Another Alarmist Claim Topples

From GRL/AGU Journal Highlights 6/22/10:

Less warming risk from permafrost thaw


Soil found in the Arctic stores half of the world's soil organic carbon (SOC) and twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere. Rising temperatures in the Arctic are thawing the permafrost; some of the soil carbon then degrades into greenhouse gases that are remobilized into the carbon cycle, exerting positive [negative to minimal according to several empirical studies] feedback on global warming.

Vonk et al.'s objective was to find out what happens to terrestrial SOC after it is released from Arctic landmasses to coastal waters. The authors chose northernmost Scandinavia to conduct their study due to its sensitivity to the warming climate.

The molecular radiocarbon fingerprint of suspended particulate matter and surface sediments collected during spring flood 2005 in the Kalix River-Bothnian Bay system reveals that there are two distinct SOC pools, which exhibit different susceptibilities to degradation upon settling from the surface water to the underlying sediments. The exported SOC distributed by rivers and streams consists of a young pool that is released from recent plant material and the upper soil layers of peatlands and an older pool that originates from deeper mineral soil layers.

The data reveal that the young pool, with an inferred high degradation rate, would be expected to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, while the carbon from the older pool, which is tightly bound to mineral particles that protect it from degradation, would resettle in coastal sediments. Therefore, thaw-released mineral organic carbon may, relative to peat organic carbon, preferentially end up in coastal sediments instead of the atmosphere. The results suggest that researchers should reevaluate the assumption that there is a simple direct link between thawing of permafrost and the addition of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

Title: Selective preservation of old organic carbon fluvially released from sub-Arctic soils

Authors: Jorien E. Vonk, Bart E. van Dongen, and Örjan Gustafsson: Department of Applied Environmental Science and Bert Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper 10.1029/2010GL042909, 2010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010GL042909

CO2 causing Increased Cooling of Atmosphere

As demonstrated in Rescue from the Climate Saviors, increasing levels of CO2 and other IR-active gases in the atmosphere increase the natural cooling system of the earth. IR-active gases do not supply additional heating power to the earth and are not a cause of  “global warming”.  IR-active gases do not act “like a blanket” but rather “like a sunshade”.  They keep a part of the solar energy away from the earth’s surface and act to cool the earth: 70% of the entire cooling power originates from these molecules. An increase in concentration only serves to increase the cooling efficiency, and now there is additional empirical evidence. A new paper shows that increased CO2 concentrations have increased the cooling efficiency of the upper atmosphere, and in combination with the 2008 solar minimum, resulted in the lowest upper atmospheric density recorded in 43 years.

Why Obama turned down specialized foreign ships to clean up the Gulf

   JUNE 19, 2010
The [First Green] President Does a Jones Act

President Obama has repeatedly said his Administration is doing everything in its power to expedite the oil clean-up and mitigate the damage. But in the two weeks immediately after the spill, 13 foreign governments reached out and offered their assistance. The U.S. response? Thanks, but no thanks.

Or at least that's how Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston, described the U.S. answer. The State Department phrased it slightly differently: "While there is no need right now that the U.S. cannot meet, the U.S. Coast Guard is assessing these offers of assistance to see if there will be something which we will need in the near future." One month later, many of these offers are still outstanding. The Belgian dredging group DEME says it has offered the U.S. specialized vessels and technology that can help clean up the spill in three to four months compared to the estimated nine months that the U.S. will need. There are only a handful of these vessels in the world, and most of them belong to Dutch and Belgian companies. So why aren't we calling on them?

Testimony of John Christy at the IAC

Transcript  IAC 15 June 2010 Montreal (emphasis added)
John R. Christy
Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science
Director, Earth System Science Center
Alabama State Climatologist
University of Alabama in Huntsville

IPCC Lead Author: 2001 TAR
Contributor: 1992 Supplement
Contributor: 1994 Radiative Forcing of Climate Change
Key Contributor: 1995 SAR
Contributing Author: 2007 AR4, WG I and II

NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement
American Meteorological Society Special Award for satellite observations
Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Mr. Chairman and members of the IAC panel, thank you for inviting me to offer my views on the IPCC process. Five years ago the New York Times quoted me saying that an IPCC-like process, “… is the worst way to generate scientific information, except for all the others.” (23 Aug 2005) I now think I was a bit too generous.

A fundamental problem with the entire issue here is that climate science is not a classic, experimental science. As an emerging science of a complex, chaotic climate system, it is plagued by uncertainty and ambiguity in both observations and theory. Lacking classic, laboratory results, it easily becomes hostage to opinion, groupthink, arguments-from-authority, overstatement of confidence, and even Hollywood movies.

Rescue from the Climate Saviors

The Hockey Schtick is honored to present the English release of Rescue from the Climate Saviors, a lay explanation of the physics underlying the fictitious dogma of climate alarmism. KE Research, a German public policy consultancy firm, prepared the report based on interviews and editing assistance from noted German theoretical physicists Ralf D. Tscheuschner & Gerhard Gerlich, authors of the peer-reviewed paper Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects within the Frame of Physics, and numerous other climatologists, physicists, and scientists. KE Research encourages all to freely distribute the report by any means (in unchanged form) and is forwarding copies to all members of the US Senate and House of Representatives, and legislators worldwide.
Rescue from the Climate Saviors 1.1

(The Hockey Schtick also assisted in English translation & editing)

Conclusions of the report include:

1. The terms “greenhouse effect” and “greenhouse gas” are misnomers and obstruct understanding of the real world.
2. Earth has a natural “cooling system”. If the planet warms, it will automatically raise its cooling power.
3. An increase of earth temperatures is only achievable if the heating power is stepped up: first to “load” matter with more energy (i.e. to raise temperatures) and then to compensate for the increasing cooling, which results from the increase of IR radiation into space.
4. CO2 and other IR-active gases cannot supply any additional heating power to the earth. Therefore, they cannot be a cause of “global warming”. This fact alone disproves the greenhouse doctrine.
   
   

Economist: Average family needs to spend $5665/yr on carbon taxes to avoid fireball planet

According to a delusional study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the price of carbon needs to be $59 per ton in order to cripple the economy to the point where carbon emissions drop to the goal of the Copenhagen accord. Given that the average family of four is responsible for 211,680 lbs or 96 metric tons of CO2 per year, at the "required" $59/ton, the carbon tax cost for the average family would have to be $5664/yr to avoid the fictitious problem of AGW. Note: carbon offsets are trading today at 10 cents per metric ton on the Chicago Climate Exchange. 

Economic aspects of global warming in a post-Copenhagen environment

Abstract: The science of global warming has reached a consensus on the high likelihood of substantial warming over the coming century. Nations have taken only limited steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since the first agreement in Kyoto in 1997, and little progress was made at the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009. The present study examines alternative outcomes for emissions, climate change, and damages under different policy scenarios. It uses an updated version of the regional integrated model of climate and the economy (RICE model). Recent projections suggest that substantial future warming will occur if no abatement policies are implemented. The model also calculates the path of carbon prices necessary to keep the increase in global mean temperature to 2 °C or less in an efficient manner. The carbon price for 2010 associated with that goal is estimated to be $59 per ton (at 2005 prices), compared with an effective global average price today of around $5 per ton. However, it is unlikely that the Copenhagen temperature goal will be attained even if countries meet their ambitious stated objectives under the Copenhagen Accord.

Environmental Scientist: "Climategate is the Greatest Scientific Scandal in my Lifetime"

If the science is solid, why stoop?

h/t Greenie Watch

What's Wrong with the Sun?

• "Something appears to have changed inside the sun, something the models did not predict. But what?"
• "These findings have thrown our best computer models of the sun into disarray."
• "high solar activity has a disproportionate warming influence on northern Europe"
• "The ultraviolet is varying much, much, much more than we expected"
• "The heat input into the stratosphere is much more variable than we thought"
• "solar activity is just one natural source of climate variability."

(NewScientist) SUNSPOTS come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only for them to fade away again after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.

But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The sun is under scrutiny as never before thanks to an armada of space telescopes. The results they beam back are portraying our nearest star, and its influence on Earth, in a new light. Sunspots and other clues indicate that the sun's magnetic activity is diminishing, and that the sun may even be shrinking. Together the results hint that something profound is happening inside the sun. The big question is what? Read more

3 Papers: Alarmist Glacier Claims are Overblown

Three peer-reviewed studies published within the past 2 weeks alone have indicated alarmist claims of anthropogenic, unprecedented, rapid glacier melt are overblown:

1. Climate Change Will Affect the Asian Water Towers

• IPCC claim of Himalayan glacier melt by 2035:
• "overstated by several hundred years"
• "oversimplified"
• "impact less than anticipated"
• IPCC false claims were "a first-rate disaster"
• "some scientists saw the error and tried to alert senior authors, but it was "too late" to get the report corrected"

2. 100-year mass changes in the Swiss Alps linked to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation

• "half of the glacier loss in the Swiss Alps is due to natural climate variability— a result likely to be true for glaciers around the world."
• "current glacier retreat might be equally due to natural climate variations as it is to anthropogenic greenhouse warming."
• "Glacier mass loss was particularly rapid in the 1940s and since the 1980s. "

3. Is the recessional pattern of Himalayan glaciers suggestive of anthropogenically induced global warming?

• "the rate of recession of most of the glaciers in general is on decline"
• "These observations are in contradiction to the widely popularized concept of anthropogenically induced global warming."
• "It is believed that the rise of temperature of around 0.6°C since mid-nineteenth century is a part of decadal to centennial-scale climatic fluctuations that have been taking place on this Earth for the past few thousands of years."

h/t Tom Nelson

UPDATE: Global warming's impact on Asia's Rivers Overblown

New Miskolczi Paper: CO2 not cause of Global Warming

Ferenc Miskolczi, a former NASA physicist, has a forthcoming paper to be published in Energy & Environment which shows empirically that change in the greenhouse effect due to CO2 would likely have been detected if it had been present in the last 61 years. Miskolczi also demonstrates that the IPCC-claimed positive feedback from water vapor does not exist. 


The Stable Stationary Value of the Earth’s Global Average Atmospheric Planc-weighted Greenhouse-Gas Optical Thickness 
by Ferenc Miskolczi Energy & Environment, 21:4 2010.

ABSTRACT: By the line-by-line method, a computer program is used to analyze Earth atmospheric radiosonde data from hundreds of weather balloon observations. In terms of a quasi-all-sky protocol, fundamental infrared atmospheric radiative flux components are calculated: at the top boundary, the outgoing long wave radiation, the surface transmitted radiation, and the upward atmospheric emittance; at the bottom boundary, the downward atmospheric emittance. The partition of the outgoing long wave radiation into upward atmospheric emittance and surface transmitted radiation components is based on the accurate computation of the true greenhouse-gas optical thickness for the radiosonde data. New relationships among the flux components have been found and are used to construct a quasi-all- sky model of the earth’s atmospheric energy transfer process. In the 1948-2008 time period the global average annual mean true greenhouse-gas optical thickness is found to be time-stationary. Simulated radiative no-feedback effects of measured actual CO2 change over the 61years were calculated and found to be of magnitude easily detectable by the empirical data and analytical methods used.The data negate increase in CO2 in the atmosphere as a hypothetical cause for the apparently observed global warming. A hypothesis of significant positive feedback by water vapor effect on atmospheric infrared absorption is also negated by the observed measurements. Apparently major revision of the physics underlying the greenhouse effect is needed.

Related: Miskolczi's original paper

Prior posts on Miskolczi

The New Climate Theory of Ferenc Miskolczi

AIG News (p. 12-13)

Discussion of Miskolczi's Virial Theorem

Antarctica 4°C Warmer during last Interglacial

According to a paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010), new high-resolution ice core data from two sites in eastern Antarctica show temperature proxies more than 4°C higher during the last interglacial (~130,000 years ago) than the present interglacial. The high resolution data provides more accurate determination of the temperature proxies, shown at lower left of each graph below:

 

The end of the last major ice age is evident ~18,000 years ago. Since the current interglacial peak ~6000 years ago, the ice core data show Antarctica has cooled. Ice core data from Greenland also show cooling over the past 8000 years. Doomsday news reports and the IPCC have claimed that rising CO2 will cause a 4°C increase and that the earth has not experienced temperatures 4°C higher than the present over the last 55 million years.  Alarmist scientists have claimed a 4°C  temperature rise would "change the world beyond recognition", cause the Saharan desert to stretch into Europe, mass extinction, all rivers to dwindle to a trickle, etc., none of which occurred with 4°C higher temperatures 130,000 years ago.

Mediterranean Sea Warming 0.2°C per Century

According to an article published in the April 2010 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, the western Mediterranean Sea has warmed at a rate of only 0.002°C/yr or 0.2°C/century. Furthermore, the authors state that this very slight long term trend can not be statistically distinguished from decadal variability, and thus there may be no statistically significant long term trend at all over the period 1943-2000. These findings contrast with those of the recent controversial paper on ocean warming which studied a shorter period from 1993-2008.


How much is the western Mediterranean really warming and salting?

JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 115, C04001, 12 PP., 2010 doi:10.1029/2009JC005816


Abstract: Instrumental biases and data processing methods can modify temperature trend estimations and enhance decadal variability in the upper ocean. These questions have not been specifically addressed in the western Mediterranean (WMED), a region where warming and salting trends have been detected during the second half of the twentieth century. In this work we test the sensitivity of these trends and decadal variability in the WMED to the use of bathythermograph data and data processing methods. We analyze different subbasins in order to detect distinct local responses. Our results show that deep waters in the WMED are increasing their temperature and salinity at a rate of 0.002°C/yr and 9.2 × 10−4 yr−1, respectively, from 1943. These trends are spatially homogeneous, not affected by instrumental biases, data processing methods, or changes in the period of time analyzed. The heat absorbed by the whole WMED is equivalent to a surface heat flux of 0.29 ± 0.19 W/m2. This figure encloses recent estimates of 0.36 ± 0.06 W/m2 for the global ocean. The intermediate layer increased its salinity at a rate of 1.3 × 10−4 yr−1 and this result can also be considered as robust. The intermediate layer temperature and the upper layer salinity show strong time variability and in our opinion long-term changes cannot be statistically distinguished from decadal variability during the period 1943–2000. The upper layer shows a temperature and heat increase for the overall period, but it is caused by a steep warming trend initiated in the early 1980s.

Physicist: CO2 "Greenhouse Effect" is Already Saturated

Adding to the list (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28...) of scientists and mathematicians who have disproven conventional greenhouse gas theory, John Nicol, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Physics, James Cook University, Australia, states in his paper Climate Change (A Fundamental Analysis of the Greenhouse Effect), 


In summary, small quantities of radiation from excited Greenhouse gases, at frequencies corresponding to a transparent window of the atmosphere, provide direct feed back of heat towards the earth, causing some heating, and towards outer space producing cooling.  The proportion of this free radiation, relative to the amount of excitation energy trapped in the Greenhouse gas, is a characteristic of the gas and will be independent of both the total heat energy present and the concentration of a given Greenhouse gas.


 [The calculations show] that there is little significant difference between the spatial distributions of heat captured by the Greenhouse gases along a vertical column within the troposphere, for a range of concentrations equal to that defined at present, nominally 380 ppm of CO2 and possible future concentrations of 760 ppm and 1140 ppm.  While it is not possible to calculate the actual proportion of energy returning to the earth via these very low frequency photons passing through a transparent atmosphere, the proportion relative to that held by excited CO2 molecules will always be exactly the same, irrespective of the total amount or density of carbon dioxide present. 


The findings clearly show that any gas with an absorption line or band lying within the spectral range of the radiation field from the warmed earth, will be capable of contributing towards raising the temperature of the earth. However, it is equally clear that after reaching a fixed threshold of so-called Greenhouse gas density, which is much lower than that currently found in the atmosphere, there will be no further increase in temperature from this source, no matter how large the increase in the atmospheric density of such gases.


As also shown by Miskolczi and others using different methods, Dr. Nicol finds that the "greenhouse effect" of CO2 is already saturated at present atmospheric levels and that future emissions will not affect temperature.  Dr. Nichol shows that the IPCC concept of greenhouse gas back radiation to warm the earth is fictitious and that the true physical process is retardation of the exit of energy from the surface. He shows that the greenhouse gas absorption bands retard the exit of energy from the earth's surface, but that there is an upper limit beyond which further increases in greenhouse gas concentrations have no further effect. The surface is radiating at a fixed rate governed by the surface temperature and any increase in greenhouse gases with the same absorption bands will "widen the path" for heat to escape to the same degree as heat is retarded from escape, and therefore there is no additional warming. These principles hold for all greenhouse gases and are beyond saturation for the most important greenhouse gases, water vapor and CO2. 

Fmr EPA Scientist: CO2 not a pollutant & not causing warming

Fred H. Haynie, a retired EPA research scientist, has devoted the past four years to a study of global climate change, and in particular the relationship to CO2, as illustrated in his ppt presentation:

The findings include 1) anthropogenic CO2 emissions have not caused the rise in background levels of CO2, which is primarily due to rising temperatures in the arctic ocean sink, and 2) a greenhouse effect of CO2 is not causing global warming. Thus, controlling CO2 emissions will have no effect on natural climate change, CO2 cannot be considered a pollutant, and attempts to control CO2 emissions will only result in lower efficiency and waste of energy.

Related: The "Greenhouse" Effect

Solar Cycle Prediction Lowered Again

Solar physicist Dr. David Hathaway of NASA has again lowered his prediction of the peak in sunspot numbers for the current solar cycle 24 to only 65 sunspots/month as of June 2010:

The predictions for solar cycle 24 have been plunging since the December 2006 prediction that it would be "one of the most intense cycles since record keeping began almost 400 years ago":  

Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one. Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 "looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Animation of prior changes to Dr. Hathaway's solar cycle 24 predictions:

The predictions for Solar Cycle 24 have plummeted from "one of the most intense" to now one of the least intense cycles of the past 400 years. If the anemic activity continues, the sun may be entering a quiet phase similar to the Dalton Minimum, characterized by approximately 50 sunspots/month at the peak of the solar cycle. 

Greenhouse Gas Scorecard

From an editorial in this month's Power Engineering journal comes mention of

"the dark horse entry: “Climategate.” The leaking of thousands of emails and files from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) raises the specter of possible academic misconduct in the field of climate change research. At best, Climategate shows researchers ignoring or modifying data that counters their positions, suppressing dissenting opinions and gaming the peer-review process. At worst, it shows that some of the science driving the politicians who regulate GHGs is wrong. At a minimum, Climategate shows unprofessional behavior among scientists trusted by world governments."

Along with a status table of major Congressional climate legislation:

CO2, Global Warming and the Royal Society

Letter from Norm Kalmanovitch to the Global Warming Policy Foundation:

The concept of human caused global warming is entirely predicated on the assumption that the rapid increase in fossil fuel consumption will raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration to levels that will cause catastrophic warming of the Earth. The IPCC defined an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 650ppmv as the absolute maximum tolerable level beyond which catastrophic global warming will be a certainty. This was presented at the climate conference in Nairobi Kenya, in 2006 along with the prediction that at the current increasing rate of CO2 emissions, by 2100 the atmospheric CO2 will be well in excess of 1200ppmv (1248ppmv according to IPCC 2007 lead Author Andrew Weaver’s November 27, 2008 presentation to the University of Calgary).

The global reference for atmospheric CO2 concentration is the Mauna Loa Observatory and this data is used by the IPCC as their only reference. The CO2 concentration data which can be downloaded directly from the site at:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_mm_mlo.txt
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_annmean_mlo.txt
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/trends/co2_gr_mlo.txt

In the past ten years CO2 emissions have climbed from 24.75gt/year in 2000 to over 32gt/year by 2009, but the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration remained a virtually straight line, averaging 1.977ppmv/year with the high value of 2.56ppmv/year occurring in 2003 and the low value of 1.55ppmv/year occurring in 2005.

The official CO2 concentration for 2009 from Mona Loa Observatory is 387.35ppmv, and with the average rate of increase in concentration for the past decade of just 1.977ppmv/year, by year 2100 the concentration will only be 567.25ppmv, having increased by just 179.90ppmv over the next 91 years.
This is less than half of what the IPCC predicted and more importantly it is below the 650ppmv maximum that the IPCC deemed safe. Essentially without even criticizing the faulty science behind AGW, it can be shown, based on the actual statements of the IPCC, that the world faces no threat from global warming as a result of increased CO2 emissions.
If one were to bring physical science into the argument it is easily demonstrated that this 179.90ppmv increase in CO2 concentration will not increase the greenhouse effect by the 1.5307°C predicted by the forcing parameter of the climate models, but by something well under 0.2°C (because of the effect of this on an already near saturated wavelength band accessible to CO2).