of the valuable contributions made by Monckton, Watts, Castles, Hughes, Lucia, Bob Tisdale or Steve Short are eligible.
But I am going to list 10 papers, and start with a non peer-reviewed paper as an exception because of his sustained and exemplary efforts, any one of which is worthy of a Doctorate.
1. Steve McIntyre’s Ohio State University Address;
How do we “know” that 1998 was the warmest year of the millennium? (May 16, 2008)
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohio.pdf
This is a seminal paper which synthesizes all the errors and obfuscations to do with the Hockey Stick. It also demonstrates McIntyre’s methodical, scientific and unadorned approach to the issue.
2. Craig Loehle’s paper;
A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies, Energy & Environment 18(7-8): 1049-1058. 2007
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
This paper was important because it was a counterpoise to Mann’s tree-ring data and provided good support for the Medieval Warming Period, a major obstacle to AGW.
3.Douglass, Christy et al; this is the first of the GCM critiques;
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology, 2007
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3058
This paper really touched a nerve and the level of hostility leveled at it was astounding; it mostly boiled down to nit-picking about Raobcore data and whether a falsification was distinct from a bias. The second link is to an addendum to the paper; comments 69-74 are entertaining.
4.Koutsoyiannis et al;
http://www.itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/850
Assessment of the reliability of climate predictions based on comparisons with historical time series. Geophysical Research Abstracts, 2008
This link is to the first presentation. This was a crucial paper; it covered the 18 year predictive history of the GCM’s on a regional basis; regionalism is the Achilles Heel of AGW.
5.Stockwell;
http://landshape.org/stats/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/article.pdf
Tests of Regional Climate Model Validity in the Drought Exceptional Circumstances Report. 2008
This paper did the job on CSIRO and demonstrated the political imput into the AGW science.
6. Misckolczi;
Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary Atmospheres. Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, Vol. 111, No. 1, January–March 2007, pp. 1–40.
http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf
This is my favourite. It has everything; the dead hand of AGW censorship, and the demolition of the AGW’s semi-infinite opaque layered atmosphere. People have quibbled about the Kirchhoff equations but Miskolczian –ve feedbacks have been established.
7. Essex, McKitrick, Andresen;
Does a Global Temperature Exist? Journal of Non-EquilibriumThermodynamics, 32 (1) 1-27. 2007
http://www.reference-global.com/doi/abs/10.1515/JNETDY.2007.001?cookieSet=1
The fallacy of a global average temperature was taken to task in this paper, and, again, the reaction was hostile. This paper wittily compared averaging temperature to averaging the phone book; an important addition to the regionalism lexicon.
8. Spencer and Braswell;
Potential Biases in Feedback Diagnosis from Observational Data: A simple Model Demonstration, Journal of Climate.
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2008JCLI2253.1
No list would be complete without Mr Cloud and –ve feedback. As well, Spencer has been a bastion of reliable temperature data. This was still a close call. Minschwaner and Dessler’s paper on RH decline as a response to increasing CO2 is a crucial paper, conforming to Miskolczi’s feedbacks.
9.Chilingar;
Cooling of Atmosphere Due to CO2 Emission, Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects. Volume 30, Issue 1, January 2008 , pages 1 – 9
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15567030701568727
An important paper about convective heat transfer which relegates CO2 radiative heating to its proper subordinate position; and incorporates atmospheric pressure as a heating factor. Thanks to Louis for alerting me to the paper. An honourable mention to the Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper on the fallacy of the greenhouse concept and a host of other errors AGW science makes.
10. Pielke Sr et al;
Unresolved issues with the assessment of multidecadal global land surface temperature trends. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol 112. 2007.
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/publications/pdf/R-321.pdf
An elegant paper which uses Stefan-Boltzman to support regionalism and show that the notion of a radiative imbalance is defeated by regional temperature based energy differentials. Somewhat superfluous since AR4, FIG 1 shows no global radiative imbalance.
Given the above, what 10 papers can AGW supporters produce to vindicate AGW?
Cohenite,
Newcastle, Australia
ROSS Garnaut made it clear in his interim report that his climate change review takes as a starting point – not as a belief but on the balance of probabilities – that the claims made in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct.
Had he made even a cursory examination of the integrity of those IPCC claims he would have found a very troubling picture.
The IPCC encourages us to believe that about 2500 climate scientists supported the claim of a significant human influence on climate. It fails to clarify that the claim was made in chapter nine of the working group one contribution and that the contributions of working groups two and three were based on the assumption that the claim was correct. The first eight chapters of the WG1 contribution were mainly concerned with climatic observations and the authors expressed no opinion about the claim made in chapter nine, and chapters 10 and 11 assumed the claim to be correct. The entire IPCC thesis therefore stands or falls on the claims of just one chapter.
We are also led to believe that chapter nine was widely supported by hundreds of reviewers, but just 62 IPCC reviewers commented on its penultimate draft. Only five of those reviewers endorsed it but four of the five appear to have vested interests and the other made just one comment for the entire 11-chapter WG1 contribution.
As is the normal IPCC practice, chapter nine has co-ordinating lead authors, who are responsible for the chapter as a whole; lead authors, who are responsible for sections of the chapter; and contributing authors, who provide their thoughts to the lead authors but take no active part in thewriting.
The IPCC procedures state that the authors at each level should reflect a wide range of views, but this is not true of chapter nine.
The expansion of the full list of authors of each paper cited by this chapter reveals that 37 of 53 chapter authors form a network of people who have previously co-authored scientific papers with each other: or make that 38 if we include a review editor.
The two co-ordinating lead authors are members of this network. So are five of the seven lead authors. Thirty of 44 contributing authors are in the network and two other pairs of contributing authors have likewise co-authored scientific papers.
In other words, the supposedly 53 independent voices are in fact one dominant voice with 37 people behind it, two voices each with two people behind them, and perhaps 12 single voices. A closer check reveals that many of those 12 were academic or work colleagues of members of that larger network. One lead author was from the University of Michigan, as were three contributing authors, two of whom were not members of the network. Another lead author was associated with Britain’s Hadley Centre, along with eight contributing authors, one of whom was not included in that network of co-authors.
All up, the 53 authors of this chapter came from just 31 establishments and there are worrying indications that certain lead authors were the superiors of contributing authors from the same organisation. The very few viewpoints in this chapter might be alleviated if it drew on a wide range of references, but among the co-authors of 40 per cent of the cited material are at least one chapter author.
Scientists associated with the development and use of climate models dominate the clique of chapter nine authors and by extension the views expressed in that chapter.
Perhaps the increase in the processing power of their computers has increased their confidence in the software they have been nurturing for years. Imagine, though, the consequences were they to imply that the accuracy of the models had not improved despite the extra funding.
These models are said to require a human component to reasonably match historical temperatures and the modellers claim that this proves a human influence on climate, but the human factor is an input so a corresponding output is no surprise. A more plausible reason for the mismatch without this influence is that the models are incomplete and contain errors, but of course chapter nine could never admit this.
Garnaut didn’t need to evaluate the science behind the IPCC’s claim to find that its integrity is questionable and that the report’s key findings are the product of scientific cronyism.
The IPCC has misled us into believing the primary claims were widely endorsed by authors and reviewers but in fact they received little support and came from a narrow self-interested coterie of climate modellers.
We should now ask what else the IPCC has misled us about and why Garnaut, a skilled academic, so blithely accepted its claims.
John McLean is a climate data analyst and a member of the Australian Climate Science Coalition.
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Republished from the The Australian with permission from the author.
Climate case built on thin foundation, John McLean, The Australian September 9, 2008
The President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, spoke yesterday at the Mont Pelerin Society meeting here in Tokyo.
He is a well known global warming skeptic and author of a ‘Blue Planet in Green Shackles’. In the book’s introduction, the President explains,
“The book aspires to be nothing more than lay knowledge of the natural sciences. Yet I do not see this as a handicap. The problem of global warming is much more about the social sciences than about natural ones, more about economics than climatology, more about a human being and his or her freedom than about an increase in the global mean temperatures by tenths of degrees Fahrenheit.”
Dear Jennifer
As any internet search confirms, climate change doomsayers use Greenland as a key indicator of “global warming”. At least some of the phenomena they observe are clearly not the effect of greenhouse gases. Take for example the following item from page 159 of the February 1818 issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine:
“Voyage of Discovery. – Government, with a laudable desire to promote the interests of science, is equipping four vessels for the purpose of exploring the Greenland Seas, which, according to the reports of persons employed in the fishery, were never known to be so free from ice as in the last season.”
The item goes on to briefly describe preparations by Captain Buchanan to reach the North Pole and Captain Ross to explore Davis’s Straits, the extent of which was then ” still utterly unknown”.
This expedition followed the 1773 voyage to the Arctic by Captain Constantine Phipps, again in the interests of Science.
Lord Sandwich commissioned Phipps to test a fashionable scientific theory of the day. Since scientists unanimously agreed that sea water could not freeze, it followed that all sea ice must be made from fresh water, and consequently must come from land. Hence the southern ice which Cook sighted on his first voyage added force to the argument of the existence of a southern continent.
Unfortunately Phipps’ expedition was inconclusive. He got as far as the Northern tip of Spitzbergen and extricated himself from the ice with difficulty. As N.A.M Rodger points out in his biography of Lord Sandwich (Harper Collins 1993) Phipps’ expedition is usually forgotten today. His discovery was a purely negative one and anyway did not convince the enthusiasts of the “ice-free Arctic theory”.
Regards,
Elizabeth (Jo) Page
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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