Climate change questions answered

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Wed, 18 Nov 2009
Opinion

Dunedinnight submitted the following

With all the figures being tossed around (or should I say being released to the atmosphere) of the effect of CO2 in the warming of the atmosphere, are we also including the huge population increase since the beginning and its possible effect on increased emissions?

The researchers respond

Emissions are a function of fossil fuel usage, not population. That is why all of the following countries added together emit less fossil CO2 than NZ: Haiti, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Kinshasa), Ethiopia, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal. Total population 420 million but added together they emit less than us. Not per person but less total. Population is not itself the problem.

[Based on 2002 figures from a variety of US government sources (mainly the Energy Information Administration, a part of the Department of Energy) that I used in a 2006 "lighter side" (but peer reviewed) article: Mackie, D. S. (2006): Hold your breath: The economic impact of human respiration. Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 87(34), 341-342. More recent data show similar relative proportions].

JimmyJones submitted the following

The "not since argument": In your earlier article you said "Garth George uses the fourth most popular: what we called the not since argument" in what you say is from "a submission made by a source cited by George". What we are talking about is an absence of any warming trend after 1998; temperatures have been steady, and so inconsistent with IPCC predictions.

There is no firm definition of climate/weather and also few people describing a temperature trend would bother to label it as weather or climate, so your argument seems foolish if it depends on you to determine whether climate or weather is being discussed.

Would you claim that my example argument above is invalid because it doesn't fit your definition of climate? Perhaps because it is only ten years you would call it weather, but I haven't called it anything except a ten year trend. You might have a valid argument if I drew a straight line through my trend and extended it so as to forecast temperatures for the next 100 years (you know - the way the IPCC does).

The researchers respond

We really feel we have categorically addressed the substance of this comment above.

If the plot of temperature were instead a stock price would the denialists all sell now because the price has been "flat"? Or would they say the long term growth looks promising?

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The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report

Submitted by Mike Palin on Wed, 25/11/2009 - 6:13am.

For those interested in a summary of the peer-reviewed literature on climate science subsequent to that included in the 2007 IPCC assessment, go here:
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/.

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Integrity begins at home

Submitted by Mike Palin on Tue, 24/11/2009 - 6:44pm.

farsighted and dunedinBlogAl-
Let us know your real names. What are you afraid of?

As you provide links to the stolen emails, you may be interested in the following official University of East Anglia statement on the matter (reported at real.climate.org): “We are aware that information from a server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites,” the spokesman stated. “Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm that all of this material is genuine. This information has been obtained and published without our permission and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation. We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved the police in this enquiry.”

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Integrity

Submitted by farsighted on Fri, 27/11/2009 - 9:14pm.

farsighted and dunedinBlogAl- Let us know your real names. What are you afraid of?

"Dear Journal Editor, Please supply me with the real names of the referees of my recently-submitted paper. What are they afraid of?" As you provide links to the stolen emails, you may be interested in the following official University of East Anglia statement on the matter (reported at real.climate.org)

Actually, I didn't - I linked to an article that referenced them. Also, you may be interested in the BBC's comment relating to a similar online thread where such links were posted: "Update 3 – 2116 GMT Monday 23 November: As lots of material apparently from the stolen batch of CRU e-mails is now in the public domain, we will not from now on be removing comments simply because they quote from these e-mails.") One assumes that the BBC took legal advice on this subject before re-opening the comment thread. It is therefore not inappropriate to refer or even directly quote such material.

Further, although this incident is often characterised in media as a "hack", it is not yet excluded that the source of the leaked material was either inadvertent or a deliberate leak by an insider.

With reference to the scientific practice that the leaked e-mails appear to reveal, you might want to ponder Carl Sagan's question from _Contact_: "What is there in the precepts of Science that prevents a scientist from doing evil?". Or Feynman's question to any data twiddler: "At the end of a long process of data manipulation, how did you know when to stop?"

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Does the end justify the means?

Submitted by Mike Palin on Mon, 30/11/2009 - 7:20pm.

You hide behind a fake signature to impugn the reputations of scientists based your reading of their private correspondence that has been stolen and they are the ones lacking integrity?

In his play "A Man for All Seasons", Robert Bolt has Thomas More say, "What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? ... And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, ... the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's, and if you cut them down -- and you're just the man to do it -- do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

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Level playing field

Submitted by Online editor on Tue, 24/11/2009 - 1:39pm.

Editor: In the interests of a level playing field, Doug Mackie and the other authors of this article will from this point restrict their responses to questions posted by readers using their real names. General comments on climate change not addressed to Dr Mackie or the other researchers will continue to be posted subject to ODT Online's normal rules and conditions.

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Special treatment

Submitted by JimmyJones on Tue, 24/11/2009 - 2:15pm.

Dr Mackie is free to reply, or not to any posting here for any reason he chooses. I question why Odt-Online would choose to ban comments from being published for the reason that Dr Mackie was not going to reply to them. All comments should be published and Dr Mackie should reply to any that he chooses. Why does Odt-Online wish to impose a special restriction?

Editor - The previous climate change thread was wandering a long way off topic. Doug Mackie responded to many comments but the debate became confused and frustrating.

We then asked readers for specific questions. Dr Mackie has now taken the time to reply to these. He is a specialist in his field and has asked for a level playing field in which readers using their own names submit their own opinions on the subject. In short, he is prepared to stake his academic reputation on what he writes and has asked for those with opposing views to stand up and be counted and expose themselves to similar scrutiny. ODT Online supports him in this.

As has already been made clear, we will continue to post general comments on climate change but request that anybody seeking to debate or question Dr Mackie or the other researchers whose articles have created this debate on ODT Online do so using their real name.

Any reader is welcome to submit their own article on climate change or indeed any other topic and can do so using this link or this link.

 

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six years?

Submitted by Calvin Oaten on Tue, 24/11/2009 - 9:08am.

Doug, where did I suggest that climate is six years? Not sure where you are coming from on that one. Ocean warming. I suggested that bathythermograph readings show no warming. You then refer to the US government NOAA dataset suggesting the contrary. Did that information come from bathythermographs, or what? Even so, if it were correct, unless the warming was absolutely dramatic I suspect this could be balanced by the cloud effect. As you know, there has been claims that one of the most significant matters claimed was the cloud effect of trapping heat, thus accelerating the warming effect.

Since been acknowledged that this is not so. What is the cloud effect. Cloud is simply water vapour. Here is the interesting conundrum. Heat from the sun and friction from moving air causes water to evaporate, and in so doing absorbs enormous amounts of latent heat. This heat laden vapour rises up into the atmosphere where it is cooled. Aerosols -small particles- attract this cooling vapour upon which it condenses. This in turn attracts more cooling vapour thus forming rain drops. Once the drops achieve sufficient mass gravity takes over and they fall as rain. The process of condensing releases the latent heat which is then free to rise and leave the atmosphere into space. When falling, the drops often absorb more heat thus repeating the process without actually reaching the ground. When it does reach ground it runs off and eventually reaches the oceans again. This evaporation/condensing process takes place continuously as long as there is sufficient energy available.

Obviously, if there was in fact an increase in the ocean temperatures then the process described would increase, thus transferring greater amounts of heat from the surface to space. A great levelling effect, I suspect. Returning to the six year argument. It seems that one of the most significant climate cycles is that of the moon. It, I believe takes some 18.5 years, so that should be considered along with the incidence of sun spot activity. All these factors have a constant impact on climate variations. I noticed a report on TV news about the shrinking of our glaciers, implying that this confirmed global warming. It showed a graph of the decline going back to 1978. Strangely, the first time I saw the Franz Joseph glacier was in the mid fifties. One of the most interesting points to me was the sign post showing where the toe of the glacier was in the late nineteenth century. It was literally kilometers nearer the sea than it is today. What would you deduce from that? Is it an aberration, or natural waxing and waning due to climate cycles? We also have been fed dramatic scenarios on the loss of the polar ice caps. But observations and past records suggest that there is no net loss at all. Rather, a constant cycle in keeping with historical records. Then of course, the Mediaeval Warming Period 800 to 1350 which by all accounts is totally unrelated to any human influence. Why? And why therefore should it suddenly be determined that we are on a fast track to doom.

Pollution yes. Warming, I don't know. Nor, I suspect does anybody else except the politicians who have been seduced by the UN IPCC, and seeing the opportunity for extracting revenue. Sorry, but I am not convinced. In fact I am more impressed at this point by Prof Lindzen's reports and Lord Monckton's views postulating that it is a theory gone seriously wrong. There are a whole lot more, such as ocean acidification and ocean currents, not to mention underwater volcanism as causes of fluctuations in climate over long, medium and seemingly short periods.

Doug Mackie replies

Calvin,

You cannot have it both ways. On one hand you say it is all scam to gather tax and then on the other hand you use this allegedly hoaxed data to try "proving" that the climate is not changing.

I hate to resort to I-said-you-said, but... you said "Bathythermographs deployed round the world's oceans show clearly that those same oceans have in fact been cooling over the past six years."

Don't you get it? You are saying that the data are real and can be relied upon and then you say that 6 years data somehow proves climate change is not happening. But here is the really funny thing: The dataset actually shows no such thing. Look at the the ocean heat graph in the above story. The NOAA dataset shows a wee dip in 2003 as part of a general upward trend. Please, tell us, what dataset were you using?

I ask my question again: If the plots of ocean heat or atmospheric temperature were a stock price, would you say: "Ohhh! Look the price is flat/going down so I will sell" or would you say "Ahh. Look the long term trend is upward so I will hold onto my shares"?

You use the jargon but not the methodology of science.

 

 

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Volcanism and climate

Submitted by Mike Palin on Sat, 28/11/2009 - 6:46am.

Calvin-
In grasping for any explanation for climate change other than anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, you list "underwater volcanism". If nothing else, you are creative.

Volcanism is a key process in the geologic carbon cycle that operates over millions of years. It is the principal mechanism by which deep-Earth carbon is released to the atmosphere as CO2. However, the rates of volcanic degassing of CO2 are slow compared to much more rapid near-surface carbon cycling and a mere 1% of that due to burning of fossil fuels by humans. The influence of volcanic CO2 on climate can be enormous when these small fluxes are integrated over millions of years. Indeed, volcanoes may well have saved Earth from becoming a frozen Mars-like world 600-700 million years ago (see this website). The important point is that this episode is one of many in Earth history that provides evidence that elevated levels of atmospheric CO2 drive global warming. Humans have outpaced volcanic emissions of CO2 by 100x and now face the consequences.

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Judge for yourself

Submitted by JimmyJones on Mon, 23/11/2009 - 11:27pm.

No-one should disregard the Climate Research Unit (CRU) emails without reading some. CRU staff admit that they are genuine but say the comments have been taken out of context. www.realclimate.org has tried to explain the most embarrassing emails but have not responded to some and given feeble replies to others. Judge for yourself. The collection is searchable at www.anelegantchaos.org/cru/search.php .

These emails seem damaging to the main science publications, the peer review process, realclimate.org and further damage the trustworthiness of the temperature reconstructions as well as the IPCC.

 

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Claims to authority

Submitted by farsighted on Sun, 22/11/2009 - 7:35am.

Will the researchers please comment on the recent release of material from the Hadley Research Centre that appear to show collusion on peer review, undermining of an established research journal, manipulation of results, threats of violence against other scientists, private funding of research, among others. See this link
And, pertinent to the "not since" argument, an (alleged) recognition by the Director of CRU that the world had cooled since 1998, albeit not statistically significant. Where is the warming, Dr Mackie? The models predict far more warming than is actually observed. Why is it "unprecedented" when it appears to have been matched 1000 years ago? Why do you still believe that reducing emissions will have any effect on temperature? Be careful which side of the debate you choose now, lest you be exposed to ridicule when the truth comes out as this scandal unravels.

Doug Mackie responds:

This is fatuous beyond belief. The people over at realclimate.org wrote many of the emails in question. The thread there now has nearly 1000 comments and they pretty much cover anything that could possibly be said. The denialosphere has a lot of lies and Winston Peters-type dancing on the shade of word meaning but nothing to prove, let alone hint at, conspiracy.

If farsighted really thinks there is a global conspiracy then there is nothing I or anyone else could say to convince them otherwise. I suggest farsighted adjust their tinfoil hat because I am watching them through the computer screen as I write.

Come come, farsighted. You have already said that using the not since argument is not valid. Own your opinions and let me snoop through your email.

 

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Dodgy climate science exposed

Submitted by dunedinBlogAl on Tue, 24/11/2009 - 11:18am.

Scientists from other disciplines have been shocked by the lack of scientific integrity that is shown by the released CRU emails. The use of the peer-review process to systematically exclude dissenting views, and the selection and manipulation of data to fit a pre-determined outcome, are not acceptable in other areas of Science. Of particular concern has been the refusal, over a number of years, to publicly release most of the data on which global warming theory is based. It appears the reason for this refusal is the fear that dodgy practice will be exposed. The one thing that is clear from all this is that the science is far from settled.

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