Study: A Dog or Cat Pollutes more than a SUV

Planet killers

From Italian News Agency AGI (Google translation + editing)

(AGI) - Rome, August 18 - How much pollution results from keeping a dog? More than a SUV. A paradox? Perhaps, but in terms of resource consumption, domestic animals have a high impact on the environment. This surprising information about our 4-legged friends is in the new issue of Focus, the monthly magazine directed by Sandro Boeri, on newsstands starting this week. Citing the results of New Zealand research which shows that to feed a dog of medium size requires 164 kg of meat and 95 kg of cereals per year when translated into an ecological footprint (the portion of land needed to produce food and dispose waste) equals 0.84 acres. The ecological footprint of a SUV, however, is equal to 0.41 hectares, an estimate that includes the energy needed to build it and drive it for 10,000 km a year. In short, man's best friend seems to have more of an impact on the environment than a highly polluting vehicle. Not only that, the ecological footprint of a dog even exceeds that of many nations: e.g. 0.8 hectares per capita average ecological footprint in Asia. Between diet and gadgets, then, a "Western" dog consumes more planetary resources 'than does much of humanity.' Not much better for cats, whose impact in terms of pollution (0.15 hectares) coincides with the footprint produced by small car. The reasons for such a waste of energy and resources are to be found in the industrial economy that revolves around pets: intensive farming of red meat for the big dogs, plants for the production of food for cats and other small animals , waste disposal (litter for cats, for example, not all biodegradable), the production of "unnecessary" items such as winter coats and plastic toys. The way out? For dogs, a diet free of red meat and for the cats a diet of fish waste. And for the bosses, a life more 'ecologically energy efficient.'

And they didn't even include the 'greenhouse' effects of all that methane & CO2 dogs and cats produce. Hello EPA- are you listening?!

'Kiwigate' Update

From the International Climate Science Coalition, September 7, 2010: Critical Pacific Ocean subset of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) temperature data now to be examined by New Zealand High Court.

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world, the newly formed New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust has taken legal action against the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), a ‘Crown Research Institute’ contracted by the NZ Government to be its sole adviser on scientific issues relating to climate change. Instead of using the New Zealand Met Service temperature record that shows no warming during the last century, NIWA has adopted an “adjusted” record of seven surface stations that shows a 1 deg. C rise, almost 50% above the global average for that period.

Because there are very few long term temperature records in the Pacific Ocean, the NIWA record bears heavily disproportionate weight in determining multi-decadal trends in global average temperatures used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, the basis for the NIWA temperature adjustments is unknown, the data and calculations that underlie the adjustment method lost, and the originator of the technique of adjustment summarily dismissed from his position at NIWA.



Read news release from ICSC affiliate, the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC), which has unsuccessfully sought access to the data and calculations behind the temperature adjustment since 2006.

Read November 2009 NZCSC paper on the scandal, “Are We Feeling Warmer Yet?”, by Barry Brill, OBE.

Read May 2010 response to NIWA attempts to whitewash the affair.

Due to the international significance of this case, ICSC will keep readers up to date as this legal action unfolds. Read more on the NZCSC Home page.

Climate Scientist: 'Skeptical Science' misleading and fails to understand physics

Climate scientist Roger Pielke Sr. skewers the [un]-'Skeptical Science' blog today for posting "misleading" information about the lack of ocean warming since 2004, and a failure to understand the physics. As Dr. Pielke notes,

• Upper ocean heat annual average did not increase from 2004-2009
• This means that global warming halted during this time period. 
• There is no other way to spin this data.
• The Skeptical Science site statement, "The most recent ocean measurements show consistent warming” is false
• The ocean heat content provides the most appropriate metric to diagnose global warming in recent and upcoming years
• The Skeptical Science statement, Claims that the ocean has been cooling are correct. Claims that global warming has stopped are not  "illustrates their lack of understanding of the physics. If ocean cooling does occur, it DOES mean global warming has stopped during that time period."

For a ready-reference to debunking other claims of the Skeptical Science site, see Lubos Motl's SPPI treatise and the I-Phone Our Climate app.

For a physical explanation why the oceans have not heated due to accumulating 'greenhouse gases' see Why greenhouse gases won't heat the oceans. Also see the recent NASA study stating “Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures.” , Oceans are cooling according to NASA, and Recent cooling of the upper ocean.

Dr. Pielke's Critique of the IPCC and Politicization of Climate Science

German climate scientist Hans von Storch interviews Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. for the American Geophysical Union Atmospheric Sciences Newletter and finds that "he voices rather critical views, and likely not everybody will like his assertions. But being a Fellow of both the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2004, a former Chief Editor of the Monthly Weather Review and Co-Chief Editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences he is undoubtedly a legitimate participant in the discussion among scientific experts." Excerpts below, emphasis added:

How do you weigh the role and the potentials of models?
Models are powerful tools with which to understand how the climate system works on multi-decadal time scale as long as there are observations to compare reality with the model simulations. However, when they are used for predictions of environmental and societal impacts decades from now in which there is no data to validate them, such as the IPCC predictions decades into the future, they present a level of forecast skill to policymakers that does not exist. These predictions are, in reality model sensitivity studies and as such this major limitation in their use as predictions needs to be emphasized. Unless accompanied by an adequate recognition of this large uncertainty they imply a confidence in the skill of the results that is not present.

You have become known for dissenting views in the present debate about the perspective of anthropogenic climate change. For example, you stress the role of land uses chances as another key driver in influencing our climate. Could you outline your position?
My perspective is summarized in a recent publication with 18 other Fellows of the American Geophysical Union in an EOS article titled "Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases" [Pielke Sr. et al., 2009]. We wrote "the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment did not sufficiently acknowledge the importance of these other human climate forcings in altering regional and global climate and their effects on predictability at the regional scale" and because "global climate models do not accurately simulate (or even include) several of these other first order human climate forcings, policymakers must be made aware of the inability of the current generation of models to accurately forecast regional climate risks to resources on multidecadal time scales."

If you were right, how would the range of options for response measures for limiting man-made climate change within certain bounds differ from what is commonly considered?
We need to recognize that the IPCC starts from an inappropriately narrow perspective that the human input greenhouse gases is the dominate environmental concern in the coming decades and then the IPCC presents policymakers with a resulting broad range of expected regional and local impacts. This is, however, at best a flawed significantly, incomplete approach.
The IPCC process should be inverted. In our 2009 EOS article that I referred to above, we recommend that the next assessment phase of the IPCC (and other such assessments) broaden its perspective to include all of the human climate forcings. It should also adopt a complementary and precautionary resource based assessment of the vulnerability of critical resources (those affecting water, food, energy, and human and ecosystem health) to environmental variability and change of all types. This should include, but not be limited to, the effects due to all of the natural and human caused climate variations and changes.

Is The Sun Causing Global Warming?

Remarkable essay by a climate scientist for an environmental organization specializing in carbon offsets! 

Recently, a documentary aired on the UK’s Channel 4, entitled ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle,' which challenged the prevailing political understanding that global warming is caused by man-made activity.

The movie argues that it is in fact the sun that is responsible for the current changes in the Earth's temperature and the film is riddled with the testimony of many scientists and climate experts, furthering a growing dissent to the man-made theory. After all, that’s all it is, a theory. As soon as people start to state that ‘the debate is over’, beware, because the fundamental basis of all sciences is that debate is never over, that questions must be asked and answered and issues raised in order for the science to be accurate.

So what exactly are the arguments behind the Sun being the main cause of global warming?

First off, it is very important to address the fact that Earth is not the only planet to be experiencing climate change in our solar system currently. In fact, many astronomers have announced that Pluto has been experiencing global warming, and suggested that it is a seasonal event, just like how Earth’s seasons change as the various hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun. We must remember that it is the Sun that determines our seasons, and thusly has a greater impact upon the climate than we could ever even try to achieve.

In May of 2006, a report came forward revealing that a massive hurricane-like storm that occurred on Jupiter may be caused by climate change occurring on the planet, which is expected to raise its temperatures by 10 degrees. National Geographic News reported that a simultaneous rising in temperature on both Mars and Earth suggest that climate change is indeed a natural phenomenon as opposed to being man-made.

Sun-Earth Coupling

The GWPF Observatory, 9/1/10 by Dr. David Whitehouse

Our understanding of the influence of solar short-wavelength radiation on the Earth’s upper atmosphere is poorer than many realise. It is a significant area of research as some scientists believe that solar short-wave variations play a greater role in climatic variations than an initial analysis of the amplitude of those variations suggests, especially because of the fairly recent realisation that there are spectral variations as well as intensity variations in the short wavelength radiation coming from the sun.

At the very least it is commonly overlooked that just considering solar irradiance changes over the 11-year solar cycle when the cycle is rising and sunspot number increasing the climatic forcing effect of the slightly increased solar output is, over the 6-7 years of the cycle, the same as the climatic forcing effect of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations over the same period, and that is without any additional solar-terrestrial climatic coupling, such as the effects suggested below.

Ultra-Violet emission from the sun is modulated on an 11-year and 28-day period (solar rotation) with variability increasing as the wavelength decreases. In the Extreme UV the variation is between a factor of 2 – 10.

EUV is absorbed in the Earth’s Thermosphere at an altitude of between 90 – 500 km creating the ionosphere. In the thermosphere temperature increases with increasing altitude. At an attitude of 400 km the temperature is about 600K at solar minimum and about 1500K at solar maximum. The thermosphere at 400km also undergoes a fluctuation in density of a factor of 10 between solar min and max, this is important for the drag-limited lifetime of satellite orbits.

Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet!

The headline is 125,000 years late, but nonetheless is being spun today as what might happen again (inferred to be due to man) to what is presently a huge ice sheet in West Antarctica. Scientists have found that tiny Bryozoan sea creatures were able to spread to disparate parts of Antarctica only by means of a trans-Antarctic seaway through what is now a 2 km solid layer of ice. They suggest also that this seaway opened up during a recent interglacial perhaps as recently as 125,000 years ago when temperatures were "at least 4C warmer." No mention in the alarmist article, of course, that climate changes being seen today may be the result of similar natural processes without any influence from mankind.

Bryozoans take many different forms, some shown here.

Tiny Antarctic creatures hint at sea level rise
Tue, Aug 31 2010 By Alister Doyle

OSLO (Reuters) - Tiny marine creatures found on the seabed on opposite sides of the vast West Antarctic ice sheet give a strong hint of the risks of sea level rise caused by climate change, scientists said Tuesday. The discovery of very similar colonies of bryozoans, animals that anchor themselves to the seabed, in both the Ross and Weddell Seas are a clue that the ice sheet once thawed and the seas were once linked, they said.
     West Antarctica holds enough ice to raise world sea levels by between 3.5 and 5 meters (11-16 ft) if the sheet collapsed. Some scientists believe it may have vanished during a natural warm period within the last few hundred thousand years.
        "It was a very big surprise," said David Barnes, lead author of the study at the British Antarctic Survey, of the find of similar bryozoans 2,400 km (1,500 miles) apart in seas on either side of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is 2 km thick.
       "The most likely explanation of such similarity is that this ice sheet is much less stable than previously thought and has collapsed at some point in the recent past," he told Reuters.
        "And if the West Antarctic ice shelf has been lost in recent times we have to re-think the possibility of loss in future with climate change," he said.
        The bryozoans, sometimes called moss animals, are often microscopic as individuals but form colonies that can look like corals or some seaweeds. Those found were unlike others around the current coast of Antarctica.

WARM PAST
        In a brief warm period about 125,000 years ago, world sea levels were about five meters higher than today and temperatures probably at least 4 degrees Celsius (7.4 F) warmer. There have been several similar warm periods in the past million years.
        The U.N. panel of climate scientists said in a 2007 report that average world temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees C by 2100, mainly because of a build-up of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

Schematic of collapse of WAIS

        Reviews of the panel have endorsed its main findings [not true Reuters- didn't you read the statements in the IAC report stating there is "little evidence" supporting AGW claims?] despite errors such as an exaggeration of the thaw of the Himalayas. Experts Monday called for an overhaul of its management.
        The Antarctic study, in the journal Global Change Biology, said that bryozoans were largely static and that their larvae, dispersed by currents, are short-lived and quickly sink.
        With the huge ice sheet in the way, it was hard to explain how similar colonies could be in both the seas. But if the ice were destabilized it would open a passage through which currents might, over time, carry the larvae, Barnes said.

Related: Report: Antarctic Ice Growing, Not Shrinking 
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=1274

Arctic Sea Ice changes mainly due to Geography & not accelerating

A letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel supporting an AGW-skeptical politician was signed by 8 prominent scientists including Harvard astrophysicist Willie Soon, and mentions a recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters:

"For example, a paper published Aug. 19 in Geophysical Research Letters by a scientist from the California Institute of Technology shows that even the apparently drastic decrease of summer-autumn Arctic sea ice is not unprecedented but merely an effect of Arctic Ocean geography."

The paper, Geographic muting of changes in the Arctic sea ice cover, undermines the notion that AGW is a primary cause of decrease of Arctic sea ice in summer-autumn by showing that the actual mechanism is related to Arctic geography, which restricts the buildup of winter sea ice and thus shifts the semi-sinusoidal pattern of summer-autumn ice melt northward at a constant (not accelerating) rate of 8km/yr since the beginning of the satellite era in 1979. This explains why September Arctic sea ice extent has declined much more rapidly (1.1%/yr) than March sea ice extent (.26%/yr) since 1979.

March Arctic Sea Ice extent decreasing only 0.26%/yr

Over the past 3 years the summer-autumn Arctic sea ice extent has increased from the low in 2007:

The paper provides further evidence that changes in Arctic sea ice are part of natural patterns dependent upon Arctic winds, geography, solar variability, Milankovitch cycles, ocean oscillations, etc. rather than AGW. A prior post has also demonstrated that it is impossible for 'greenhouse warming' to melt the icecaps from below.

References:
Explanation of the paper (translated from Icelandic)
A paper by the same author finds we are nowhere near a "tipping point" regarding Arctic Sea Ice
Even Tamino thinks the paper is correct

Diesels greener than electric cars, says Swiss gov report

From The Register, UK:

Get a TDi estate not an EV, and save the planet! By Lewis Page, 8/31/10

        Swiss boffins have mounted an investigation into the largely unknown environmental burdens of electric cars using lithium-ion batteries, and say that the manufacturing and disposal of batteries presents no insurmountable barriers to electric motoring. However, their analysis reveals that modern diesel cars are actually better for the environment than battery ones.
        The revelations come in a new report [1] issued by Swiss government research lab EMPA, titled Contribution of Li-Ion Batteries to the Environmental Impact of Electric Vehicles. The Swiss boffins, having done some major research into the environmental burdens of making and disposing of li-ion batteries - to add to the established bodies of work on existing cars - say that battery manufacture and disposal aren't that big a deal. However, in today's world, with electricity often made by burning coal or gas, a battery car is still a noticeable eco burden:
        The main finding of this study is that the impact of a Li-ion battery used in [a battery-powered car] for transport service is relatively small. In contrast, it is the operation phase that remains the dominant contributor to the environmental burden caused by transport service as long as the electricity for the [battery car] is not produced by renewable hydropower ...

Warmist catfight: Revkin "making sh*t up" & should "shut the f*** up"

Wow- perennial alarmist Andrew Revkin of the New York Times Dot Earth blog seems to have touched a nerve amongst fellow warmists with his latest entry, On Harvard Misconduct, Climate Research and Trust. Revkin, attempting to be a bona fide journalist states,

"Do I trust climate science? As a living body of intellectual inquiry exploring profoundly complex questions, yes.

Do I trust all climate scientists, research institutions, funding sources, journals and others involved in this arena to convey the full context of findings and to avoid sometimes stepping beyond the data? I wouldn’t be a journalist if I answered yes."

After posting, Revkin promptly bolted to "camping over the next few days, so comment moderation will be very sporadic," but while he is away a catfight* has erupted amongst fellow warmists accusing Revkin of "making sh*t up," "ignorance," being "appalling," "pontificating" "nonsense" he "reads on the internet," etc. Here is some of the vitriol, courtesy of Tenney Naumer and computer programmer Steve Easterbrook [comments in italics added by me]:

Steve Easterbrook has his say on Andrew Revkin's latest attempt to join Judith Curry in her tribe of professional self-immolationists [note 'immolationists' is not an English word according to dictionary.com; immolation is defined as 'to sacrifice' and self-immolation as suicide for 'an extreme form of protest']

When did ignorance become a badge of honour for journalists? by Steve Easterbrook, Serendipity, August 28, 2010

Here’s an appalling article by Andy Revkin on Dot Earth which epitomizes everything that is wrong with media coverage of climate change. Far from using his position to educate and influence the public by seeking the truth, journalists like Revkin now seem to have taken to just making shit up, reporting what he reads in blogs as the truth, rather than investigating for himself what scientists actually do.

Paper: More ways the Sun influences Climate

        Incredible as it may seem, the IPCC claims the Sun has little to no significant influence upon the climate, preferring to blame 97% of climate change on CO2. This myopic conclusion is based upon consideration of only one solar parameter- the total solar irradiance (TSI) - while ignoring potential secondary amplifying effects from the much more variable solar magnetic field, such as the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al, and the much greater variability than previously thought of the UV portion of the solar spectrum (which is capable of heating the ocean unlike the IR from 'greenhouse gases'). A new paper finds yet another means by which variation in solar magnetic activity can have marked influence on weather, climate, and ocean oscillations.
        Professors Jean-Louis Le Mouel, Vincent Courtillot, et al have published several papers of late revealing more evidence and information about how the Sun's variable magnetic activity may impact various terrestrial phenomena, including weather and climate (see for example Kossobokov et al. 2010; Le Mouel et al. 2010b). And their new (13 August 2010) publication adds even more remarkable evidence and insights to the topic.

Figure 1. Correlation between the amplitude of the semiannual oscillation in length-of-day (blue curves with middle panel as detrended data while both top and bottom panels as original data) and various solar activity measures (sunspot numbers and proxy for galactic cosmic rays: red curves) from 1962-2009. A 4-year moving-average filter was used to smooth the data series. Adapted from Le Mouel et al. (2010).

Figure 1 displays some rather unexpected and surprising correlations between the long-term variation in the amplitude (A) of the solid Earth rotation parameter (here they have adopted its well-detected semi-annual variation) called length-of-day and two candidate solar activity measures: sunspot number (SN) and neutron count (NC, a proxy for incoming galactic cosmic rays), which were obtained from a station in Moscow, Russia. They point out that A and NC are inversely correlated with SN, the solar activity index, which leads A by about 1 year. And since galactic cosmic rays are also inversely related to sunspot number with a delay of 1 to 2 years or so, A is directly correlated to NC.
        Le Mouel et al. (2010) explain the correlations in Figure 1 as being due to a plausible physical link of the 11-year solar activity cycle to a systematic modulation of tropospheric zonal wind (since winds above 30 km contribute less than 20% of Earth's angular momentum, as proxied by A). They also make the important point that although the IPCC and others usually rule out the role of solar irradiance impact on terrestrial climate because of the small interannual changes in the solar irradiance, such an argument does not apply to the plausible link of the large seasonal incoming solar radiation in modulating the semiannual oscillations in the length-of-day amplitude. Consequently, Le Mouel et al. (2010a) say their paper "shows that the Sun can (directly or indirectly) influence tropospheric zonal mean-winds over decadal to multidecadal time scales." And noting that "zonal mean-winds constitute an important element of global atmospheric circulation," they go on to suggest that "if the solar cycle can influence zonal mean-winds, then it may affect other features of global climate as well, including oscillations such as the NAO and MJO, of which zonal winds are an ingredient [Wheeler and Hendon 2004]." Therefore, "the cause of this forcing," as they describe it, "likely involves some combination of solar wind, galactic cosmic rays, ionosphere-Earth currents and cloud microphysics."
        In summation, it is becoming clear there are many ways in which the magnetic activity of the Sun can impact various meteorological phenomena on Earth, including temperature and rainfall. The study of Le Mouel et al. (2010) is another unique contribution in that it shows there are connections of solar activity, through persistent modulation of the zonal wind, to faster or slower rotation rates of the solid Earth. And it must be noted that such contributions are only possible because they are willing to take broad multi-disciplinary approaches to understanding the complex patterns that are contained in different dynamical indices of the Earth. Such objective efforts stand in stark contrast to the near-religious paradigm of atmospheric CO2 as the predominant driver of climate change, as encapsulated in the UN IPCC reports.

References:
Le Mouel, J.-L., Blanter, E., Shnirman, M., and Courtillot, V. 2010a. Solar forcing of the semi-annual variation of length-of-day. Geophysical Research Letters 37: 2010GL043185.

Kossobokov, V., Le Mouel, J.-L., and Courtillot, V. 2010. A statistically significant signature of multi-decadal solar activity changes in atmospheric temperatures at three European stations. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72: 595-606.

Le Mouel, J.-L., Kossobokov, V., and Courtillot, V. 2010b. A solar pattern in the longest temperature series from three stations in Europe. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 72: 62-76.

adapted from the NIPPC Report

Paper: Many climate science papers misuse statistics

A paper published today in the Journal of Climate finds that "a large fraction" of papers in the climate science literature misuse tests of statistical significance. While the author did not examine any of the repeatedly debunked tests of statistical significance in the hockey stick literature of Michael Mann & coauthors, he

"tested a recent, randomly selected issue of The Journal of Climate for at least one such misuse of significance tests in each article. The Journal of Climate was not selected because it is prone to include such errors but because it can safely be considered to be one of the top journals in climate science. In that particular issue we observed a misuse of significance tests in 14 out of 19 articles. A randomly selected issue of ten years before showed such misuse of significance tests in 7 out of 13 articles. These two samples perhaps would not pass a traditional significance test, but they do indicate that such errors occur in the best journals with the most careful writing and editing. Indeed, in one of this author’s papers such erroneous use occurred."

So, 74% of the articles in a recent issue of a top climate science journal misused tests of statistical significance, compared to only 54% of articles in an issue from 10 years before. Thus, one might surmise that there is a trend of unprecedented, record high misuse of statistics in the field of climate science. As stated by Edward Wegman, PhD in mathematical statistics,

"As statisticians, we were struck by the isolation of communities such as the paleoclimate community that rely heavily on statistical methods, yet do not seem to be interacting with the mainstream statistical community. The public policy implications of this debate are financially staggering and yet no apparently independent statistical expertise was sought or used."

And also well stated by the Clive Crook article in Atlantic Monthly,

"Climate scientists lean very heavily on statistical methods, but they are not necessarily statisticians. Some of the correspondents in these emails appear to be out of their depth. This would explain their anxiety about having statisticians, rather than their climate-science buddies, crawl over their work."

Wikipedia: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics" is a phrase describing the persuasive power of numbers, particularly the use of statistics to bolster weak arguments...

Significance Tests in Climate Science
Maarten H. P. Ambaum, Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, United Kingdom

Abstract: A large fraction of papers in the climate literature includes erroneous uses of significance tests. A Bayesian analysis is presented to highlight the meaning of significance tests and why typical misuse occurs. The significance statistic is not a quantitative measure of how confident we can be of the ‘reality’ of a given result. It is concluded that a significance test very rarely provides useful quantitative information.

See also the article today published in of all places Mother Jones illustrating more flagrant misuses of statistics in the field of climate science.

Wind Power Won't Cool Down the Planet

Often enough it leads to higher carbon emissions.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, AUGUST 23, 2010 By ROBERT BRYCE


        The wind industry has achieved remarkable growth largely due to the claim that it will provide major reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. There's just one problem: It's not true. A slew of recent studies show that wind-generated electricity likely won't result in any reduction in carbon emissions—or that they'll be so small as to be almost meaningless.
        This issue is especially important now that states are mandating that utilities produce arbitrary amounts of their electricity from renewable sources. By 2020, for example, California will require utilities to obtain 33% of their electricity from renewables. About 30 states, including Connecticut, Minnesota and Hawaii, are requiring major increases in the production of renewable electricity over the coming years.
        Wind—not solar or geothermal sources—must provide most of this electricity. It's the only renewable source that can rapidly scale up to meet the requirements of the mandates. This means billions more in taxpayer subsidies for the wind industry and higher electricity costs for consumers.
        None of it will lead to major cuts in carbon emissions, for two reasons. First, wind blows only intermittently and variably. Second, wind-generated electricity largely displaces power produced by natural gas-fired generators, rather than that from plants burning more carbon-intensive coal.

Paper: Strong Association of Sun with Climate Change

While the IPCC claims solar variability has little if any connection to climate change, the peer-reviewed paper A 2000-Year Context for Modern Day Climate Change by Maasch et al finds a strong, worldwide correlation between proxy records of solar output and climate. Also in contrast to statements of Michael Mann et al, the paper finds strong evidence that the Medieval Warming Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) were global, not local, phenomena, stating "The global distribution of the LIA and MWP and the agreement between climate proxy records and the D14C series over the last 2000 years indicate a strong association between solar variability and globally distributed climate change. This shows that change in the output of the Sun has significant impacts on climate."

Figure shows eight climate proxies distributed from the Arctic to Antarctic showing MWP, LIA, and strong correlations to solar activity. The 2 series shown for each location are the solar and climate proxies.

ABSTRACT:  Although considerable attention has been paid to the record of temperature change over the last few centuries, the range and rate of change of atmospheric circulation and hydrology remain elusive. Here, eight latitudinally well-distributed (pole–equator–pole), highly resolved (annual to decadal) climate proxy records are presented that demonstrate major changes in these variables over the last 2000 years. A comparison between atmospheric 14C and these changes in climate demonstrates a first-order relationship between a variable Sun and climate. The relationship is seen on a global scale.


For papers by 860 scientists showing the MWP was a global phenomenon and in most studies hotter than the present, see the Medieval Warming Project

Global Temperatures 1-2°C higher 6000 years ago

Geothermal boreholes provide a useful proxy to reconstruct temperatures of the past. The IPCC only shows borehole data from the past 500 years in AR4 graphs (e.g. figure 6.10b), conveniently leaving out the Medieval Warming Period, even though borehole proxy data is available for the past 20,000 years. Huang et al published worldwide borehole data for the past 20,000 years since the peak of the last major ice age, which shows the "Holocene Climate Optimum" about 6000-7000 years ago was 1-2°C warmer than the present and the Medieval Warming Period ~1000 years ago. This worldwide borehole data as well as ice core data from both Greenland and Antarctica show that the rate and extent of 20th century warming was not unprecedented and that much warmer periods have occurred naturally.

Higher resolution ice core data from Greenland also show cooling of 2-3°C over the past 8,000 years:

Lower resolution ice core data extending back to the last interglacial from both Antarctica and Greenland show temperatures were higher than the present ~8,000 years ago and much higher than the present ~130,000 years ago: 

Paper: AGW not responsible for economic losses from disasters

A paper published yesterday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society finds no evidence to blame so-called 'anthropogenic climate change' [formerly called 'anthropogenic global warming' or AGW] for increasing economic losses from disasters.

Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change?
Author: Laurens M. Bouwer, Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Capsule summary: Climate change is often seen as the culprit of increasing economic losses from weather disasters. The scientific literature however shows that there are other causes up to now.

Abstract: The increasing impact of natural disasters over recent decades has been well documented, especially the direct economic losses and losses that were insured. Claims are made by some that climate change has caused more losses, but others assert that increasing exposure due to population and economic growth has been a much more important driver. Ambiguity exists today, as the causal link between climate change and disaster losses has not been addressed in a systematic manner by major scientific assessments. Here I present a review and analysis of recent quantitative studies on past increases in weather disaster losses and the role of anthropogenic climate change. Analyses show that although economic losses from weather related hazards have increased, anthropogenic climate change so far did not have a significant impact on losses from natural disasters. The observed loss increase is caused primarily by increasing exposure and value of capital at risk. This finding is of direct importance for studies on impacts from extreme weather and for disaster policy. Studies that project future losses may give a better indication of the potential impact of climate change on disaster losses and needs for adaptation, than the analysis of historical losses.

Why Greenhouse Gases Won't Heat the Oceans

        Climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr has noted that land surface temperature records (which comprise the vast majority of temperature records prior to the satellite era (1979-)) are unreliable due to land use changes and urban heat island effects, and that we should therefore look to ocean heat content changes as the most reliable metric for assessing global heating and cooling. The oceans cover 71% of the global surface area and hold at least 1000 times more heat than the atmosphere. Many have claimed that the 'missing heat' from 'anthropogenic global warming' has gone into the oceans, even though the heat seems to be 'missing' from the oceans as well. Recent data from the ARGO network of ~3200 floating robot sensors has shown that since full deployment of the system in ~2003, the ocean heat content has declined despite steadily rising 'greenhouse' CO2 levels:

From Loehle 2009: Cooling of the global ocean since 2003

How could this be? Here are the physical reasons why increasing concentrations of 'greenhouse gases' would not be expected to increase ocean heat content:

1. Infrared radiation from 'greenhouse gases' causes evaporative cooling of the oceans rather than heating

LWIR wavelength is ~8-14 microns

        CO2 and other 'greenhouse gases' re-emit radiation to the Earth and space in the long-wave infrared (LWIR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. While ultraviolet and visible radiation from the Sun does penetrate the surface of the oceans to cause heating, the energy output of the Sun is relatively stable and obviously not linked to man. However, since the LWIR re-radiation from increasing 'greenhouse gases' is only capable of penetrating a minuscule few microns (millionths of a meter) past the surface and no further, it could therefore only cause evaporation (and thus cooling) of the surface 'skin' of the oceans. Stephen Wilde, LLB (Hons.), Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society explains this in detail, excerpted below:

"However the effect of downwelling infrared is always to use up all the infrared in increasing the temperature of the ocean surface molecules whilst leaving nothing in reserve to provide the extra energy required (the latent heat of evaporation) when the change of state occurs from water to vapour. That extra energy requirement is taken from the medium (water or air) in which it is most readily available. If the water is warmer then most will come from the water. If the air is warmer then most will come from the air. However over the Earth as a whole the water is nearly always warmer than the air (due to solar input) so inevitably the average global energy flow is from oceans to air via that latent heat of evaporation in the air and the energy needed is taken from the water. This leads to a thin (1mm deep) layer of cooler water over the oceans worldwide and below the evaporative region that is some 0.3C cooler than the ocean bulk below."

The recent paper by Roy Clark, PhD also discusses the physics and concludes, "Application of Beer’s law to the propagation of solar and LWIR [long-wave infrared] flux through the ocean clearly shows that only the solar radiation can penetrate below the ocean surface and heat subsurface ocean layers. It is impossible for a 1.7 W.m−2 increase [predicted by the IPCC due to man-made greenhouse gases] in downward ‘clear sky’ atmospheric LWIR flux to heat the oceans." (p. 196). Increasing levels of IR-active 'greenhouse gases' would instead be expected to cause increased evaporative surface cooling of the oceans. N.B. there is also a negative feedback phenomenon on CO2 levels discussed in a paper published in Nature which shows that the evaporative cooling of the ocean 'skin' from increased downwelling IR allows increased uptake of CO2 due to increased solubility of CO2 at lower temperatures.

2. Even if 'greenhouse gases' were capable of heating the oceans, the ocean heat capacity is so immense that there would be no significant change in ocean temperature
        The huge mass and heat capacity of the oceans regulates and stabilizes global temperatures to a far greater degree than any possible influence from mankind.
        The immense heat capacity of the oceans can be illustrated by assuming the oceans could be heated one-way by all solar energy absorbed by the Earth, and assuming no cooling due to convection, evaporation, or radiation. The oceans hold 1.3 billion cubic km of water. Assuming the density is 1 kg per liter, the mass of the oceans is 1.3 billion billion kg or 1.3 yotta grams. The total solar power absorbed by the Earth in one year is 89 peta Watts (PW):

        For a thought experiment, assume all 89 PW are taken up by the oceans and that the oceans don't release any of that heat. That would add 0.67 yotta calories to the 1.3 yotta grams, resulting in an increase in the ocean temperature of only 0.5C after an entire year.
        Now, let's also assume that the IPCC is correct that 'greenhouse gases' are causing 1.7 W/m2 'radiative forcing,' and that it is possible for this IR 'back-radiation' to penetrate and heat the ocean (even though we've already shown that is impossible above). The 1.7 W/m2 works out to 850 Tera watts (TW) [or .85 PW] when multiplied by the total Earth surface area of 500 tera square meters. Thus, the IPCC claims that 'greenhouse gases' are preventing .85 PW of energy from leaving the atmosphere to space. This .85 PW is less than the 89 PW from the Sun by a factor of 105 times. Plugging this into our thought experiment above shows that the change in ocean temperature from 'greenhouse forcing' would be 0.5C/105 or .005C in one year or only 0.5C after 105 years, assuming the oceans release none of this added heat!  In reality, of course, the oceans would release all or most of this added heat by convection, evaporation, or radiation, leaving at most only a few hundredths of a degree temperature change after 105 years. Thus, it is impossible for 'greenhouse forcing' to raise ocean heat content to any measurable degree, or cause melting of the icecaps from below, or increase sea levels from thermal expansion.

3. The Second Law of Thermodynamics requires heat to flow one-way from hot to cold.
        Since the atmosphere is colder (average radiating temperature of ~ -10 C) than the ocean surface (~ 17 C), the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that heat can only be transferred one-way from the ocean surface to the atmosphere, not the other way around.


Related: 
1. The latest Chilingar et al paper also discusses heat capacity of the atmosphere, which should decrease due to added CO2: "saturation of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, with all other conditions being equal, results not in an increase but in a decrease of the greenhouse effect and average temperature within the entire layer of planet’s troposphere. This happens despite intense absorption of the heat of radiation by CO2. The physical explanation of this phenomenon is clear: molecular weight of carbon dioxide is 1.5 times higher and its heat-absorbing capacity is 1.2 times lower than those of the Earth’s air. As a result, the adiabatic exponent for a carbon dioxide atmosphere, at the same all other conditions, is about 1.34 times lower than that for a nitrogen–oxygen humid air"
2. Another empirical analysis which finds increased CO2 leads to increased cooling  
3. Sea surface temperatures have been on a long-term decline since the Medieval Warming Period (~1000 years ago),  Roman Warming Period (~2100 years ago), and Egyptian Warming Period (~3100 years ago):

4. NOAA says the oceans are the drivers of global temperature, not the land surface.
5. Dr. Pielke asks whether James Hansen's GISS model should be rejected as unskillful.