Environmental Coalition: Biofuels result in higher emissions than fossil fuels

Bioenergy’s Carbon Neutrality Dismissed by Coalition of NGOs
October 20, 2010 by Antonio Pasolini

A coalition of environmental organizations has warned that bioenergy is far from being carbon neutral and that related carbon accounting systems currently in place are deceptive.

According to Ecosystems Climate Alliance, an alliance of NGOs committed to “keeping natural terrestrial ecosystems intact and their carbon out of the atmosphere”, zero-emission bioenergy is a myth. It blames the loopholes in LULUCF’s (Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry) accounting rules for the misconception. The organization made an announcement on the subject on the occasion of the Tianjin Climate Change Negotiations, which took place between 4 and 9 October 2010.

ECA says the LULUCF is ‘arcane’ and cryptic. It adds that developed countries at the Tianjin meeting, led by the EU, tried to manipulate the way emission targets are projected and reported to spur biofuel growth and hide its environmental cost. Countries with renewable energy targets allow biomass burners to stay out of emissions accounting, backed by the “deceptive assumption that prior sequestration is sufficient to neutralize the problem”, and give them generous financial incentives for generating “green energy”. This way they act as serious competition for real renewables like wind and solar, which have much higher unit cost of production.

The fact that emissions from logging and burning of biomass are left out of Kyoto Protocol accounting systems, ECA says, creates an “attractive but misleading way for industrialized countries to appear to be achieving their national emissions reduction targets under the Protocol through substituting bioenergy for fossil fuels. In reality, such substitution results in higher emissions than those from fossil fuel for the same amount of useable energy.”

“One of problems we face in trying to get the broader public, climate change and energy decision-makers to appreciate just how perverse it is to burn biofuels. Firstly, it's counter-intuitive - most people just tend to think about growing an agricultural crop and then processing and burning it where all those familiar notions of the renewability of growing vegetables on a patch of ground make it seem 'mostly harmless'” says Alistair Graham, of the Humane Society International, one of ECA’s partners.

CO2 is emitted when natural gas is extracted and wood is extracted from forests because a substantial proportion of the wood is unrecoverable (such as branches, roots and rot). This problem is worse in wet old growth and pristine forest where logging is followed by burning.

“The debate rarely dwells upon the almost inevitable fact that that patch of ground would have grown vegetation anyway - whether as agriculture, forestry or a natural ecosystem - that's just what naturally happens”, Alistair says. “So the growing of biomass is not 'additional' - the vegetation growth would have happened anyway. This argument does seem to be getting some traction in the guise of concern over the displacement of cropland away from growing food - especially food security issues in developing countries, subsistence communities.”

Besides emissions, ECA also highlights transport and storage problems associated with biomass, which requires massive infrastructure. This is one of the reasons wood is favoured over agricultural crops for pulp and paper production. The wood is stored ‘on the hoof’ in the forest and cut when needed. It also explains why agricultural crops are more commonly converted into liquid fuels, as these require less storage space.

“People do not appreciate how effective natural ecosystems are at storing carbon” says Alistair. “Some critics - usually those with vested interests in alternatives - are wont to assert that soil/peat carbon is less securely stored out of the atmosphere than fossil carbon. If left alone or managed carefully, natural vegetation is very good at maintaining itself and its soils for millennia, where climate change itself is the only thing that perturbs things - especially ice ages.”

Physicist: Global Warming 1980-2008 caused by Sun, not Man

Dr. Horst Borchert, the Director of the Department of Physics of the Johannes-Gutenberg Institute, Mainz, Germany, presented a paper, Using Satellite Measurements to study the Influence of Sun Activity on Terrestrial Weather at the Space Weather Workshop held in Boulder, Colorado earlier this year. Dr. Borchert finds from satellite measurements that global warming between about 1980 to 2008 was "not anthropogenic but caused by natural activities of the Sun’s surface." He relates changes of the solar magnetic field to cosmic rays and cloud formation (the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al) and to effects on the North Atlantic Oscillation, which affects weather phenomena around the globe.

Author: Horst Borchert

Using Satellite Measurements to study the Influence of Sun Activity on Terrestrial Weather

Abstract: The time rows of Terrestrial Climate Components (TCC) since the Eighties have shown some strong Influences by Extraterrestrial Components with the beginning of the 22. Sunspot period. Therefore the increase of ground near temperature on earth and oceans (2 –3 m above ground), called Global Temperature, during the warming period between about 1980 and 2008 seems to be not anthropogenic but caused by natural activities of Sun’s surface.
 
Some Extraterrestrial Components (EC) can be destined by measurements on the earth’s surface directly or indirectly: (a) The Reduction of Cosmic Rays by the magnetic fields of the sun-winds (Forbush-Reduction) by measuring the neutrons, which are secondary particles (Höhenstrahlung) of Cosmic Rays, and (b) the influence of the sun-winds on earths weather system by calculating the Sun-Wind-Index (SWI) from the difference of magnetic field in antipodal Stations.

Winter NAO Index

The link between TCC and EC is the “Svensmark – Effect”. It describes the formation of terrestrial clouds by the secondary particles of Cosmic Rays (Similar to Wilson’s Fog Chamber 1911). This effect modulates the North Atlantic Oscillation Index (NAO). It can be shown by using measured data, that the secondary particles of cosmic rays are controlling the NAO and therefore the weather in the Northern Hemisphere especially very strong since 1975. GOES – Satellites, geostationary stationed at about 35,800 km (22,300 miles) in equatorial plane above earth, measure the components of Sun-Wind that earth is exposed. These components are Flares, protons, alphas, electrons and magnetic fields. By correlating these extraterrestrial as well as terrestrial components, one can determine the strength and impact of sun’s activity on the weather on the earth. Applying this method by using the by NOAA published Data it will be explained that the warming period on earth, that started about 1980 and seems to be ending about 2010, in deed was caused and modulated by sun’s activity: Since 1975 GOES Satellites measured increasing strong flux of solar protons, which penetrated earths magnetic field and influenced the stratospheric O3 layer. Especially in 1989 the components of sun-winds caused strong disturbances of electricity and telemetric networks in the Northern Hemisphere. The magnetic fields reduced the Intensity of Cosmic Rays (Forbush Reduction) in this year partly of about 30% at 56 ° N (Moskau). From 1980 to 2009 Cosmic Rays and Cloudiness, which are delayed about 10 to 12 month, correlated with K~0,8 (Svensmark-Effect). The NAO correlates with Cosmic Rays (K~0,7) and confirms these connections between extraterrestrial and terrestrial components. That leaded finally since 1990 to increasing Sunshine-Duration of about 0,5 h/d and global rays of about 10 W/m2 in yearly averages around 50° N (Mainz) in Central Europe during this warming period. The ground near temperature increases of about 0,9 +-2 °C of the Yearly Averages. The Global Temperature increased since about 1980 more continuously to about 0,6 °C in 2006. With the end of sun’s activity in December 2006 (Sunspot Nr. 930 with “sun-tsunami”) the increase of ground near Temperature ended and weather started to become colder again in winter 2009 to 2010 in Europe and USA. Even the Sun-Wind-Index confirmed these development, it decreased very quick to values beneath 10 nTesla, which was never found since 1910, when it was very cold.
That means, that Measurements of sun wind components by Satellites like GOES help to understand and to forecast terrestrial weather development.

10. März 2010
1) Physikdirector a.D. Diplom-Physiker Dr. Horst Borchert
Geographical Institute of Johannes-Gutenberg Institute; Westring 159, 55120 Mainz
T.: 49 6131 683516, E: bcht01@aol.com, www.umad.de

The fallacy of the greenhouse effect

A recommended post from the planetary vision blog, The fallacy of the greenhouse effect, explains in simple terms why the conventional explanation of the "greenhouse effect" violates both the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics:

An object can warm through the absorption of electromagnetic radiation (EMR). However, an object passively warmed can't warm the object providing the warmth. Were this to be so energy could be multiplied for no extra input merely by having objects mutually radiate EMR. But there is no such temperature multiplication because the amount mutually exchanged cancels. It does not add as is required by greenhouse theory.

The reason that an object can be heated by EMR on earth by the sun is because the sun is warmer than the earth.  The idea of the greenhouse effect is that the cooler, upper layers of air are able to warm a warmer ground by backradiation. But this can not happen.

Greenhouse theory would even require that the backradiation from the earth to the sun warms the sun by a small (if practically imperceptible) amount. This is impossible too because a cooler object can not warm a warmer one unless work is done.  But greenhouse gas, not having an energy source, can not provide this work nor can the earth provide work to the sun.

200-plus years of thermal study must be thrown out the window if we are to believe that EMR from a colder object can warm a warmer one. If that were the case energy could be made from nothing merely by bringing two objects together mutually radiating EMR (such as the air and ground) such as the following examples show.



Let object A represent a warmer object radiating to an infinite heat sink C maintained at absolute zero.  Object B is introduced into its field of radiation and so is warmed:

Object B comes up to equilibrium temperature.    Now it has its own radiation and object A is subject to more radiation than it was before (which was zero).  If the cooler object B can warm the warmer object A through backradiation then object A will heat to a higher temperature than before for free merely because object B is passively warmed.



Object A and B now radiate more energy to the universe then when A was by itself merely by B's presence. This is clearly not possible.



Now to carry it further let the sphere B be replaced by many such spheres B on one side of A.  They all radiate as much EMR as the original object B. With eight spheres the energy is multiplied eightfold according to greenhouse theory:

Object A is eight times as warmed by backradiation as it was when there was only one sphere B.  In the case of the atmosphere this is the equivalent of putting more greenhouse gas "energy absorbers" in the atmosphere.



Now let the EMR blocking coverage continue from eight spheres B to a hemispherical shell B.  This is a cross-section through B:

Now half the radiation of A is blocked by B.   According to greenhouse theory half of this half will be radiated back to object A thus warming it.  Object A now emits 100% +  25% now re-radiated back by the hemisphere B.  An extra 25% energy gain for free!



Let the hemispherical shell B become a fully enclosing spherical shell B:

According to greenhouse theory as much of the amount emitted outside of shell B will be emitted inside.  But what happens to the amount emitted inside?  Does it add to the energy?  According to greenhouse theory yes, but how can it?  Only the amount emitted to the outside of the system is relevant.




(The outside shell B must radiate a total amount which was equal to A's original output.  Being at a larger radius it will have a lower emission temperature.  Effectively the shell B is a red shifter of the EMR spectrum.  Yet the amount of energy emitted in total will be the same.)




If adding shells as greenhouse blockers could work as an energy multiplier then Willis Eschenbach's steel greenhouse model would work.  Many commenters on that thread in defence of the greenhouse effect objected to its preposterousness but it is not warranted because the model is an accurate representation of the greenhouse effect; it's just that the greenhouse effect is preposterous.



For me the resolution to the paradox is to view heat energy like a stream that only flows downhill, from warmer to cooler, despite the presence of backradiation.

An ordinary, human blanket creates warming by blocking convection not by "backradiation". An emergency aluminium foil blanket warms by a high reflectivity/low emissivity, not by absorption and re-emission.



In the case of the earth the only way that a chemical can alter temperature is by a lowered emissivity.  But greenhouse gases being good absorbers are also good emitters as per Kirchhoff's law.

An empirical example of how a cooler object can not warm a warmer object can be seen in the operation of a vacuum furnace.

go to SOURCE for rest

CO2 and the Climate: An Engineer’s Point of View

English translation of an essay from ParisTech Review, a Journal of ParisTech, a research and higher education cluster of excellence composed of twelve French Grandes Ecoles (Engineering and Business Schools) that cover a sweeping spectrum in science, technology and management.

Christian Gérondeau / Engineer / October 15th, 2010

Rarely has a debate preoccupied the media and public opinion as much as the one that is raging today on climate change and the possible impact of human activities.

Climatologists themselves are divided into two warring factions. The majority seems to be aligned with the “official” camp, which supports a point of view that can be summarized in four points:

- The temperature of the Earth is rising and will continue to do so in a dangerous way
- Human activities and more specifically carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are the root cause of the phenomenon
- Action thus needs to be taken to control and reduce CO2 emissions
- There are means to achieve this and they must be implemented as soon as possible to “save the planet”

But other climatologists, who are increasingly making themselves heard, are challenging the very foundations of this reasoning. They argue that variations in the climate have always existed, and that there is no evidence that human activities, particularly CO2 emissions, have a significant influence on its evolution or average global temperature.

Without being a climatologist—and there are very few in the world—is it possible to have an opinion? Faced with the difficulty of the subject and the scope of the controversy, it is tempting to say no. This article will try to show that it is not the case, and that a rational approach—which could be qualified as that of an engineer, i.e., based on facts—leads to a number of conclusions that are hard to dispute and shines new light on this complex topic.

Global Warming Propagandist Slapped Down

Financial Post, 15 October 2010 by Lawrence Soloman

William Connolley, arguably the world’s most influential global warming advocate after Al Gore, has lost his bully pulpit. Connolley did not wield his influence by the quality of his research or the force of his argument but through his administrative position at Wikipedia, the most popular reference source on the planet.

Through his position, Connolley for years kept dissenting views on global warming out of Wikipedia, allowing only those that promoted the view that global warming represented a threat to mankind. As a result, Wikipedia became a leading source of global warming propaganda, with Connolley its chief propagandist.

His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped, following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia. In the decision, a slap-down for the once-powerful Connolley by his peers, he has been barred from participating in any article, discussion or forum dealing with global warming. In addition, because he rewrote biographies of scientists and others he disagreed with, to either belittle their accomplishments or make them appear to be frauds, Wikipedia barred him — again unanimously — from editing biographies of those in the climate change field.

I have written several columns for the National Post on Connolley’s role as a propagandist. Two of them appear here and here.

Financial Post, 15 October 2010

EPA sued by over 90 entities for 'Greenhouse' Gas Regulations

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Obama administration's move to curb 'greenhouse gases' using the Environmental Protection Agency has drawn legal challenges from more than 90 companies and trade associations. This could be very interesting since any of these legal challenges conceivably might result in subpoenas issued for infamous warmists such as James Hansen and Michael Mann, forcing them to provide documents and prove their flimsy AGW theory under cross-examination in a court of law. Here's what happened when James Hansen was 'boxed in' on the witness stand once before,  dumbfounded when cross-examined and asked to name just one other scientist who agreed with his assertion that sea levels would rise more than 1 meter this century, stating "I could not, instantly."

Dr. Roy Spencer appears well prepared as an expert witness for the plantiffs.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL OCTOBER 9, 2010

Carbon Curbs by EPA Land in Court Again

By TENNILLE TRACY
WASHINGTON—The Obama administration's move to curb greenhouse gases using the Environmental Protection Agency has drawn legal challenges from more than 90 companies and trade associations, giving the courts another opening to shape U.S. climate policy in the absence of legislative action.

The most recent lawsuit attacking the EPA's climate policy was filed Thursday by the California-based Pacific Legal Foundation. The conservative group is challenging EPA's so-called endangerment finding, which concluded that greenhouse gases posed a risk to public health. The finding is the basis of proposed EPA regulations to cut carbon dioxide emissions using the Clean Air Act.

"EPA violated its statutory duty—and the public trust—by recklessly making a sweeping judgment about [carbon dioxide] emissions without independent review by scientists of the highest caliber, as required by law," said the foundation's attorney, Ted Hadzi-Antich, in a statement.

EPA has denied numerous requests to reconsider its endangerment finding. The agency says its findings are rooted in science and claims "these types of arguments are based on a manufactured controversy and provide no evidence to undermine our determination," an EPA spokesman said.

The courts have already played a central role in the nation's climate change debate. The U.S. Supreme Court got the ball rolling when it decided in 2007 that EPA could regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

"Someone not happy with the spilled milk would probably make a run at the Supreme Court," said Kevin Holewinski, a partner with the law firm Jones Day. "These issues are too profound to be heard by one tribunal."

In addition to its endangerment finding, EPA adopted a rule in April that set greenhouse gas standards for passenger cars and light trucks. In May, EPA passed a "tailoring rule" that outlines which types of facilities have to obtain greenhouse-gas permits.

The climate bill passed by the House of Representatives last year would have substituted a more flexible cap and trade system for the EPA's clean air rules. That bill is unlikely to move forward in the Senate.

"The extensive litigation attacking EPA's clean air initiatives are as much—if not more—about the broken politics of Washington D.C.," said Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund.

While litigation over the EPA's climate rules churns through the lower courts, some members of Congress are calling for legislation to block the agency from using the Clean Air act to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.), for example, has introduced a bill to delay EPA's work on the issue for two years and has already recruited dozens of supporters in the Senate. Some Republican lawmakers have also supported action to stop the EPA climate rules.

Also in the Wall Street Journal 10/10/10: Shootout in the EPA Corral 

The Arctic Undeath Spiral

NSIDC director Serreze: “The volume of ice left in the Arctic likely reached the lowest ever level this month.”

Serreze (photo at right): “I stand by my previous statements that the Arctic summer sea ice cover is in a death spiral. It’s not going to recover.” (Sept 2010)

“The reason so much (of the Arctic ice) went suddenly is that it is hitting a tipping point that we have been warning about for the past few years.” James Hansen, 2007

If Arctic sea ice was truly in a 'death spiral,' why does the 1st derivative (rate of change) of Arctic sea ice show one of the earliest and healthiest recoveries from the 2010 summer minimum over the past 7 years?

In addition, the 1st derivative for Antarctica sea ice also shows one of the longest sustained rates of sea ice accumulation for the 2010 winter compared to the past 7 years:

 h/t http://daltonsminima.altervista.org/?p=11750

Paper: Sun affects Climate much more than thought

Adding the the recent spate of papers showing that - surprise - the Sun has much, much more to do with climate change than previously thought, the respected German Physics Journal Annalyn der Physik recently published a paper analyzing solar irradiance data from 1905 to 2008 which finds cosmic rays modulated by solar activity cause a large portion of atmospheric aerosols (clouds) with profound effects on climate [see the cosmic ray theory of Svensmark et al]. The paper concludes, "The contribution of the active sun, indirectly via cosmic rays, to global warming appears to be much stronger than the presently accepted [IPCC] upper limit of 1/3."

Strong signature of the active Sun in 100 years of terrestrial insolation data
Werner Weber, Institut fur Physik, TU Dortmund, Otto-Hahn-Straße 4, 44221 Dortmund, Germany


Abstract: Terrestrial solar irradiance data of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory from 1905 to 1954 and of Mauna Loa Observatory from 1958 to 2008 are analyzed. The analysis shows that, with changing solar activity, the atmosphere modifies the solar irradiance on the percentage level, in all likelihood via cosmic ray intensity variations produced by the active sun. The analysis strongly suggests that cosmic rays cause a large part of the atmospheric aerosols. These aerosols show specific absorption and scattering properties due to an inner structure of hydrated ionic centers, most probably of O− and O+ produced by the cosmic rays.

Introduction: In recent years, it has become clear from satellite data [1] that the total solar irradiance (TSI) varies only in the range of 0.1 % with solar activity. At the top of the atmosphere (TOA), the average TSI is ≈ 1360 Watt per m2 of normal incidence, and the solar variations are of order 1–2 Watt/m2 or 0.25–0.5 W per m2 of earth’s surface. For comparison, the anthropogenic warming due to CO2 increase is assessed to ≈ 2 W/m2 . Thus, the IPCC estimates the solar contribution to climate change to at most 1/3 of the total [2].
On the other hand, there are observations of pre-industrial climate change. For example the ‘little ice age’ of the 17th century correlates well with times of specific solar inactivity known as the Maunder minimum [3] from 1640 to 1710 where none of the usual 11 year sunspot cycles have been observed. Other climate variations also appear to parallel the solar activity changes. A survey of such features and others is given by Kirkby [4].
The active sun reduces the cosmic ray intensities by 20 % and more at the height of a sunspot cycle [5]. Most affected are cosmic rays of 1–10 GeV energy which is the dominant part of the spectrum. These cosmic rays deposit most of their energy at altitudes between 8 and 15 km (upper troposphere, lower stratosphere). Balloon measurements have shown that approximately 30 to 50 ions are produced per cm3 and sec, depending on latitude and solar activity [6]. These numbers are consistent with results from cosmic ray simulation programs [7]. Further, from mass spectroscopy it is known that at these altitudes ≈ 6000 ‘small ions’ per cm3 exist, with masses of up to 400 unit masses [6]. In contrast, in the continental boundary layer, there exist ≈ 2000 ‘small ions’, mainly produced by natural radioactivity. Svensmark [8], in his much debated papers, has postulated that the ‘small ions’ strongly influence water droplet nucleation, and thus significantly modulate the cloud formation and thereby influence the albedo. By analyzing satellite data of cloud coverage during solar cycle 22, as measured by the ISCCP satellite program [9], he has suggested that lower troposphere clouds (3–5 km altitudes) are most affected by the variation of cosmic ray intensities, and thus by solar activity (see also [4]). Further arguments for the link between cosmic ray flux and climate variability have been given by Shaviv and Veizer in a study on paleo-temperatures [10].

Conclusion: In summary, the terrestrial insolation data of SAO and of Mauna Loa observatory appear to vary strongly with solar activity. Evidence was presented that this modulation is caused by the cosmic rays, which pro- duce ‘small ions’, most probably consisting of O+ and O− ion centers surrounded by two shells of water
molecules. After coalescence, the very stable hydrated centers persist in the atmosphere as neutral nanometer size droplets and should constitute a large part of the atmospheric aerosols. Due to their strong light absorption, and due to their inner structure, these droplets show their own diurnal dynamics and appear to last for years, if not decades, especially over the oceans. They also exhibit strong Rayleigh scattering, which in solar active times results in a significant blue shift of the insolation, much bigger than that of the active sun itself.
Thus it appears that the SAO and Mauna Loa data represent a key for a more detailed understanding of atmospheric processes. The contribution of the active sun, indirectly via cosmic rays, to global warming appears to be much stronger than the presently accepted upper limit of 1/3. However, to really confirm this view, it is necessary to study the properties of atmospheric small ions and droplets in great detail, along paths which e. g. have been laid by C.T.R. Wilson. F.E. Fowle of the SAO group had been aware of Wilson’s work and had suggested explanations of SAO results along those paths. However, modern research has not taken up these ideas, and the SAO data have fallen into oblivion. In this paper it was shown that this is not justified. Instead, the SAO data, the works of Langley, Abbot, Fowle, Aldrich and others represent a great American scientific heritage.

Paging IPCC: Much of recent global warming actually caused by Sun

The ball of fire in the sky, not the jubblesheet

By Lewis Page • The Register Posted in Environment, 7th October 2010

New data indicates that changes in the Sun's output of energy were a major factor in the global temperature increases seen in recent years. The research will be unwelcome among hardcore green activists, as it downplays the influence of human-driven carbon emissions.

As the Sun has shown decreased levels of activity during the past decade, it had been generally thought that it was warming the Earth less, not more. Thus, scientists considered that temperature rises seen in global databases must mean that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions - in particular of CO2 - must be exerting a powerful warming effect.


Now, however, boffins working at Imperial College in London (and one in Boulder, Colorado) have analysed detailed sunlight readings taken from 2004 to 2007 by NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) satellite. They found that although the Sun was putting out less energy overall than usual, in line with observations showing decreased sunspot activity, it actually emitted more in the key visible-light and near-infrared wavelengths.

These shorter wavelength forms of radiated heat penetrate the atmosphere particularly well to heat up the Earth's surface - just as the same frequencies get in through car windows to heat up its interior. The hot seats and dashboard - in this case the seas, landmasses etc - then radiate their own increased warmth via conduction, convection and longer-wave infrared, which can't escape the way the shortwave energy came in. This is why the car, and the planet, become so hot.

Thus the Sun, though it was unusually calm in the back half of the last decade, was actually warming the planet much more strongly than before.

According to a statement released by Imperial College:
Although the Sun's activity declined over this period, the new research shows that it may have actually caused the Earth to become warmer. Contrary to expectations, the amount of energy reaching the Earth at visible wavelengths increased rather than decreased as the Sun's activity declined, causing this warming effect.

"These results are challenging what we thought we knew about the Sun's effect on our climate," says Professor Joanna Haigh of Imperial, lead author of the study.

"It does require verification, but our findings could be too important to not publish them now," she told hefty boffinry mag Nature, which published the new research. The prof considers that increased sun-powered warming probably had as much effect on global temperature as carbon during the period of her study.

Haigh thinks, however, that while recent temperature rises may well have been down to the Sun as much as anything humanity has done, over long periods of time solar warming probably has little effect on the Earth's temperature one way or the other, as solar activity cycles up and down regularly.

"If the climate were affected in the long term, the Sun should have produced a notable cooling in the first half of the twentieth century, which we know it didn't," she says.

Nonetheless, the research indicates that the Sun's influence on the climate is poorly understood, and that current climate models will probably have to be amended in some way. Other scientists have lately said that solar influences are stronger than established climate theory had originally estimated.

It has also been more and more widely admitted among climate scientists in recent years that among human-caused emissions, other factors - in particular black carbon (soot) and sulphate aerosols - may exercise an influence as powerful as that of greenhouse gases.

For now the long-term implications of the SORCE data are unknown. All that can be said with any certainty is that through 2004-2007, the Sun warmed the planet much more powerfully than had been thought.

"We cannot jump to any conclusions based on what we have found during this comparatively short period and we need to carry out further studies to explore the Sun's activity," says Haigh.

Subscribers to Nature can read Haigh and her colleagues' paper, An influence of solar spectral variations on radiative forcing of climate, here.

Related: Gavin Schmidt of 'Real'climate weighs in with his unfounded opinion that this is not true.

Paper: Models lead to overly confident climate predictions

A paper published today in the Journal of Climate finds that ensembles of climate models used by the IPCC to predict future climate change "may lead to overly confident climate predictions." The authors find that many models share the same computer code, have the same limitations, and "tend to be fairly similar," resulting in confirmation bias. Indeed, empirical observations have shown far less warming than the "90% confident" IPCC models in AR4, as shown in this poster by John Christy:

Journal of Climate doi: 10.1175/2010JCLI3814.1 

On the Effective Number of Climate Models

Christopher Pennell and Thomas Reichler

Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

Abstract: Projections of future climate change are increasingly based on the output of many different models. Typically, the mean over all model simulations is considered as the optimal prediction, with the underlying assumption that different models provide statistically independent information evenly distributed around the true state. However, there is reason to believe that this is not the best assumption. Coupled models are of comparable complexity and are constructed in similar ways. Some models share parts of the same code and some models are even developed at the same center. Therefore, the limitations of these models tend to be fairly similar, contributing to the well-known problem of common model biases and possibly to an unrealistically small spread in the outcomes of model predictions.

This study attempts to quantify the extent of this problem by asking how many models there effectively are and how to best determine this number. Quantifying the effective number of models is achieved by evaluating 24 state-of-the-art models and their ability to simulate broad aspects of 20th century climate. Using two different approaches, we calculate the amount of unique information in the ensemble and find that the effective ensemble size is much smaller than the actual number of models. As more models are included in an ensemble the amount of new information diminishes in proportion. Furthermore, we find that this reduction goes beyond the problem of “same-center” models and that systemic similarities exist across all models. We speculate that current methodologies for the interpretation of multi-model ensembles may lead to overly confident climate predictions.

Global Warming Improves Biodiversity

Several recent alarmist news reports have claimed 'biodiversity" is the latest eco-scare:

• Biodiversity is next...Elite environmentalists and globalists appear to be preparing to dump global warming as their cause celebre
• 'IPCC for nature' proposed -- 'Biodiversity crisis...International body to monitor destruction of flora and fauna' -- On 'equal footing' with climate 
• Update: UN Biodiversity report 'has multiple errors in first chapter alone' (It really is 'IPCC like') 
• Tom Nelson posts 

Adding to the scientific and common sense evidence that global warming is beneficial to biodiversity is this new paper showing how global cooling causes extinction and that biodiversity decreases towards the poles almost everywhere in the world.

Disappearing Glaciers Enhanced Biodiversity

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2010) — Biodiversity decreases towards the poles almost everywhere in the world, except along the South American Pacific coast. Investigating fossil clams and snails Steffen Kiel and Sven Nielsen at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) could show that this unusual pattern originated at the end of the last ice age, 20.000 to 100.000 years ago. The retreating glaciers created a mosaic landscape of countless islands, bays and fiords in which new species developed rapidly -- geologically speaking. The ancestors of the species survived the ice age in the warmer Chilean north.

The exceptional biodiversity of the southern Chilean coast is known for a long time. More than 500 species of clams and snails are known from this area, twice as many as at comparable latitudes in the northern hemisphere. The reasons for this diversity were so far speculative, report Kiel and Nielsen in the current issue of the scientific journal Geology: "Opinions include that southern Chile is a museum of diversity where species survived for millions of years in addition to new arrivals; or that Antarctic species colonized this area from the south." Their analysis of around 35.000 fossil clams and snails, belonging to about 400 species, allowed the paleontologists to draw some more precise conclusions: "Our fossils reject both hypotheses. Biodiversity in this area always decreased toward the south in the geologic past, and we didn't find any intruders from Antarctica," explains Steffen Kiel. In addition, the researchers found that the vast majority of species and genera that lived in that area only 16 million years ago had become extinct. "This area is certainly not a museum of biodiversity," adds Kiel.

The most species-rich groups of animals in the southern Chilean fiordlands are those inhabiting rocky shores. This is exactly the habitat that was created when the glacier retreated from their marine termini. "Molecular biologic investigations on phylogenetic relationships of these species show that they are geologically very young and descended from North Chilean ancestors. This agrees well with our results," says Sven Nielsen, who has been working on Chilean fossils for many years. "Charles Darwin, who was the first to discover fossils in this area during his voyage on the 'Beagle', would have been fascinated."

This research shows that for species conservation not only single, exceptional habitats need to be protected, but that a diversity of habitats needs be conserved to maintain a healthy biodiversity.
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet zu Kiel.

Journal Reference:

1.S. Kiel, S. N. Nielsen. Quaternary origin of the inverse latitudinal diversity gradient among southern Chilean mollusks. Geology, 2010; 38 (10): 955 DOI: 10.1130/G31282.1

Related: Paper: Global Warming Improves Biodiversity

Nothing Wrong with The Hockey Schtick Graph

I frequently get comments asking why The Hockey Schtick graph banner starts in 1998. This new post from the Global Warming Policy Foundation explains why. [their banner begins in 2001, but the points are essentially the same]  

David Whitehouse: Nothing Wrong With Our Graph

The Observatory, 1 October 2010

The GWPF’s graph showing that the global average annual temperature hasn’t changed this century, drawn against a nice blue backdrop, is making a few people see red. Why this is I don’t exactly know as their logic, in contrast to their anger, isn’t entirely clear. Perhaps it is because it neatly summarises the uncertainties in climate science as well as common misconceptions (as was the intention) that some commentators find too uncomfortable to address, instead becoming deniers of basic scientific data. It certainly seems a difficult fact for some, but inconvenience is one thing, facts are another.

Those who complain that the graph is wrong, if they are to be fair and consistent, should now target the Royal Society in their sights as it has admitted this in its recent brochure on the science of climate change that the recent spell of warming ended in 2000.

They are not alone.  The Journal Science has said the pause in global temperatures is real, as do many refereed scientific papers in numerous journals. Also in State of the Climate in 2008, a special supplement to the August Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, no less, confirmed that in the past ten years the HadCRUT3 temperature data (there are problems with this data set regarding its reliability and how it calculates averages but it is probably the best we’ve got) shows no increase whatsoever. Their analysis showed that the world warmed by 0.07 +/- 0.07 deg C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 deg C expected by the IPCC. Corrected for the large 1998 El Nino event (that made 1998 the hottest year on record) and its sister La Nina, the last decade’s trend is perfectly flat. There were even comments in the so-called Climategate emails along the lines of the temperature not increasing and “it’s a travesty” that we can’t explain it.

Professor Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit also holds this view, saying yes in a BBC interview in response to the question; Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically significant global warming.

UN IPCC Scientist Asks Tough Questions

Dr. Judith Curry, IPCC scientist and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, asks some tough unanswered questions of climate science and the IPCC in her new blog post What can we learn from climate models? The post begins with a sobering Short answer: I’m not sure.

This is interesting in light of the fact that essentially all of the IPCC 'consensus,' conclusions, and predictions are based entirely upon computer models. In addition, the IPCC admits in the fine print that said models have not been validated and that they don't even know how to validate the models. 

Other tough as yet unanswered questions include:

How did they [climate scientists] manage to reach conceptual consensus in spite of persisting scientific gaps, imminent uncertainties and limited means of model validation? 

Why, to put the question differently, did scientists develop trust in their delicate model constructions? 

Never mind: Scary videos of Glaciers Calving 'from AGW' just due to naturally soggy bottoms

One of the icons of global warming propaganda is the shots of glaciers calving into the sea, an entirely natural process which has been occurring for eons. Both Greenland and Antarctica are huge bowl shaped basins which buildup snow in the interior which turns into ice. The tremendous pressure of the increased ice in the basins causes the glaciers to slide toward the edges and squeeze out like toothpaste which we witness as glacier calving. This is explained in a geoscientist journal article here and by geologist Ian Plimer here. A new paper published in nature explains how these glaciers continuously slide from the interior to exterior of these basins without any influence from mankind.

Glaciers May Have Soggier Bottoms Than Thought
By Charles Q. Choi posted: 29 September 2010 01:08 pm ET



Drilling boreholes with a hot-water drill on Bench Glacier, Alaska.

Glaciers may seem to be all ice, but it turns out they can be soggy with water, a finding that should help researchers understand how glaciers slide toward the sea, and improve their predictions about rising sea levels in the face of climate change.

"Adding water to the base of glaciers and ice sheets can make them speed up," said glacialogist Joel Harper of the University of Montana at Missoula, who with his colleagues discovered an unexpected amount of water near the bottom of a glacier in Alaska.

Scientists had long known that water will pool in the crevasses at the bottom of a glacier, the huge cracks that extend upward into the ice from the bedrock. However, precisely how much water is in these "basal crevasses" was uncertain because it was hard to peer into these giant mounds of ice.

Now, after using radar and seismic imaging of Bench Glacier in southeastern Alaska, as well as by directly drilling into it, researchers learned that glaciers can possess extensive networks of interconnected, water-loaded basal crevasses.

Harper and his colleagues focused on the temperate valley glacier, about 4 miles (7 kilometers) long and up to 650 feet (200 meters) thick, located in the Chugach Mountains east of Anchorage. Their experiments discovered numerous water-filled basal crevasses that regularly extended as much as 260 feet (80 meters) up from the bedrock into the ice.

Based on their data, the researchers estimated that the basal crevasses in Bench Glacier hold enough water to cover the glacier's bed with water 4 inches deep (10 cm). Although that may not sound like much, even a roughly 1.5-inch (4-cm) increase in the amount of water caused by spring melting can trigger a fivefold increase in the sliding speed of the glacier, Harper explained.

Boring surprise

Harper and his colleagues actually discovered these crevasses by accident. They were originally investigating the pressure that water experiences under glaciers — this pressure and the sliding speed of glaciers can sometimes be closely tied. To observe the effects of the pressure, they aimed to melt holes in the glacier 590 feet (180 meters) deep, all the way down to the base , using jets of hot water to bore into the ice. When all the water from this drilling hit the water pooled under the glacier, they predicted, a big pressure spike would result and they could detect it at other boreholes, giving clues as to how water pressure under glaciers changes over time and space.

"Much to our surprise, the instruments showed a huge draining event long before the drill hole hit bottom," Harper recalled. "We lowered a video camera down the boreholes and found we had intersected a basal crevasse."

The researchers then began drilling to look for other water-filled crevasses and started imaging them with radar and seismic tools to learn more about them.

Glacier speed and sea level change

Given the discovery of numerous water-loaded crevasses in Bench Glacier, "there is reason to believe that they can sometimes exist in other glaciers, but now we need to figure out how common they are in other places," Harper said. "We are now drilling in Greenland."

A better understanding of how water flows under glaciers and influences their speed is key to improving our projections of sea level change, Harper said.

"One of the major barriers to generating reasonable projections of sea level rise is our limited understanding of how meltwater influences the sliding speed of glaciers and ice sheets," Harper explained. "Glacier speed influences sea level through calving of icebergs. Faster speeds result in more icebergs generated at the calving front."

The scientists detail their findings online today (Sept. 29) in the journal Nature.

Why Heat Doesn't Flow from Cold to Hot and the Myth of AGW

Pertinent to discussions on the Shattering the Greenhouse Effect thread, this fascinating excerpt from the book Uncertainty: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, and the Struggle for the Soul of Science, explains how physicists came to explain the one-way transfer of heat from hot to cold demanded by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics using statistical techniques. For the uninitiated, the reason this is of interest in the AGW debate is that climate scientists continue to make the fundamental physical error of assuming that a colder 'greenhouse gas' atmosphere at an average radiating temperature of -5C can heat a warmer Earth surface at +15C in violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Without making this erroneous assumption, the entire AGW facade comes crashing down.

Jet-Setting Bill Gates tells rest of Planet to Emit ZERO CO2 and Depopulate

In a recent TED conference presentation, Bill Gates, owner of a $21 million private jet and 66,000 sq ft mansion with a $30,000/month electric bill, tells the rest of the planet to emit zero carbon dioxide. The father of three and investor in mass sterilization technologies also tells the rest of the planet to depopulate. As shown in this clip, Gates presents his stone cold mathematical analysis for allegedly solving the global warming hoax by reducing global CO2 emissions to zero,  predicting CO2 emissions as follows: CO2 = P x S x E x C

where,
P = People (that's You)
S = Services per person
E = Energy per service
C = CO2 per energy unit



Gates says that in order to get CO2 emissions to zero, "probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty close to zero" and immediately thereafter begins to describe how the first number -- P (for People) -- might be reduced. He says:

"The world today has 6.8 billion people... that's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."

New vaccines and better healthcare would only lead to a big increase in P, so that leaves the "reproductive health services" such as the mass sterilization technologies the Gate's Foundation is developing. Another way to reduce P is to detonate anyone skeptical of the dangers of CO2, as the "no pressure' 10:10 campaign recommends. And by the way 10:10, according to Gates, Hansen, and the nuts at 350.org, everyone on the planet has to reduce CO2 emissions to absolute zero, not just by the 10% you advocate.  Therefore, 10:10 campaigners, you should immediately advocate detonating yourselves 1st since a 10% reduction isn't going to "save the planet."

New Material Posted on the NIPCC Web site 10/01/10

Human Mortality in Castile-Leon, Spain (29 Sep 2010)

Cold is a much greater killer of people than heat is almost everywhere in the world. The people of the Castile-Leon region of Spain are much more likely to die from a cardiovascular disease in the extreme cold of winter than in the extreme heat of summer. And the same holds true with respect to dying from respiratory and digestive system diseases. Read More

The Glaciation of Arctic Canada’s Baffin Island (29 Sep 2010)

The Little Ice Age was found to have been the coldest period of the current interglacial, which suggests (once again) that 20th-century global warming could not have taken the earth into “uncharted” thermal territory, but only back to something similar to what prevailed prior to the Little Ice Age, like the Medieval Warm Period. Read More

The Peatlands of China’s Changbai Mountains (29 Sep 2010)

Have they been giving up their carbon in the face of what climate alarmists claim is unprecedented global warming? Read More

Soil Solarization (29 Sep 2010)

What is it? ... and how is it affected by atmospheric CO2 enrichment? Read More

Effects of Elevated CO2 and Ozone on the Nitrogen Acquisition and Growth of Peanuts (29 Sep 2010)

Contrary to the blatantly false contention of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, CO2 is not a pollutant; it is a pollution fighter that reduces the negative effects of true pollutants, such as ozone, and replaces them with positive effects that are of great worth to man and nature alike, as evidenced by the findings of this review. Read More

Feeding the Future World (29 Sep 2010)

What are the needs? ... and what are our chances of meeting them? Read More

Global Warming and Malaria (30 Sep 2010)

“Non-climatic factors, primarily direct disease control and the indirect effects of a century of urbanization and economic development, although spatially and temporally variable, have exerted a substantially greater influence on the geographic extent and intensity of malaria worldwide during the twentieth century than have climatic factors.” Read More

Holocene Glaciers of Western Canada (30 Sep 2010)

What does their history tell us about the nature of 20th century global warming? Read More

The Changing Climate of Canada: Implications for Agriculture (30 Sep 2010)

The “deadly” global warming that brought an end to the debilitating cold of the Little Ice Age and ushered the planet into the Current Warm Period is proving to be a real boon to Canada, as well as to the rest of the world, which may have to depend upon North America’s northernmost country to supply a significant portion of the food it will need to support its growing numbers in the years and decades to come. Read More

Methane Uptake by Soils of a Temperate Deciduous Forest (30 Sep 2010)

Global warming will likely result in increasing CH4 uptake rates in this region because of the trend to drier summers and warmer winters. And this response represents a negative feedback that should help to temper predicted increases in CO2-induced global warming. Read More

CO2, Global Warming and Sugarcane: Prospects for the Future (30 Sep 2010)

How does the important C4 plant respond to a CO2-enriched and warmer atmosphere? Read More

How Does Global Warming Impact the El Niño-Southern Oscillation? (30 Sep 2010)

The more we learn, the less we seem to know. Read More