Avalanches of global warming alarmism by Dr. Tim Ball and Tom Harris

UN climate cataclysm predictions have no basis in fact and should not be taken seriously

Throughout the United Nations Climate Change Conference wrapping up in Bonn, Germany this week, the world has been inundated with the usual avalanche of manmade global warming alarmism. The UN expects us to believe that extreme weather, shrinking sea ice, and sea level rise will soon become much worse if we do not quickly phase out our use of fossil fuels that provide over 80% of the world’s energy.

There is essentially nothing to support these alarms, of course. We simply do not have adequate observational data required to know or understand what has happened over the past century and a half. Meaningful forecasts of future climate conditions are therefore impossible.

Nevertheless, this year’s session has been especially intense, since the meeting is being chaired by the island nation of Fiji, a government that has taken climate change fears to extremes.

COP23 (the 23rd meeting of the Conference of the Parties on climate change) conference president, Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, has called for “an absolute dedication to meet the 1.5-degree target.” This is the arbitrary and most stringent goal suggested by the Paris Agreement. In support of Bainimarama’s position, the COP23/Fiji Website repeatedly cites frightening forecasts made by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

One prediction stated: “The IPCC recently reported that temperatures will significantly increase in the Sahel and Southern African regions, rainfall will significantly decrease, and tropical storms will become more frequent and intense, with a projected 20 per cent increase in cyclone activity.” 

To make such dire forecasts, the IPCC relies on computerized models built on data and formulas to represent atmospheric conditions, and reflect the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is the principal factor driving planetary warming and climate change.

However, we still do not have a comprehensive, workable “theory of climate,” and thus do not have valid formulas to properly represent how the atmosphere functions. We also lack data to properly understand what weather was like over most of the planet even in the recent past. Without a good understanding of past weather conditions, we have no way to know the history, or the future, of average weather conditions – what we call the climate.

An important data set used by the computer models cited by the IPCC is the “HadCRUT4” global average temperature history for the past 167 years. This was produced by the Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, both based in the United Kingdom.

Until the 1960s, HadCRUT4 temperature data were collected using mercury thermometers located at weather stations situated mostly in the United States, Japan, the UK, and eastern Australia. Most of the rest of the planet had very few temperature sensing stations, and none of the Earth’s oceans (which cover 70% of the planet) had more than occasional stations separated from the next ones by thousands of kilometers of no data. Temperatures over these vast empty areas were simply “guesstimated.”

Making matters even worse, data collected at weather stations in this sparse grid had, at best, an accuracy of +/-0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees F), and oftentimes no better than +/-1.0 degree C. Averaging such poor data in an attempt to determine past or future global conditions cannot yield anything meaningful – and certainly nothing accurate or valid enough to use in making critical energy policy decisions.

Modern weather station surface temperature data are now collected using precision thermocouples. But, starting in the 1970s, less and less ground surface temperature data was used for plots such as HadCRUT4. Initially, this was done because governments believed satellite monitoring could take over from most of the ground surface data collection.

However, the satellites did not show the warming that climate activists and computer models had forecast. So, bureaucrats closed many of the colder rural surface temperature sensing stations, while many stations in the vast frigid area of Siberia were closed for economic and other reasons. The net result was that cold temperature data disappeared from more recent records – thereby creating artificial warming trends, the very warming that alarmists predicted, desired and needed for political purposes.

Today, we have virtually no data for approximately 85% of the Earth’s surface. Indeed, there are fewer weather stations in operation now than there were in 1960.

That means HadCRUT4 and other surface temperature computations after about 1980 are meaningless. Combining this with the sensitivity (accuracy) problems in the early data, and the fact that we have almost no long-term data above Earth’s surface, the conclusion is unavoidable:

It is not possible to know how or whether Earth’s climate has varied over the past century and a half. The data are therefore useless for input to the computer models that form the basis of the IPCC’s conclusions.

But the lack of adequate surface data is only the start of the problem. The computer models on which the climate scare is based are mathematical constructions that require the input of data above Earth’s surface as well. The models divide the atmosphere into cubes piled on top of each other, ideally with wind, humidity, cloud cover and temperature conditions known for different altitudes. But we currently have even less data above the surface than on it, and there is essentially no historical data at altitude.

Many people think the planet is adequately covered by satellite observations – data that is almost global 24/7 coverage and far more accurate than anything determined at weather stations. But the satellites are unable to collect data from the north and south poles, regions that are touted as critical to understanding global warming.

Moreover, space-based temperature data collection did not start until 1979, and 30 years of weather data is required to generate a single data point on a climate graph. The satellite record is far too short to allow us to come to any useful conclusions about climate change.

In fact, there is insufficient data of any kind – temperature, land and sea ice, glaciers, sea level, extreme weather, ocean pH, et cetera – to be able to determine how today’s climate differs from the past, much less predict the future. The IPCC’s climate forecasts have no connection with the real world.

Sherlock Holmes warned that “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote this famous quote for fiction, of course. But it applies perfectly to today’s global warming debate, especially where the IPCC’s scary conclusions and forecasts are involved. Of course, this will not stop Bainimarama and other conference leaders from citing IPCC “science” in support of their warnings of future climate catastrophe.

We should use these facts to spotlight and embarrass them every time.

___________

Dr. Tim Ball is an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba. Tom Harris is executive director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition.

NOAA Surface Temperature Changes Show Little Correlation to CO2 Changes Since 1880

Prof. Karl Erdman provided this surface temperature record to me from his search of government data files.  The orange dots are the change in the annual global temperature anomaly from year to year. The blue line is the 10-year average of the change in the annual global temperature anomalies.  The gray vertical bars are the average annual CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.  Since CO2 concentrations increase almost every year, if the temperature is increased by increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, then the change of temperature each year should have a strong tendency to be positive since the CO2 concentration change is positive almost every year.  The only years the CO2 concentration did not increase were from 1941 to 1946.

The sub-heading says that annual CO2 levels have little impact on the annual temperature change.  Looking at this data objectively, it is very difficult to claim that there is any correlation between the changes of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and the changes in the surface temperature!  This states the real lesson of the data better than the sub-heading of the graph does.

This is consistent with my understanding of the basic physics of the Earth's climate as I have discussed it numerous times.  The effect of atmospheric CO2 is very, very small.  It is probably actually a cooling effect, just as that of water vapor certainly is.

The data plotted is based on three data sources:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat

The changes in the temperature anomaly from one year to the next are the differences between a year's temperature anomaly and that of the next year from this data set.

ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt

Measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations from 1959 to 2012.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.smoothed.yr20

Historical CO2 record derived from a spline fit (20 year cutoff) of the Law Dome DE08 and DE08-2 ice cores June 1998 Source: D.M. Etheridge L.P. Steele R.L. Langenfelds R.J. Francey Division of Atmospheric Research, CSIRO, Aspendale, Victoria, Australia J.-M. Barnola Laboratoire of Glaciologie et Geophysique de l'Environnement, Saint Martin d'Heres-Cedex, France V.I. Morgan Antarctic CRC and Australian Antarctic Division, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Once again there is little reason to be concerned about the emissions of CO2 due to using fossil fuels.  So why is the Obama regime, and his EPA in particular, claiming that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.  Plants certainly do not think it is anything of the sort.  Increased crops and natural vegetation provide us many benefits:

• Increased food supplies for people and livestock
• A decrease in arid land areas
• Moderation of day to night temperature variations
• Increased oxygen production

I would like to thank Harry Dale Huffman for comments that lead to improvements in this post.

Evaluating the Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming Hypothesis

The continued barrage of claims that man's use of fossil fuels should be curtailed because it generates CO2 emissions has caused me to revise and add to an earlier posting on the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.  The EPA has declared CO2 a pollutant even though it is essential for plant growth and the present levels are less than optimal for plants.  It also has no known toxicological effects upon man unless it were to be at least 20 times more concentrated than it presently is.  Obama and many in Congress want to find ways to further reduce fossil fuel use in order to decrease CO2 emissions, or so they say.  The United Nations remains determined to bring about a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.  Meanwhile, the United States has tremendous reserves of coal and has recently found ways to extract huge amounts of natural gas from shale, yet we are to be stopped from making effective use of these resources and saddled with huge energy costs in the name of catastrophic man-made global warming based on the hypothesis we are about to discuss.

Man clearly makes a contribution to global warming because there is a strong local warming effect in urban areas.  However, the contributions of man to warming on the global scale are small and difficult to even measure.  The anthropogenic global warming catastrophe hypothesis makes the following claims:

• Man's use of fossil fuels results in CO2 emissions in amounts significant compared to the natural sources.
• The CO2 added by man to the atmosphere lingers there a long time, often said to be 100 years.
• The greenhouse gas warming caused by these additions of CO2 is itself significant.
• The warming caused by man's CO2 additions to the atmosphere causes a much stronger warming due to increased water vapor at altitude and its greenhouse effect.
• The great increase in water vapor at 8 to 12 km altitude over the equator and the lower latitudes results in a warming hot zone in the atmosphere, which warms the entire globe by back infra-red radiation.
• The resulting warming causes catastrophic effects, such as droughts, heavy rains, low snowfall, heavy snowfall, increased numbers and severity of hurricanes and typhoons, increased malaria, increased parasites, a greater mortality of older people, the extinction of species, and a great rise in sea level.

One of the most popularly cited versions of the greenhouse gas global warming hypothesis is based on the following thermal power diagram by Kiehl and Trenberth (several similar versions exist):

This is all so much hogwash and bunkum.  Let us consider some of the reasons why CO2 emitted by man is not causing such large and significant global warming effects:

1) The rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1850 to the level of 2008 made almost no difference in the infra-red radiation absorbed since almost all of the infra-red radiation was already being absorbed that CO2 can absorb in 1850.  The temperature increase due to the CO2 increase since 1850 is about 0.12C.  This is based upon the usual atmospheric CO2 concentration plot, but like the temperature hockey stick plot, this plot is now known to have been manipulated to make the rise of CO2 since the end of the Little Ice Age and the start of the Industrial Revolution look more dramatic than it really has been.  It has not been proven that the general rise in CO2 is not simply due to the oceans warming as their temperature increases slowly due to the end of the Little Ice Age just as often happened before the Industrial Age.

2)  The greenhouse gas models treat the Earth's surface as a black body thermal radiator.  Black body radiators are a very special idealization which the surface of the Earth does not much resemble.  Real objects are characterized by an emissivity constant of less than 1.  The black body radiator has an emissivity of 1.  The Earth's surface has an emissivity of about 0.7.  The diagram above says surface radiation is 396 W/m^2, which is the power emission for a black body with a temperature of 289.1K, close to the Earth's average surface temperature.  The real Earth's surface with an emissivity of 0.7 only emits about 277.2 W/m^2 at a temperature of 289.1K.  The Kiehl - Trenberth diagram over-estimates the outgoing surface radiation by a factor of 1.43.

3)  The models underestimate the solar radiation incident on the Earth's surface.  They claim it to be about 47% ( Kiehl and Trenberth), when measurements have commonly shown it to be between 65 and 75% of the total solar radiation incident upon the outer atmosphere (see the diagram below).  This underestimate of incident radiation, together with the much higher surface radiation claimed by treating the Earth's surface as a black body radiator, allows them to greatly increase a claimed large amount of back radiation due to infra-red absorbing gases in the atmosphere re-emitting long wavelength infra-red radiation absorbed from the ground.  This radiation is said to be half emitted into space and half emitted toward the ground.  This happens over and over, they say, creating a geometric power series of 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125 + 0.0625 + ..... or terms of one-half raised to the nth power.  This infinite series equals one, though the greenhouse warming advocates say it equals two!  The half of the radiation emitted into space is 169 W/m^2 in the Kiehl - Trenberth diagram, but the half returned to the Earth's surface is twice (1.97 times to be precise) that amount.  This huge exaggeration of the back radiation is a complete violation of physics.  This exaggeration then causes the effects of greenhouse gases to be greatly exaggerated.  In reality, a cooler atmosphere cannot emit sufficient IR toward a warmer surface to raise the temperature of the warmer surface.  The power incident upon the surface minus the cooling claimed for thermals (air convection) and by evaporation of water is only 64 W/m^2, which creates a surface with a black body temperature of 183.3K or -89.8C if the surface were a black body radiator as claimed.  In reality, the surface temperature with an emissivity of 0.7 is 200.4K or -72.7C.  The claim is that a surface that should be at this cold temperature somehow raises its temperature to 289.1K or 16.0C by radiating much more energy than it should and most of that energy is returned to the surface thanks to a multiplier effect in the atmosphere.  This violates cause and effect, not to mention basic thermodynamics in which heat energy always flows from a higher temperature body to a lower temperature body. 

Note also that the Kiehl - Trenberth diagram claims that only 40/396 = 0.101 of the surface radiation passes through the atmosphere without absorption.  The data on the right side of the upper part of this figure makes it clear that much more than 10% of the radiation is emitted into space from the surface despite the infra-red gases called greenhouse gases.  The estimate is that it is 15 to 30% transmission.

4)  The CO2 warming models believe that increased CO2 and water vapor do little to decrease the incoming solar radiation of ultraviolet, visible, and short wavelength infra-red radiations.  This offsetting effect, important during the day, is underestimated, however.  The greenhouse gas models do not predict the observed small decrease in the range of high day to low night temperatures as a result.  The radiation absorption of CO2 and water are shown in the figure above.  The three strongest absorptions of CO2 all occur where there is complete saturation of the effect due to the combination of the effects of water and already existing CO2 already.  The fourth strongest absorption line lies in the longer wavelength tail of the incoming solar radiation however and the absorption frequency at which it lies is not already saturated.  So although this line is weak, it actually has a significant effect as CO2 is further increased, at least as compared to the outgoing radiation effect.  The effect on incoming radiation is to cool the surface by removing more incident solar energy from the spectrum reaching the surface.

5) The residence time of man's CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is about 5 years when introduced high in the atmosphere (as in nuclear blasts or some volcanic eruptions [not caused by man despite the claims of certain Iranian clerics, but useful for studies of CO2 atmospheric dwell times]), not the 50 to 200 years claimed in one part of the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007, but in agreement with another part of the same report.  Other studies of the low altitude introduction of CO2, where man's use of fossil fuels introduces the vast majority of it, show the half life in the atmosphere to be about 1 year.

6) The portion of the CO2 in the atmosphere due to man is estimated to be about 1.2% to maybe a couple of % based on other reasonable assumptions.  The seas and plants are the dominant factors determining the atmospheric concentration of CO2.  Warming seas increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2.  Increased CO2 causes more plant growth which uses more CO2.  Ocean animals with shells also use large amounts of CO2.  Higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 also cause land minerals to react with more CO2 and bind it up.  Thus, plants and land minerals provide some negative feedback to increased atmospheric CO2.  When man adds CO2 to the atmosphere, the increased partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere pushes the equilibrium concentration in the oceans at a given temperature upward, acting as a further negative feedback mechanism.

7)  The hot spot in the warming pattern from about 8 to 12 km altitude near the equator that should be found if CO2 is acting as strongly as a greenhouse gas and enhancing the greenhouse gas effect of water vapor as is claimed by the UN IPCC AR4 report has been searched for. The hot spot in the atmosphere is not present.  This is definitive proof that the UN IPCC computer models are wrong about the role of CO2.  This reason alone is not only an adequate reason to reject the man-made CO2 contribution to global warming being as large as that claimed by the UN IPCC report, but it requires a scientist to reject this hypothesis.  A theory cannot make so necessary a prediction and fail, and nonetheless still be claimed to be true.  This would violate the fundamental scientific method.

8)  The temperatures on other planets and moons in our solar system are also rising, which is consistent with measurements of the solar cycle.  These other atmospheres are all warmer than predicted by the intercepted solar radiation energy.  Many have hotter surfaces and atmospheres than Earth though they have little or no greenhouse gases.

9)  Much of the claimed rise in land surface temperatures is due to the urban heat island effect, which has increased the reported temperatures in recent decades due to the closing down of more accurate rural weather stations around the world.  Few station sites follow the rules for good siting.  Urban stations should be entirely excluded when recording temperatures for global warming or cooling effects or assessing the effects of greenhouse gases such as CO2.  Instead, low altitude and urban stations have been given fallaciously high weight in the ground temperature records by extrapolating data taken from such warmer stations onto areas far from them but at higher altitude or more remote locations.  Stations at higher latitudes in Canada, Russia, and China have been preferentially shut down and temperatures for those critical areas have been assigned based on readings far to the south.  The temperatures officially used for high altitudes in the Andes of Boliva are based on data from cities on the Pacific Ocean and hot jungles of the Amazon basin.  The cool Andes Mountains lie between these areas and are much cooler.  This trick has been used over and over around the world.  Cooler temperatures actually measured decades ago have been replaced by interpolated values biased to higher temperatures in recent times.  This exaggerates the apparent temperature increase.

10)  Much raw temperature data has recently been pried loose from national temperature archives, often thanks to dogged requests under Freedom of Information Acts.  The rural stations in the U.S., Russia, Northern Europe, northern Australia, New Zealand, China, and some areas of Canada, Latin America, and Africa whose data has been examined carefully show little to no late 20th Century temperature increase.  The data used in the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007 was heavily manipulated, in ways that make no scientific sense, to enhance a rapid rise of temperatures in the late 20th Century.

11)  There is much evidence that the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warming, the Minoan Warming, and the Halocene Warmings b and a and other warmings longer ago were warmer than the present time, yet humans, animals, and plants thrived.

12) The rate of the temperature increase at the start of the Medieval Warm Period was similar to that we had in the late 20th Century using even the inflated and manipulated ground temperature data.  There was also a warming period around 1700 in which the temperature rose 2.2C in just 36 years, compared to the 0.7C temperature increase claimed for the 20th Century.  The claims of an unprecedented rise in temperatures in the late 20th Century are without justification.

13) The sea surface temperature data, the balloon data, and the satellite temperature data for the late 20th Century show much smaller temperature increases than does the manipulated land surface data used by the alarmists.  The oceans and water cover 71% of the Earth and the satellites read temperatures over the entire Earth.  The oceans store about 22 times the heat stored in the atmosphere.  The ocean temperatures of the last 6 years are unchanged or decreasing.  A better way to search for warming is to examine the heat content of the oceans using the results of the reliable Argo buoy arrays which can measure the heat content to a depth of 700 meters in the oceans. These measurements show no increase from 2003 through 2008.  The entire heat capacity of the atmosphere is the equivalent of only the top 3.2 m depth of the oceans.

14)  The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 follow temperature increases rather than preceding them, consistent with dissolved CO2 being emitted upon the warming of the oceans or dissolved when the oceans cool.  The solubility of CO2 increases greatly with lower temperature and higher pressure.  Due to high pressure and cold temperatures, the deep ocean waters hold huge amounts of CO2, but it takes a long time to warm those waters in response to solar irradiance changes due to the huge amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of water, the low amount of heat energy in the gaseous atmosphere, the huge volume of water, and the depth of most of the oceans.  Consequently, the rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will lag general warming events by long times, though there is observable response to warming El Nino events and cooling La Nina events.

15)  Despite a continued CO2 concentration increase in the atmosphere since 1998, the temperatures have not risen, which was noted as an embarrassment in the dumped CRU e-mails by Trenberth.  The much-touted computer models are baffled by this.

16)  Solar wind and solar electromagnetic fields are believed to have major effects upon the cosmic ray flux on the Earth and other planets in the solar system.  When solar sunspot activity increases, solar irradiance increases, but so also does the solar wind and the range and strength of the solar electromagnetic field.  This shields the Earth from cosmic rays and the reduced flux of cosmic rays causes less lower atmosphere (below 3.2 km) nucleation and growth of clouds.  The Earth's temperature decreases sensitively to the amount of cloud cover in the lower atmosphere, so when the sun is less active, there are more cosmic rays and they generate more lower atmosphere clouds, which has a strong cooling effect.  Contrary to the frequent claims of the global warming alarmists, solar activity has stronger effects upon the Earth's temperature than just that caused by the changes in solar irradiance.  Both the solar and Earth electromagnetic fields are presently weaker than they have been in many decades, so cosmic radiation is not being as well shielded as has long been usual.  With both fields weakened, the flow of molten material in the center of the Earth is decreased, which also should decrease the heat flow from the center of the Earth to its surface.

17)  The predicted catastrophic changes due to warming do not seem to have materialized.  The failure here is widespread and should not be a surprise given that these calamities did not happen during the earlier warm periods such as the Medieval Warm Period given in 11) above.  The historical record indicates that man generally benefited from these warmer periods.  We also know that mortality rates generally are higher due to cold weather than due to warm weather, so moderately rising temperatures are less harmful than an equivalent drop in temperatures.

So, what is the essential physics of our climate?

1)  About 70% of the incoming solar radiation is incident and absorbed by the Earth's surface.  Thus, (0.7)(341 W/m^2) = 238.7 W/m^2 warms the surface.  With an emissivity of 0.7, the temperature of the Earth's surface is 278.5K, or only about 9.5K cooler than the average temperature we observe.

2)  Most of the remaining energy is due to the action of gravity on our atmosphere and the movement of convection currents to keep the atmosphere in equilibrium.  The gravity effect operates due to the energy of the ideal gas molecule being the sum of its kinetic energy and its potential energy.  The higher altitude gas molecules have more potential energy and less kinetic energy and the decrease in kinetic energy is almost linear with increasing altitude.  The temperature of the ideal gas in equilibrium is proportional to its kinetic energy.  At sea level, the nitrogen, oxygen, and argon molecules that make up about 99.967% of the atmosphere and the remaining gas molecules are colliding about 6.9 billion times per second, so they rapidly absorb their share of energy even from the infra-red absorbing gases commonly called greenhouse gases.

3)  At lower altitudes, the transfer of energy by water molecules and their phase transitions from liquid or solid state to gas and then at somewhat higher altitudes where it is cooler, back to the liquid or solid state.  These transitions involve a large absorption of energy or cooling upon the transition to gas and a large emission of energy upon returning to the liquid state.  Water provides a great balancing effect to the climate and very effectively counteracts either great temperature increases or decreases.

4)  The average daily surface temperature is raised by the storage of large amounts of energy in water and the subsurface ground during the bright sunlight hours of the day and the return of that heat to the surface by conduction during the night.  Such an effect is observed for the moon as shown below, despite the fact that the moon stores much less energy than our Earth with water covering 71% of its surface and our vegetation holding heat better into the night.  The image below shows that effect NASA long ago calculated for the moon.  The outer surface of the blue areas is the temperature due to the solar radiation incident with no subsurface to store heat or to be warmed by conduction.  The outer surface of the orange is the observed temperature due to the subsurface heat holding effects.  Note that the daily high temperature shifts to later in the day, just as on Earth, from the noontime.  Note also the cooling effect during the day and the bigger warming effect at night.  These effects would be more subtle on Earth due to the smaller temperature extremes, but they will still exist.  In fact for a much more realistic understanding of the Earth's climate, one needs to develop the complete day to night cycle in this fashion for the more complicated Earth with its atmosphere, oceans, and plant coverage.

5)  At about 4000 meters, as much energy is transferred in the atmosphere by radiation as by air molecule collisions and convection currents.  The temperature of the Earth as viewed from space is about 255K, which is the temperature of the U.S. Standard Atmosphere at an altitude of 5000 meters.  The atmosphere at about 5000 meters is in effective thermal equilibrium with space.


6)  As one moves to lower altitudes from 5000 meters, the increasing kinetic energy of the gases as the potential energy decreases causes the temperature of the atmosphere to increase approximately linearly.

7)  Energy input from the solar wind, the interaction of the solar magnetic field with that of the Earth, the conduction of heat from the Earth's hot interior including large numbers of thermal vents in the deep oceans, and debris and particles collected from space provide additional energy inputs to the Earth.  It is not difficult to account for the 9.5K higher temperature of the Earth's surface compared to that expected for the average incidence of solar radiation upon its surface.  What is far more interesting are the explanations as to why the Earth's surface does not rise to a temperature of 393.8K or 120.7C at noon on the average day and then fall to 3K at night with no incident sunlight.

The case for the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is so poor, that it is clear that the real reason so many support this false hypothesis does not lie in the science.  There are ulterior political and unethical business motives for the constant claims that man's use of fossil fuels is going to be responsible for a global climate catastrophe.  Those who want reasons to increase the control of our use of energy, flock to this false theory.  Those who want to add further high taxes love the idea of something like cap and trade taxes.  Those who wish to subject the United States to more international control, say the United Nations, love this false theory.  Those who stand to make money from the trade of carbon credits love it.  Those who are pushing federal investment and mandates to create the smart grid love it.  Those who are working on electric cars, wind generation of electricity, solar power generation of electricity, nuclear power, thermal insulation, higher efficiency light sources, light materials for transportation, products made from recycled materials, and many others who stand to make money from throttling fossil fuel use very often support this false alarmist idea.

Disclaimer:  My laboratory works on projects for oil companies, solar power companies, wind generator companies, nuclear power plants, suppliers to the coal industry, low-weight materials for transportation companies, efficient light sources, improved thermal insulation materials, materials made from recycled materials, and energy from recycled materials.  My laboratory will prosper better with a strong private sector, a strongly growing economy, a limited government, and with widespread respect for science and what it can do for us to make our lives better.  Bad science and the disrespect for science that it will generate is bad for the future of my laboratory.

Recent Ocean Heat Content Trend Shows Lack of Heating

J. M. Lyman and colleagues earlier this year claimed the ocean heat content data of 1993 to 2008 showed a global warming trend of 0.63 +- 0.28 W/sq.m.  They allowed that the rise from 1993 to 2000 was followed by a flattening ocean temperature that started about 2001-2002.  Given a peak in land surface temperatures around 1998 and a subsequent flattening for a few years after that as solar irradiance and sunspot activity moved out of a warm cycle into what is looking more and more like a cooling cycle, it is to be expected that the ocean heat content would rise for a few years following the end of the solar irradiance increases.  As Roger Pielke Sr.has pointed out, the oceans hold 90% of the variable heat content of the Earth in the upper ocean water.  Thus, trends in the upper ocean temperatures and its heat content must be related to the solar radiance, though with a bit of lag and some averaging due to the huge heat capacity of the ocean.

With respect to longer term trends in the Earth's climate, the upper ocean temperatures are a much better measure than the flighty atmospheric temperatures on land, which are influenced much more by the time of day and the nearby human population.  We know the ground-based weather stations to have been badly biased upward by urban heat island effects (here, here, here, and here) and a long period of undocumented data manipulation (here and here and here).

R. S. Knox and D. H. Douglass of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Rochester have an in press publication in the International Journal of Geosciences, which uses data from the global array of Argo floats to calculate the ocean heat content (OHC) of the upper oceans.  The Argo floats were deployed in the early 2000s and are less prone to the biases and errors of the expendable bathythermographs used to obtain earlier ocean data.  The data is show in the graph below:

The green line shows the average annual ocean surface temperature provided by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  That has been trending downward since 2003, with most of the drop since 2005.  The Argo data from the surface to a depth of 700 meters is plotted in blue.  The red data points are the 12-month moving average of the blue line data.  The dashed red line is the linear fit to the 12-month moving average data.  The energy flux to compare to the Lyman result of 0.63 +- 0.28 W/sq. meter increase is -0.161 +- 0.040 W/sq. meter.

The result does not indicate the expected large rate of increase in OHC due to a warming planet if the increasing concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere were the primary driving force in our climate and it acted as the climate models have generally claimed it does.  Given the short span of time and the strong annual variations of the OHC, this result does not clearly rule out a warming effect of CO2 upon the Earth's temperature.  But, it does suggest that the cooling expected by many solar scientists due to decreased sunspot activity, may have started.  It argues that it is foolish to believe that the warming trend of the 1980s and 1990s was the early part of a catastrophe, which was caused by increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2.  It argues that we need to continue to carefully observe solar effects and the ocean heat content so that we can come to a real understanding of our climate and what causes longer term changes in it.

It also follows that forcing the world's peoples to do without energy or to pay skyrocketing costs for renewable energy or carbon sequestration on the basis of an ensuing catastrophe caused by man-made CO2 emissions is without justification.  It is terribly wrongheaded to use force to make people give up many of the comforts of their lives because some scientists and politicians have been claiming an unproved hypothesis is established fact.  Far from it, the strong global warming claim based on atmospheric CO2 has a trendline which indicates that it is not likely to make the transition from hypothesis to proven theory!

UAH Satellite Temperature Readings in 9-Year Decline

As we have observed, the land surface temperature record is unreliable and biased upward by the elimination of rural stations, the bad siting of most stations, and the application of adjustments to the raw temperature readings which create an artificial rapid temperature increase bias.  The UAH satellite temperature record showed a much weaker late 20th Century temperature increase than did the unreliable land surface temperature record.  For the period from 2001 to 2009, the atmospheric CO2 concentration continued to increase as shown by the black line in the plot above.  The UN IPCC AR4 climate models all predict a continuation of the late 20th Century temperature increase into this period based on this increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The satellite temperature record is the red-blue line and the linear trend line is the green line.  The trend line is showing a 0.84C decrease of temperature per century.  Of course, the longer term trend line of temperature since the end of the Little Ice Age has been positive.

Dr. Syun Akasofu presented the temperature trend and the decadal oscillations of the global temperature superimposed upon the longer linear trend line using the global temperature data since 1880 and up to 2000.  The linear trend line for that period is projected back into the very late Little Ice Age and forward.  The graph indicates where the temperature had been measured to be through 2008 and the IPCC AR4 report of 2007 prediction out to the year 2100 is shown.  This graph was presented at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, New York, March 2009.  The pink area is the UN IPCC range of predictions, which are proving to be too high.  This is not surprising given that they were a projection themselves largely based on a time from the bottom of the last cooling temperature oscillation and the maximum of the warming oscillation of the late 20th Century.  Such climate predictions are incredibly foolish.

The upper graph of temperature is basically that between the end of the yellow box area to the present, showing a slight temperature decline.  This decline is consistent with the indicated temperature oscillations superimposed on the long term linear trend line since the end of the Little Ice Age in the Akasofu graph.  Of course, there is no certainty that the linear long term warming rate from 1880 to 2000 will be maintained into the future, since the natural forces causing this warming trend are not well-understood and they have been known to frequently change direction in the past.  But, it is a more reasonable guess than that of the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007, whose science we know to be wrong on steroids.

GISS 2008 Global Average Temperature

The Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) determined average global temperature result for the first 11 months of 2008 is plotted with annual measurements back to 1880. GISS has the reputation of reporting the highest global temperatures of the four principal global temperature sources. Recently they reported temperatures across Russia in October which were identical to those in September, and I do not know if this data was even corrected for that error. Such an error would make the average temperature appear higher than it should be.

So far, 2008 is the coolest year since the year 2000. Note that 1999 and 2000 average global temperatures were below the trendline. Clearly 2008 is also. Examining this data without knowing what the factors are that cause changes in the earth's temperature, one might have a tendency to expect the long term trend of temperature to be upward. However, the last 8 years of data can also be viewed as indicating an end to the rise in temperature, which is consistent with observations of solar activity.

A further rise in temperature is almost certainly more good than bad for mankind barring the panicked reactions of politicians to deprive us of many of the benefits of the Industrial Revolution and take more of our freedom of choice from us. Both the warming from the early 1800s and the Industrial Revolution have made life much richer and easier for humans. This is a good thing and we should allow this beneficial combination to continue. Maybe, we will one day enjoy as warm a climate as that of the Medieval Climate Optimum or that of 500 BC when Greek civilization flowered.


The plot above gives the increase in temperature in degrees Centigrade by region over the world compared to the average temperature in the relatively cool years from 1950 to 1980. Note that the central U.S. and Canada have temperatures unchanged from that period. The coastal region temperatures of both countries are only very slightly warmer. I hardly think anyone in North America is complaining from a personal discomfort standpoint. There is also little change in South America or in Australia. In Africa, only North Africa has seen much of a temperature increase. Iran is also significantly warmed. Apparently, Allah is punishing the Muslims. There is little temperature change in India or in Southeast Asia. The largest temperature changes are in Europe and in North Asia. The further north in Europe and Asia, the greater the increase. It seems clear that this is just exactly what one would wish for. People who live in these regions should be very happy. The farmers there will have an easier time growing food and the wildlife will generally find life easier also.

What is not to like about this situation? Oh yeah, we should be mournful of the fate of the Muslims in North Africa and Iran, whose situation is perhaps worse. But then again, who are we to question Allah's will? If he wishes to reward nearly everyone who is not Muslim and punish those who are, that is his business.

Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

I wish to direct my readers to an excellent review of the climate literature on the subjects of global temperature and climate related to the observed increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide which has occurred since 1870. The rate of increase in CO2 has been faster since about 1950 than it was before that date. This review by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon was published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (2007) 12, 79-90 and was entitled Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. Because the article was written for physicians, it is well aimed for my audience of intelligent people, who may very well not be up on the latest jargon of climatologists or all the details of the many ocean cycles, etc.

The first figure of the article shows the temperature measured at the surface of the Sargasso Sea, which is a large area of the Atlantic, over a 3,000 year period using isotope ratios of marine organisms left in the sediment. The average temperature of this period is drawn as a reference and it is seen that the height of Greek civilization occurred during a warm period with a maximum temperature about 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than the average temperature, that the Roman period corresponded to a temperature period very near average, that the Fall of Rome and the Dark Ages corresponded to a period in which the temperature dropped by about 1 degree Centigrade, followed by the Medival Climate Optimum during which conditions improved in Europe, followed again by a decrease called the Little Ice Age, followed again by a return to a very nearly average temperature, where we are today. The French and Indian War and the American Revolution were during the coldest parts of the Little Ice Age, with conditions few living Americans would prefer to those of the present near average temperature. This figure is shown below:

They then show that the shortening of glaciers occurred well before increases in the atmospheric CO2 began. It began as a result of the warming ending the Little Ice Age. They show that the arctic temperature correlates very well back to 1880 with solar activity and does not correlate with atmospheric CO2. Then they show that the increase in annual mean surface temperature in the contiguous United States from 1880 to 2006 was 0.5 degree Centigrade per century. This is a temperature difference well within the 3 degree Centigrade variance over the last 3,000 years and one which few people would notice personally. A 0.5 C temperature increase is caused by an increase in solar activity of about 0.21% and the measured increase in solar activity from 1900 to 2000 was 0.19%.

During the recovery from the Little Ice Age, U.S. climate has improved with more rainfall, fewer tornadoes, and no increase in hurricane activity. Sea level has trended upward over the last 150 years at a rate of 7 inches per century. This sea level rise also began with the end of the Little Ice Age, rather than with the major increases in atmospheric CO2.

During the past 50 years, human use of hydrocarbons has increased 6-fold, but the increase in atmospheric CO2 has been only 22%. This increase in atmospheric CO2 has stimulated plant growth, which is good for both humans and other animals. Higher CO2 concentrations allow plants to grow faster and larger and to grow better in drier climates than otherwise. The Industrial Revolution has not only improved human life, but it has benefited plant life and the animals who depend upon plants. Increased warmth has also made life a bit easier for most plants and animals. The historical record of bursts in human civilizations also seems strongly to correlate with the warmer periods of the last 3,000 years.

Something to Celebrate in 2009: Global Warming Thesis Falls to Its Knees

While the first year of the presidency of B.O. will be loaded with attempts to bribe U.S. industries into new dependency upon the government trough and a take-over of large chunks of the medical insurance industry and of medical health services, there is an important bit of good news. The claim that the world will soon suffer catastrophic harm due to man-made global warming is likely to continue to lose credibility.

There has been no warming since 1998, when a strong Gulf Stream current and the El Nino cyclical warming in the Pacific caused a very warm year. The cycles of the ocean currents are complex and are not part of the UN IPPC oft-cited global temperature prediction programs. These programs do not provide for the variation of the sun's radiation which correlates with its sunspot activity. Indeed, 69% of the global warming of the last two decades of the 20th century may be due to an increase in radiation from the sun, which would provide a very reasonable explanation for the known temperature increase on several of the other planets of our solar system. We should also bear in mind that the heat capacity of the oceans is hugely greater than that of the atmosphere. Consequently, the current cycles of the oceans play a major role in the decades long cycles of warming and cooling. Variations in the Gulf Stream and the El Nino and El Nina cycles are very important. So to is the 70 to 80 year cycle of the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which sometimes brings warm water into the northeast Atlantic.

Other natural factors are finally beginning to get some recognition. The role of cosmic radiation in providing nucleation sites for the formation of water droplets to create cloud cover has recently been recognized. We have long been without any supermajor volcanic explosions that have put sun-reflecting dust into the upper atmosphere, which allows for warmer climates. In 2007, it was also claimed in a paper in the Quarterly Journal of the HMS that increased CO2 in the atmosphere leads to less water in the atmosphere and water is a more important greenhouse gas than CO2 is. Thus, it claims there is no positive feedback leading to increasing temperatures, as has often been claimed by the global warming alarmists.

Perhaps the most important decades long climate temperature cycle is the 22-year cycle in the solar radiation and magnetic field linkage. This produced the warming cycle from about 1975 to 1998 and the earlier warming cycle from 1925 to 1947. The longer term important cycle is the glacial and interglacial periods, with the present period likely still in a warming phase following the last glacial cool period.

The 2007 UN IPCC report claimed we would see a 0.3 degree Centigrade temperature increase in a decade due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. Well, there has been an increase of 15 ppm from 1998 to 2007 and there was no temperature increase at all. In fact, 2007 itself was a very cold year. Now in 2008, the atmospheric CO2 concentration is about 5% greater than it was in 1998, and still there is no warming. Various scientists have now claimed that there will be no warming until about 2015, due either to sunspot activity cycles or the cycles of ocean currents.

The global climate temperature models of the UN IPCC reports have never been able to predict the temperature into the future, or for that matter the temperature of periods long ago, but inferred from the ice records and by other means. These computer models are known to be completely inadequate for making predictions. What they are is a test of our state of knowledge of the climate and they show us that what we know is still very inadequate. I think they also show that the U.N. is also being selective in what part of our knowledge of the climate causing factors is included in the models. Selective can be good, but the U.N. is being driven by politics in its selection process, rather than by science.

Increasing numbers of scientists have publicly refuted the idea that it is established that CO2 emitted by man into the atmosphere has caused global warming and that any such warming would be catastrophically bad for man and the earth. More than 31,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition taking the stance that man-made global warming is not established to be the case by science. Of these scientists, more than 9,000 have Ph.D. degrees. Yours truly has recently sent in his signed statement to be added to the petition. Only 52 scientists had a hand in writing the UN IPCC Summary for Policy Makers.

The scientific case for anthropomorphic global warming is falling apart. It is to be hoped that this will impede the politicians from creating catastrophic cap-and-trade and anti-energy legislation. Many politicians are hoping to use the supposed catastrophe of man-made global warming to force people throughout the world to accept rule from international bodies such as the United Nations. Global energy usage restrictions and taxes are envisioned. We must be diligent in making it known that the science of the climate is not sufficiently known to justify this grab for power. In fact, what is known tends to enforce the idea that natural forces have much more effect upon the climate than do man's activities.

The Earth's Favorite Average Temperature

During the last 600 million years, the earth's favorite average temperature has been about 22C or about 72F. The average temperature has come down from this temperature a number of times, but it usually stays near this very warm temperature. When the temperature drops, it for comparatively short times and it sometimes drops a lot. About 600 million years ago, the average temperature was about 23C and it stayed at the high temperature for more than 160 million years. About 440 million years ago, the average temperature dropped to about 12C or about 54F. It quickly rose back up to 23C and then dropped to about 20C from 375 to 310 million years ago. From 300 to about 270 million years ago, it was about 12C again. Then it shot up to about 22C until it dipped down for a short time to about 16C about 140 million years ago. It quickly returned to 22C and stayed there until about 35 million years ago when it started to decrease. Once again, it fell until it reached about 12C. It has since risen a bit, so at this time the average temperature is about 14C, which is much cooler than the most common average temperature of 22C.