Pronouncement of Global Warming’s Demise On Thin Ice

As stated it is inaccurate to use a small sample of a data set to determine if there is a trend, and ten years is much too short of a time frame to determine a climate trend. However who decided that 100 years is enough data to declare a trend? I tend to think that with a system as complex as global climate, perhaps the 100 years of data we have is much too small of a data set to determine a climate trend.

I think the biggest problem I have with this article is a question that has often confused me in the past on this very serious subject. Exactly what type of devices were they using to record temperatures in the 1800's and early 1900's? Was it mercury filled thermometers? And you honestly want me to believe that we have an accuracy within a 0.5 degree? Are you kidding me? I also have to agree with the previous poster, 100 years is not even close to a proper sampling in order to determine a trend. The earth has been steadily warming, gradually and quite naturally since we emerged from the last ice age some 20,000 years ago.

I thought because of the melting glaciers that the ratio of salt to fresh water was diminishing, causing some current that regulates tempatures to not work as well causing global cooling, i'm not sure though but I had heard that somewhere.

You must realize, that what you are reading is only one side of the hotly debated global warming discussion. What this piece ignores is the larger scope. If, as earlier posts suggest, you take a longer view, say back to the medieval warming period (Often ignored by those who believe global warming has been caused by man), you will find evidence that temperatures were at one time (And we didn’t die off then either) very much hotter than they are now, hotter even than we could even reach within the next 20 years at the current rate of warming even if you take the good doctor’s numbers to heart.

There are other life-long climatologists just as certifiably authentic as this good Dr. who would look at the last 50 years as a mere blip on the horizon as far as climate change is concerned, and the debate rages on…

Just in case the hook, line and sinker had all made their way past your watchful eye…

I would be interested to see where these measurements they are using are being taken. Are they around metro areas that have grown significantly over the last 100 years? Areas where we have laid down miles and miles of asphalt and concrete thereby creating massive heat manufacturing areas! Or are these in remote areas that have remained relatively free from encroaching civilization?

As statisticians say... You can find the right set of numbers to make any argument you wish!

rsf00001: The time scale of relevance depends upon the issue you are trying to address. If one is concerned about climate changes on time scales of 100s of thousands of years, temperature trends of a decade or even 100 years are not long enough. If all you care about is how global temperatures varied from last year to this year, two years of data would be sufficient. But what happens if you are concerned about temperature trends on time scales of decades or a century? Because I care about my kids and grandkids, that is my biggest concern. And in fact, temperature trends over 10-100 years are by definition long enough to establish a climate trend over that period of time. The fact that we see a warming trend in temperatures over the past 100 years does not invalidate the notion of longer term trends; they will undoubtedly occur. For example, scientists estimate, on the basis of the projected changes in Earth's orbit about the sun, that the next ice age will arrive in about 50,000 years. Interesting, but not really relevant to concerns about global warming this century.

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Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

Mikeyboy028: The accuracy comes from the combination of many, many data points. And what aspect of a global warming trend do you question? Please explain how glaciers throughout the world are melting if global temperatures are not on the rise. Please explain how a 5,000 year old pine cone was found preserved in the meltwater of a Peruvian glacier if temperatures are not warmer today than in the recent past. With regard to the 100 years sampling, see my response to rsf00001 above. Finally, the last ice age actually ended about 12,000 years ago, not 20,000 years ago. And the Earth has not been "steadily warming" since then - there was a temperature maximum during the Mid-Holocene climatic optimum some 5,000 to 9,000 years ago.

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Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

theGreenGrok: The issue with looking at trends over a short period of time is how do you separate what is natural from what is unnatural?

Sure if you look at the graphs provided you can see immediately that there has been a warming trend over the last 40-50 years. If you look at the last 10 years there appears to be a cooling trend. What about if you look at the last 1000 years? 10,000 years? What this tells us is that global temperatures vary greatly. Sometimes they are high, sometimes they are low.

So we can look at the graphs now and recognize that temperatures are going up. The question we need to be asking isn't whether or not the climate is changing. It most certainly is. The question we need to ask ourselves is what is the cause. Is this part of a natural cycle or are we causing it.

This is the critical question because it is what determines our response. If we are causing the problem we need to fix it and fix it now. If it is part of a natural cycle then we should just leave it alone.

Every argument I see these days with regards to Global Warming is trying to prove that it is happening. Very few people are spending the time and money to show that we are causing it. We just sort of accept that to be the case without evidence. Show me the proof (I am serious. If it is out there I want to see it.).

The article states that it is inappropriate to look at very short time intervals when pondering whether or not anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real. Yet this is what many in the media and in media-conscious academia do when the latter issue a statement or a study proporting to show that global warming is causing extreme weather events. The media then repeats and amplifies the claim mindlessly.

I not only doubt the accuracy of mercury thermometer readings, I seriously question whether tree ring studies, ice core studies, and coral reef studies can nail down a temperature record to within one degree C. or less. An even bigger problem is that AGW zealots have frequently resorted to solving the problem of scant historical temperature records in the southern hemisphere oceans (where relatively few large ships traveled and few daily temp measurements were written down in log books by the sailors) by the method of "extrapolating" data to plug into the empty data field and then re-averaging real data with imaginary data to make, well, whatever point you want to make. Most recently this technique has been used with Antarctica in a clever study that makes East Antarctic colder more than 50 years ago (in order to be able to claim that the area has since warmed) and makes West Antarctica seem to be even warmer.

What does real data show taken with actual instruments? Well, the big bulk of the Antarctic continent is in the east and it seems to be tending colder, even around the South Pole despite the heat island effect of a big base there. West Antarctica along the coast seems to be warmer, but that can be entirely due to effect of warm Pacific and Indian Ocean currents rubbing the coast. Where all the mischief comes in is when people start using all sorts of reasons to make the temperature records between the West coast and the South Pole become warmer, even resorting to snow layer studies which are very questionable at nailing a temperature to within one degree C.

The legitimacy of extrapolating numbers to plug into a data field like that smacks of fine-tuning a computer model to make it cough up the result you want. They also issue economists with advanced academic degrees and according to the computer models many of those guys were using I should be retired right now living on my bounteous 401K.

Back in the old days when temperatures had to read from a mercury thermometer by a human eyeball, the human tendency is to be reasonably accurate concerning mid-range, ordinary measurements, but to exagerate extreme measurements. People just get caught up in how cold it is out there in January or how hot it is in July and mentally they start rooting for a new extreme record to be set. I suspect this was the case in a reading taken in the winter of 1947 at an official measuring station on McDonald's Pass (near Helena, Montana) of minus 72 degrees F. For many decades this was the coldest recognized temperature in the lower 48 states.

However, vast swatches of Montana at that time did not have
official measuring stations, so someone could extrapolate a more complete data field and produce a computer modeled result that "proves" Montana was much colder as recently as the 1940's. As we say in criminal justice, torture statistics enough and they will confess to anything!

Dr. Chameides analysis does not take into account mechanisms that could mitigate global warming, such as a reduction in solar heating.

Over the past century, Earth's average temperature has increased by approximately 0.6 degrees Celsius (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit). Solar heating accounts for about 0.15 C or 25 percent of this change, according to computer modeling results published by NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies researcher David Rind in 2004. This range is supported by Manuel Vázquez, a researcher from the Canary Islands’ Astrophysics Institute (IAC) who reported in July 2008 that current climatic variations may be affected “around 15 percent or 20 percent” by solar activity.

A recent study (S.K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schüssler, and J. Beer, "Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years" Nature, Vol. 431, No. 7012, pp. 1084 - 1087, 28 October 2004) revealed that the level of solar activity for the past 70 years has been exceptionally high and the previous period of equally high activity occurred more than 8,000 years ago. During the past 11,400 years the Sun spent only of the order of 10% of the time at a similarly high level of magnetic activity and almost all of the earlier high-activity periods were shorter than the present episode.

A number of scientists (i.e., M. A. Clilverd et al., "Solar Activity Levels in 2100", Astronomy and Geophysics, Vol. 44, No. 5, pp. 20-22, October 2003), studied long term variations in atmospheric cosmogenic radiocarbon. They predicted a rapid decline in solar activity, starting with new cycle 24. Conversely, in March, 2006, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research predicted that the next sunspot cycle would be 30-50% stronger than the last one. Solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center boldly predicted a fast ramp up, with the first sunspots of the cycle 24 appearing in late 2006 or 2007.

It is now 2009 and we still appear to be caught in the waning days of old cycle 23. September 2008 was the first spotless month in a century. There were a total of 266 spotless days in 2008, the most since 1913. In September, researchers analyzing data from NASA's Ulysses spacecraft reported that the solar wind blew at a 50 year low, which was 20-25% less than the last solar minimum. In December, scientists from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center reported that the ionosphere had moved to extraordinarily low altitudes, which indicated a drop in extreme ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Other indicators of solar activity, such as F10.7 radio flux and the Ap index, which measures geomagnetic activity, have also flatlined. (Visit NOAA/Space Weather Prediction Center - http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SolarCycle/ and http://www.spaceweather.com/.)

If the sun does become quiet for a prolonged period of time, the reduced solar activity could have a discernible effect on the earth's climate.

According to the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, "After accounting for the increase in CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the Earth’s surface temperature corresponds with the increase in solar radiation, except during major volcanic eruptions." A recent study (O.M. Raspopov et al. "The influence of the deVries (∼200-year) solar cycle on climate variations", Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 259 [2008] 6–16) compared summer temperature records, based on juniper tree-ring widths in Central Asia with the deVries (∼210-year) solar cycles through the last millennium. The scientists concluded: "The climate response to long-term solar activity variations (from 10s to 1000s years) manifests itself in different climatic parameters, such as temperature, precipitation and atmospheric and oceanic circulation. The climate response to the de Vries cycle has been found to occur not only during the last millennia but also in earlier epochs, up to hundreds of millions years ago."

In the 17th century during a period known as the Maunder minimum or Little Ice Age, very few sunspots were observed and Europe experienced very cold temperatures. Some scientists have speculated that we could be entering a new Maunder minimum (Schatten, K. H.; Tobiska, W. K., American Astronomical Society, SPD meeting #34, #06.03; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 35, p.817, May 2003).

It is more likely. however, that the sun is transitioning from unusually high activity to levels that are more in accord with recent historic norms. Comparing plots of the number of sunspots for different cycles going back to 1775 reveals that the best fit for old cycle 23, as it currently stands, would be solar cycles 10 to 15, from the mid 19th to early 20th century. This corresponds with much cooler average global temperatures in Dr. Chameides' graph. The effect of a quieter sun now would be to flatten the curve of the increase of global temperature, as shown in the 5 year averages.

Another major factor to consider is the 60 to 70 year cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (MOC) that brings warm currents from the tropics to Europe. A computer model by researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University (Keenlyside, N.S., M. Latif, J. Jungclaus, L. Kornblueh, and E. Roeckner, "Advancing Decadal-Scale Climate Prediction in the North Atlantic Sector", Nature, 453, 84-8, 29 May 2008) projects that the MOC will weaken. This will cause the north Atlantic waters to cool and will effectively counter greenhouse warming for the next decade.

Greengrok: "The accuracy comes from the combination of many, many data points." Well, I feel better now. The accuracy of even many, many, many data points is still entirely based on the individuals (no matter how many) ability to decipher the instrument they are reading. On a mercury thermometer you are lucky to be able to read to within 1.0 degree (F). I have many more questions than answers but specifically I am questioning whether or not man is (or even could be) responsible for a change in global temperatures.

"The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) refers to the time of maximum extent of the ice sheets during the last glaciation (the Würm or Wisconsin glaciation), approximately 20,000 years ago. This extreme persisted for several thousand years."

Perhaps I am mistaken but I have been lead to believe (and again up for debate) that the earth started to come out of (read "started to warm enough for glaciers to retreat") approximately 20,000 years ago.

I believe the earth is warming, I believe it is a natural cycle, I believe it will improve our lives and planet. If you have proof otherwise, please provide it to me.

My "theories" are just as good as anyone elses.

solarman14: You're right - data from past climate shifts suggest that melting glaciers could alter ocean currents, shutting down the Gulf Stream and maybe even sending the Northern Hemisphere (but not the Southern Hemisphere) into ice age conditions. My reading of the literature suggests that the chances of that happening any time soon are extremely small in spite of the great visual effects in The Day After Tomorrow.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

Slagtron:
1. The Medieval warm period: No one is denying that there was a warm period roughly between A.D. 800 to 1300. This time period has never been ignored by climate scientists working on global warming - for example see the IPCC report (Box 6.4, pp. 468-69): www1.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf

2. Actually, temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period were NOT "very much hotter than they are now," and were likely somewhat lower (see www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11676 and www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/09/02/0805721105.short), and there is evidence to suggest that the warm period was not even global in extent (www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5762/841).

3. As for dying off: I am not suggesting that global warming means the end of humanity or the end of civilization. It will mean major dislocation and human suffering. We live in a very different world from that of our medieval antecedents, with 6 billion people dependent on a global and complex infrastructure for the delivery of food and water. A crisis in one part of the world can have geopolitical and economic consequences for Americans.

4. In the great sweep of geologic time, you are of course correct: 50 years is just a blip. So is my life, your life, and the lives of our children. Nevertheless I still care about my 4 score and seven and the 4 score and seven of my children. Don't you?

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

brettroeder - The temperature data have been very carefully filtered for and/or corrected for the influence of metro areas - and this has been done using different and independent methodologies, with the same results. But forget the temperature data. Since 2000, the rate at which glaciers are melting has more than doubled compared to the average melting rate in the 20 years prior to 2000 (www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090129090002.htm).  Also, of the 30 reference glaciers tracked globally only one (in Chile) is not receding (www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080317154235.htm). For more info on glaciers check out the world glacier monitoring service (www.wgms.ch). You don't need a thermometer to document retreating glaciers. Explain how glaciers melt in the absence of warming.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Dr Chameides,

I have to wonder about relying on GISS data. Franky, it is very suspect to me. Why? Well for starters, GISS is run by James Hansen who is hardly an unbiased source. As the father of global warming theory, he has a vested interest in GISS showing warmer and warmer data. This can be seen in how GISS tweaks the data. Even 80 year old temperatures are massaged by GISS. GISS has made mistakes over the years that almost always favor warmer readings. The latest was this fall when data for September was reused for October in parts of Asia. It show an enormous Asian heat wave, a heat wave that didn't happen. The mistake was not caught by GISS.

GISS relies on ground based weather stations that are scattered around the world and managed by various organizations. The stations offer poor coverage of many parts of the globe. Many stations have dropped out in the last 20 years and the ones that remain tend to be in more urban settings. Franky, the setting of many of these stations is so poor that they are useless. However, that does not deter GISS. The GISS stations may have proven the urban heat island effect, but not global warming.

GISS data is also not consistent with satellite measurements we have from the last 30 years. What is even more telling is that the gap between GISS and the satellite data is getting wider. Over the last 30 years GISS is showing more warming than satellites. In the last 5 years GISS is diverging (warming) from the satellites at a rate of 2 deg. C a century.

theGreenGrok: "Explain how glaciers melt in the absence of warming."

Explain how the melting of the glaciers is the fault of man and not part of a natural cycle!

Most Global Warming supporters will point to thawing glaciers, increasing temperatures and changes in the ocean and say "Look! Global Warming!"

Most Global Warming detractors will point to things that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago and say "Yes, but it has happened before."

You see the detractors are usually not suggesting that Global Warming doesn't exist. Rather they are suggesting that it is blown out of proportion and part of a natural cycle.

So in fact the supporters and detractors are arguing over points they often agree on. Earth's Climate can and does change over time. If we would all just accept that then we could begin to deal with the real issue. Are human beings responsible for this change or is it natural?

Too many people take it as gospel truth that driving cars and flying jets causes global warming. But where are the studies that prove this?

If anyone out there can point to studies that prove (or at least support this), I want to see them. So if anyone can respond to this post with some links to these studies, I would appreciate it. GreenGrok, can you provide any links?

"The temperature data have been very carefully filtered for and/or corrected for the influence of metro areas - and this has been done using different and independent methodologies, with the same results. But forget the temperature data."

With due respect, Dr., here's a great blog by a meteorologist who's a little skeptical about the validity of the "modern" equipment being used to gather ground data for NOAA.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/test/

To state that because there were many, many potentially inaccurate thermometer readings from the 1800's thereby implies that error can be reduced is simply incorrect. If those devices and the methods by which they were read were universally inaccurate, then those inaccuracies, for better or worse, are now part of the data which is presented above.

Combined with the sorry state and placement of many of the ground stations referenced in the URL above, I find most of the ground data suspect. Regrettably, billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars of economic impact is at stake in various programs and so-called carbon trading schemes based on this data.

As a tax payer and consumer, I would certainly prefer that more solid science be conducted before such economically far-reaching policies are enacted. I further believe it's important for those parties who stand to benefit from these policies (including grants to academia) clearly identify and quantify how they benefit. Thank you for your contribution here; I too care about my children and how much they will have to pay for the results of this research.

Slanted: 1. Please read my post. I did NOT, repeat did NOT use the GISS data. I used the data from the the Climatic Research Unit and United Kingdom Meteorological Office Hadley Centre (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/nhshgl.gif).

2. That argument about urban heat islands is a red herring. How do you explain the increase in sea surface temperatures?

3. And be careful about that satellite data - significant errors have been found in the mid-tropospheric temperature trends inferred from that data.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

I guess we can agree that we need to be careful about all the data, much less the conclusions drawn from it. Some of the data points to recent cooling in the last five years and no real warming in the last 10, so why are we going to rewire our economy when we don't even know were we are headed much less if man is the cause?

If this was truly a critical situation why is nuclear power off the table? It really is, the new administration has proposed nothing in this area. Wind and Solar are nice, but what is going to provide the base load our electrical grid needs? Today that is 20% nuke and something like 60% coal. Efficiency savings will be lost to increased demand through economic growth (if we still believe in that) and EVs. So why are we not building a hundred nuclear plants? Safe, carbon free modern plants are off the table yet 1960's nuclear power is somehow ok?

I walk the walk when it comes to efficiency and responsibility, but I say lets hold off on crazy items like cap and trade until we know more. None of the models predicted the last five years, so lets see what the next five years show on your fancy graphs.

Looks to me as if the Earth is normally much warmer than today and we have been living in the longest cool period in the history of earth. See this chart of 2 billion years.

http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm

GATA Slanted. Look Green guy, I know your grant money is all based on you pushing this crap, but really show us exactly how WE are the cause. I have yet to see anything completely conclusive to us(humans that is) being the cause or GW. Before we go all radical on this, lets make sure we are not on a witch hunt.

As a meteorologist who doesn't earn a dime from oil companies or green companies or anybody else on this issue, here are a few comments. First, the article must be view with caution since Dr. Bill Chameides is an "environmentalist" and academic. With those credentials, there is a 95% chance that he will always side with the "catastrophic warming" camp.

Now, notice on the graphs, the sharp warming from 1907 to 1941. This was due to natural causes. No scientists will argue otherwise since human contributions were minor at that point. Since World War II (1945), the earth has warmed about 0.6 deg C which is roughly a 1 deg per century rate. Humans likely have contributed but this is hardly catastrophic. Recent cooling (six yr trend is down)could be temporary but now most climate forecasts made in the last 20 years are now badly wrong. Actual warming has been far less than "forecast". Many meteorologists, who are highly practiced in real world forecasting, have been warning the climate scaremongers that long range forecasting is tough and perhaps they are overlooking a few things. The science is hardly "settled" on this and frankly, we have little or no scientifically demonstrable skill at multi-decadenal climate forecasting.

Be skeptical...very skeptical...of the climate alarmists. They generally mean well but that doesn't mean they are right.

Dr. Chameides: Would you please take your pretty five-year average line for five years ending 2008 and draw one ending 2007? Is that one above (warmer) than the one ending 2008? How about one for five years ending 2007? Is that one above (warmer) than the one ending 2008? Keep drawing.

How convenient that you provided only four averages which support your warming belief. A single year does not a trend make, but isolating all the recent changes lets you ignore them as mere exceptions to your rule.

How about 1930-1950? Was there any cooling trend anywhere there?

Eggman002: Did I say anything about the cause of the warming? With respect to all your other comments, please see my responses to previous posters. With respect to proof, please start with this: tinyurl.com/aexjcr

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.theGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Kstauff: OK you have a healthy skepticism. You don't believe the instrumental record. So forget it. If the globe is not warming, please explain why the vast majority of glaciers around the world are melting.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.theGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Mike Cook, Thanks for your comments. I can't help what the media says so don't hold me responsible for what they say. I gather that you don't trust the temperature record. So let's forget it. If global warming is not the answer how do you explain the fact that the vast majority of the world's glaciers are melting? And, by the way, just because temperatures may be decreasing in a few isolated locations does not mean that temperatures on average over the globe are not increasing.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.theGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

rshaud, very impressive review of the literature:

1. The point of the post was to show that global temperatures are still on the rise. I gather you do not dispute that.

2. Of course long term global temperatures vary with solar activity, but the warming over the past 20-25 years is mostly NOT due to the sun. How do we know - from direct observation of solar output (see www.nicholas.duke.edu/nicholas/insider/thegreengrok/solarvariation).

3.The flattening you describe in the last 5 years is probably due to the fact that there has been a persistence in La Nina conditions and we are at a solar minimum.

4. And yes, the present solar minimum has been especially strong and if it persists it will slow the warming. Let's see what happens. Are you ready to gamble the future on a bet that the sun will stay quiescent?

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

Mikeyboy028:

1. It's statistics. The error in the average is inversely proportional to the square root of the number of uncertain samples, so the accuracy increases with the number of samples even if the individual samples have errors in them as long as they're random.

2. The last glacial MAXIMUM was about 20,000 year ago. The last glaciation ended about 12,000 years ago.

3. With regard to the human role in present global warming you can start with blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/07/12/human_cause-5/

4. "Your theories are just as good as anyone else's." A friend of mine feels the same way and claims that 1 + 1 = 3. I guess your theory is he is right. I know he is wrong.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.theGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Thanks for the response GreenGrok. I never suggested that you were talking about the cause. But I am sure any doctor or scientist would tell you that you can't treat the symptoms of a problem, you have to treat the cause. Let's not spend billions of dollars treating symptoms. It is a waste of time and money.

I read over the link you posted and it has some merit but also some flaws. They are the same flaws that were presented in An Inconvenient Truth. I will refer specifically to the temperature data provided. Many other people have mentioned possible flaws with interpolating data, tracking data etc. I won't bother with that.

1) If you look at the graph over the past 400,000 years, you see what appears to be a relationship between CO2 levels and Temperature. However a relationship does not imply causality. Humans have not been pumping out CO2 for thousands of years. The article in question even states that the previous increases in CO2 were due to an increase in temperature. So in this case the increase in temperature causes the increase in CO2. Not the other way around. The article also claims that the increase in CO2 then further increases the temperature but it doesn't back up that claim with any data.

2) If you look at the same 400,000 year graph you see a huge spike in CO2 levels at the end of the graph. This is the same thing you see in the graph shown in An Inconvenient Truth. However there is no corresponding spike in Temperature. Why? If there is a direct relationship between the two shouldn't we see a huge spike in temperature? Though I will admit the graph is a bit hard to read.

The graph over the last 1000 years is perhaps more telling because in this case you do see a spike in temperature that corresponds with the spike in CO2 levels. My first question then is why is there a discrepancy in the graphs?

The first graph implies that a shift of 100ppm in CO2 will result in a shift in the temperature equal to about 10-15 degrees. Yet the second graph shows an increase of perhaps 1 degree for a shift of 100ppm in C02. I suppose the argument would be that there hasn't been enough time to see the full effect and the effects will become more dramatic over time.

3) The article suggests that there are 3 possible natural causes of the increased CO2 and temperature. It then states that since it is not any of those three it must be our CO2 output. I would simply state that it is dangerous to assume we know all the possible causes. Just because we can't see another cause doesn't mean it is not there. Let's be sure.

My point is that there are too many unknowns and too many assumptions being made. If you want to convince the Global Warming detractors you need to come up with conclusive evidence that Human actions are causing Global Warming.

There are too many variables for us to be conclusive about anything. We need to spend more money on hard science to nail down the cause of Global Warming. Then we can start treating that cause.

Dr. Chameides,

Yes, I and many others, as the link and these comments demonstrate, have a healthy skepticism of this research. It is not motivated out of any ideology. I would gladly accept replacements of fossil fuels with nuclear or renewable sources, with the presumption that these sources are economically competitive with fossil fuels, or even somewhat more expensive. But this is not because I believe fossil fuels and the CO2 that they emit is causing global warming; it's rather a matter of energy security. I simply have not been convinced that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of global warming.

Very few dispute that average global temperature has not risen; what is obviously in dispute is the cause. I and others do question the accuracy of the devices being used and the data that they provide, and that seems like a reasonable thing to do, especially as conclusions are drawn from this data which impact the economic well being of every citizen. If, in fact, anthropogenic CO2 is not actually a substantial cause of increased warming, then taxing fossil fuel to prevent further warming makes no sense, especially if doing so significantly increases the cost of living.

CO2 does have a higher capacity for heat than water vapor, but water vapor is 26 times more prevalent in the atmosphere and therefore has a far greater total capacity for heat. What is unclear to me is how a compound such as CO2, with just a 30% greater heat capacity than water, making up .0385% of the atmosphere, can possibly compete with water vapor, which makes up a full 1% of the atmosphere, in relative ability to contain heat. This doesn't consider the radiative cooling of these substances that occurs each night, nor other phenomena such as fluid dynamics.

In short, policy is being debated now about the impact of fossil fuels on the environment, and proponents of "cap and trade" or carbon tax policies seem more than willing to increase the cost of such fuels significantly in an effort to reduce their use. This is largely based on the conjecture that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of increased global temperature. And yet the fossil record shows that temperatures have been warmer and CO2 has been as prevalent or more so in the past. I simply don't agree that Science has enough information to make the dire predictions that are being asserted by some in the AGW community.

The impact of these proposed regulations on economic growth and cost of living is significant and far reaching. The cynic in me finds more sinister reasons than saving the planet for such schemes, but the hard fact is that such increases in cost of living will hurt everyone, most so the poor throughout the world. And that assumes that all countries would institute similar policies, which is very doubtful. I'm the guy with a wife, mortgage and three kids that gets to live with the results of this, so pardon me if I'm just a little skeptical.

Regards,

Keith Stauffer

No one possesses a clear crystal ball. They are all fuzzy. But at least those of us with myopia can see what is going on right under our nose!

new paper reports TSI DID increase between 1980 and 2000

Scafetta, N., and R. C. Willson (2009), ACRIM-gap and TSI trend issue resolved using a surface magnetic flux TSI proxy model, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L05701, doi:10.1029/2008GL036307.

The abstract reads:

“The ACRIM-gap (1989.5-1991.75) continuity dilemma for satellite TSI observations is resolved by bridging the satellite TSI monitoring gap between ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results with TSI derived from Krivova et al.’s (2007) proxy model based on variations of the surface distribution of solar magnetic flux. ‘Mixed’ versions of ACRIM and PMOD TSI composites are constructed with their composites’ original values except for the ACRIM gap, where Krivova modeled TSI is used to connect ACRIM1 and ACRIM2 results. Both ‘mixed’ composites demonstrate a significant TSI increase of 0.033%/decade between the solar activity minima of 1986 and 1996, comparable to the 0.037% found in the ACRIM composite. The finding supports the contention of Willson (1997) that the ERBS/ERBE results are flawed by uncorrected degradation during the ACRIM gap and refutes the Nimbus7/ERB ACRIM gap adjustment Fröhlich and Lean (1998) employed in constructing the PMOD.”

The conclusion reads, in part:

This finding has evident repercussions for climate change and solar physics. Increasing TSI between 1980 and 2000 could have contributed significantly to global warming during the last three decades [Scafetta and West, 2007, 2008]. Current climate models [Intergovernmantal Panel on Climate Change, 2007] have assumed that the TSI did not vary significantly during the last 30 years and have therefore underestimated the solar contribution and overestimated the anthropogenic contribution to global warming.”

So there you go. The science is settled, the debate is over. It was the sun that caused the warming not the evil people driving their SUVs. And it is the sun that is behind the cooling now. Nothing we can do about it. Go on and live a guilt free lives. The world is not ending.

I think everyone is missing a very important, and very obvious, point here. Dr. Chameides, you need to go brush up on your elementary calculus a little. You state that the graphs are “the changes in average global temperatures”. CHANGES. This means that the graphs represent the derivatives of the actual temperature vs. time graphs.

So your statement that there has been a warming trend since the early 1900s is completely false. The consistent warming trend didn’t start until around 1980. It also means that today’s average global temperatures are likely lower than they were in the early 1900s.

By the same token you are wrong about the temperature decreasing since 1998. The temperatures have still been rising, just not rising as fast.

This may actually help your argument, because as others have pointed out we didn't put out much CO2 when you claim the warming trend started.

I've noticed a trend among some of the most die hard global warming denialists that can be expected to appear in response to any article on this site that deals with climate change. While many here express a healthy skepticism that desires only to see the facts, many show a reflexive tendency to first attack the methods to obtain facts, then the facts themselves, and finally the character of those who present the facts (though not necessarily in that order).

When the vast majority of scientists involved in climate and geological studies agree that global warming is real, and that humans share a good deal of the responsibility for it (if not the majority of responsibility), you might want to treat the opposing side with equal skepticism. In other words, the majority is not always right, but when you are dealing with people educated in the very subject being debated, the majority view is much more likely to be right. That would be the reasonable way to approach the subject, if in fact for the die-hards it is a debate.

However, this is increasingly falling into the pattern that bioligists familiar with dealing with creationists should recognize. To some people, the scientific method itself is open to debate, because they mistakenly believe everyone's belief and opinion is equal. Unfortunately, if they are not founded on facts and reason, they are not. Creationists do not debate the exact date of fossils based on carbon dating -- they argue that carbon dating itself is flawed. The most extreme elements of the global warming "skeptics" don't argue the amount of warming -- they argue the method of taking temperature. Creationists immediately seek to discredit anyone who believes in evolutionary biology by stating that they are atheists, and (by their version of reasoning, anyway)immoral. The red herring for the climate skeptics is that the proponents must be "greenies," "liberals," "socialists," or some "other" towards which the average Joe the Plumber should feel suspicion and disdain. To Dr. Chameides and all of the others who try to inform this debate as to why global warming is occurring, I must tell you that there is a certain very vocal segment of the population you will not reach, simply because reasonable arguments and facts do not work. For some, reason itself is debatable.

Dr. Chameides,

I agree that global temperatures are on the rise and that most of it is not due to the sun. (The estimated effect of solar heating in my posting on 03/10/09 ranged from 15% to 25%.)

You asked if I were ready to gamble the future on a bet that the sun will stay quiescent? A quiescent sun should certainly be taken into consideration when devising timelines and plans for dealing with global warming. But I don't think that's the main issue. My concern is: to what extent have scientists have compromised objectivity and impartiality in order to promote a political agenda? And what are the potential consequences?

The public has been presented with worse case scenarios for long term climate change (some of which, indeed, may be valid). In the meantime, we are evidently in an immediate period of global cooling that could last at least a decade. People should be told about it. If they aren't and the world continues to cool, the credibility of the scientific community will take a hit.

Add to this the global economy dropping off the cliff. People's confidence in the institutions of power has been shaken and uncertain and austere times lie ahead. Politicians face an uphill battle persuading the public to make even more sacrifices to combat global warming. Managed expectations that conflict with reality will only make their job harder.

Or maybe I need to brush up on my reading things more carefully skills. haha. You say changes in the article, but the explanation of your data says differences relative to an average. So I was wrong about the graph representing derivatives. I misunderstood, sorry.

To Mike_R: You are using same red herring tactics you arguing against. Even in the same sentence you denounce them. Calling them "denialists," "Joe the Plumber," lumping them in with creationists, and assuming they are unreasonably skeptical.

Five hurdles need to be cleared for drastic, expensive, forced government action to be warranted on climate change.

1) Is the earth warming ? Most would still argue yes despite recent cooling.

2) Are humans to blame ? I believe "yes" and so does the scientific consensus but there is still significant debate here. Also, how much of the warming is anthropogenic is simply impossible to know.

3) Is the warming a bad thing ? I suspect "yes" but most assume the earth's ecosystem and humans are very fragile. My guess is that humans and plants and animals can easily adapt to 0.1 deg per decade. The ecosystems are much more robust than most scientists want you to believe. Afterall, they all want to feel that their research is of utmost importance,

4) What is the forecast ? Frankly, we don't have a clue. Climate scientists seem to think that their forecasts can be believed but so far, they have waaaaay overestimated the warming. Climate science is in it's infancy, and frankly, we don't really have a clue.

5) What can we do about it ? Nothing that I've heard of presents a cure that's not far worse than the disease. The Kyoto treaty, if actually followed, would likely produce a reduction of temperature too small to even measure.

So, in summary, of five necessary hurdles for dramatic forced action, at most two or three have been met and even those are in dispute by qualified scientists.

The prudent action is to keep building our knowledge and databases. Keep the honest debate flowing. Keep exploring ways to be more energy efficient. Keep looking for solutions. But don't take any major, expensive policy action. It simply is not warranted.

A nice debate on climate change always rages on
EasternUSWx dot Com

While there are a few of the usual idiots spouting politics, the debate has a variety of well informed people on all sides of the issue.

If you are interested in the topic, I suggest you give it a read.

Observed temperature trend lines using satellite data....

1990-2008 .17 deg/decade
1995-2008 .10 deg/decade
2001-2008 -.12 deg/decade

IPCC forecasts
1990-2008 .34 deg/decade
1995-2008 .18 deg/decade
2001-2008 .18 deg/decade

All the IPCC forecasts have been too high so far but they did correctly predict warming (except that we have cooled since 2001).

The only problem with waiting and gaining knowledge to the point of irrefutability is that it could be way too late. A couple of degrees change most likely won't change things too much but when you get into more significant changes it will start to have effects on the world food and water supply. The longer we wait the more potential there is for catastrophic changes.

It's difficult to say by how much CO2 emmisions would have decrease to make a difference, but most likely significantly.

On who to believe, my opinion is to go with the consensus of the experts. I have conducted some of my own reading and I consider myself reasonably intelligent, but I am no climatologist. Experts on climate change generally do not include meteorologists, but the scientists that conduct the research into real climate change. And yes, there is a general consensus. Many of the aspects of global warming has been tested again and again by research from various scientists, and so far it has stood up to scrutiny. So I will go with the consenses in this case. Yes there are a few dissidents, but a consensus has been reached by the majority.

Who on this board can say that they are an expert in climate change to the point they can really refute the consensus?

I'm not saying debate is a bad thing (it's good), but you really can't debate unless you have something to debate with, such as an expert knowledge in the topic being debated. Otherwise the debate is subject to heresy. At this point I have to trust that proper debate has occurred and is occuring among the experts. After all this debate has been going on since the 70's. Until the consensus changes I will tend to beleive that global warming is occuring and human activity is at least partially responsible.

How do you melt glaciers without warming the Earth?

You would have to warm the air and water that circulates around the ice.

How do you do that?

To warm the air, add greenhouse gases and particulate pollution that holds heat.

To warm the ocean, melt the ice lid covering it as much as possible and increase its densities and concentrations of anything that will absorb heat as opposed to reflect heat.

Like poop. Add lots of poop around all coastlines.

Seems pretty straighforward.

How do you measure the temperature of the planet?

Probably impossible. How do you measure the temperature at the surface?

Look around.

How do you know if the ocean is warming?

Measure it at all depths all the time.

Also you can check the temperature sensitive lifeforms and see how they are doing.

Thanks Dr. Bill for the information, you can never have too much.

I look forward to the impact of the next El Nino and solar sunspot maximum over the next decade.

Talk about poop hitting the fan.

Maybe someone can clarify this for me. Global Warming supporters often point to the "Scientific Consensus". What I want to know is whether the scientific consensus agrees that the planet is getting warmer, or whether they agree that humans are causing it. Because again there is a huge difference.

A consensus that agrees that the Earth is getting warmer doesn't rule out the possibility that it is a natural process.

So I want to know which point the consensus agrees on.

Slanted: You make some good points. Let me respond to some of them.

1. I have never suggested that nuclear power should be off the table. Going forward with nuclear presents some problems - dealing with the waste, finding investors without huge gov't subsidies - but they are not insurmountable.

2. Walking the walk on efficiency and starting a cap and trade are one and the same. If will take decades of slow but steady emission reductions to address the climate change issue. Much of what we will do in the first decade or so will focus on efficiency and the like - stuff we need to do anyway. If it turns out the climate change concerns are wrong, no harm no foul. If we are right, than we have set up the marketplace in a way that sets us up to continue to ratchet down on emissions.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

JPB - As noted in other responses, it's a matter of time scale. When thinking about your future and the future of your children, what is more relevant: what the climate does on time scales of billions of years or decades and centuries?

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Seriously and company: Let's take a step back, shall we. I wrote a post on whether the past 10 years were warmer or cooler than the previous. Nothing about why. Nothing about what we should do about it. The responses are far more telling than anything I wrote.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Marybrown: Thank you for your comment. Let me just make two observations.

1. Forecasting climate is fundamentally different from meteorological forecasting. It is the difference between an initial value problem and a boundary value problem. That is why long-range meteorological forecasting, which is an initial value problem and based on detailed observations, is so difficult. Climate simulations are relatively insensitive to the initial values you use to "spin up" the model.

2. The fact that the warming over the past 50 years has not been catastrophic (a viewpoint not shared by all - depends on where you live) does not mean that future warming will be benign.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Eggman002:

1. The argument is sometimes made by those who argue against human interference in climate that you cannot use the presence or absence of correlations to establish cause and effect. And then when mechanistic explanations are provided for complex climate behavior, these same people use the presence or absence of correlations to argue against a cause-and-effect relationship. I respectfully suggest that that is what you are attempting to do here.

2. I would be the last person to suggest that "we need to spend more money on hard science." Then you would accuse me of using climate change to get more grant money. So I will leave that one alone. But let me ask you: at what point do you think it is appropriate to "treat the cause"? How certain do you think we need to be? Do you require the same level of certainty in other aspects of your life, like taking out insurance?

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Keith (aka kstauff), Thank you for your comments and good luck with the wife, mortgage, and three kids. I've been there and I know it's a heavy responsibility and it can't be easy these days. With regard to science having enough information, please consider the following: the National Academy of Sciences, established by Congress to advise the nation on scientific and technical issues, has stated the science is certain enough and the time for action has arrived.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

mwils51: The Scafetta paper is interesting. I have one problem with it. It only looks at 2/3's of the satellite record. If you include the entire record with all 3 of the solar cycles that have been observed, there is no net trend in solar radiation.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

GreenGrok:
1) I would have to agree. I am definitely suggesting that a correlation does not suggest cause and effect. I am not however trying to use correlation to argue against a mechanistic explanation. The fact is I have never seen a mechanistic explanation. If you can show me one, I would appreciate it.

2) I would never accuse you of using climate change to get grant money. I think we need to spend money on researching climate change. I just think we need to put it where it belongs. We need to stop researching stupid things like pumping pollution into big bags in the ocean, or underground, or dumping iron filings into the ocean.

If you want to know what I want to see, it is this. I would like to see an independent study which supports the theory that burning Fossil Fuels results in Global Warming.

I would like this study to use a single method for determining temperature and CO2 levels across all time periods being studied. Or if multiple methods are to be used, the same methods again must be used across all time periods. If you use different methods in different time periods how can you ensure their validity. The methods used to determine temperature and CO2 must be well documented.

I would like to see a minimal amount of "interpolation". If you don't have the numbers, then don't try and make some up. Again if any interpolation is done, I want to see that well documented.

I would like the final results to show that human actions have caused the increase in CO2. This should also show an obvious correlation between a rise in CO2 and a rise in temperature.

So far the studies I have seen fail in all these categories. They use different techniques to get the temperature depending on the period in history. The data is then interpolated to fill in the missing pieces, and finally the data does not seem to provide the solid correlation that they predict. Some correlation is seen, but not to the level that is predicted. The correlation in the past seems apparent but in the present it is a little less obvious. If you can't predict what will happen in 5 years, what makes you think you can predict 50 years?

And finally the study needs to be confirmed by secondary or tertiary sources who independently come to the same conclusions (and ideally using different methods).

Now, if you can show me studies that do this, I will shut up forever on this subject. The reality is that I am not asking for too much, I am just asking for people to follow the scientific method. So far this is not what I am seeing. That may be just because I am looking in the wrong place, and if that is the case I hope someone will steer me in the right direction.

Averaging (as in the 5 year average line) has a built in lag. In this case, the average is most accurate for 2.5 years or more before the latest date. The 5 year average needs another year or two before it gives a result that applies for today.

who cares if a 100 years is not enough to determine climate change. this is what we know and it looks bad!if we have average global temperatures past a 100 years ago then research it and make some conclusions of your own. until then this is what we know.
this article should at least raise enough "reasonable doubt" in one's mind for one to start acting on the way we north americans live. how much energy does it take you to get up and turn off a light, tv, computer, heater,or car. not much really, not much at all. if 500 million people did that it would have to make a difference!
it's not about who is right or who is wrong as it often does in today's society. this is our home, and it can be saved if we simply give up some of our very unnecessary comforts we so easily take for granted!

Dr. Chameides has mentioned his kids and grand kids several times. Quite admirably, they are his 'biggest concern,' but the fact is that his progeny's lives will be diminished either way; their restricted and highly regimented lives will be exchanged for saving our climate if his theories are right, or their restricted and highly regimented lives will be sacrificed for no reason if his theories are wrong.

I've read much discussion about the impact of 'doing nothing', but little about 'not doing enough.' What will the impact be on the 'carbon producers' when after complying with all of the regulations and emissions caps, the climatologists see no significant change in the climate? And how long will it take for those same climatologists to analyze the data and determine, one-way or the other, the effectiveness of those restrictions? If a generation or two has passed and the climate is still warming will the restrictions be increased or will the CO2 emissions be discredited as having little to do with the warming in the first place?

Assuming the other outcome, if the warming is halted, will the climatologists need to additionally see a few dozen years of cooling - returning the climate to a more acceptable temperature, before 'victory' is declared? And, if as I suspect, those who imagine themselves as 'manipulators of society' would prefer to never return to the 'old ways', and if man's activities do in fact influence climate temperature, wouldn't we then be in danger of a catastrophe in the other extreme? Is it possible for reduced CO2 emissions to magnify a natural cooling cycle? These are questions all of us need answers to before being drafted into a 'multi-generational' war. In every war, there must be an end game, an 'exit strategy'.

Most of those warning us about a coming catastrophe eagerly offer up their findings, pronounce their diagnosis, and prescribe our medicine. Don't most prescriptions come with an expiration date; "take these pills for 3-weeks", etc? What I mean is, no one has told us how long must we take our medicine before the illness is cured. Has anyone even offered a guess? If the build-up of CO2 took 150 years to reach critical mass, how many years will the industrialized world be required to swallow these pills? Is this a chronic illness? Is this a 'forever' prescription? When will the doctors know if the medicine is working? If we're now observing a 10-year cooling trend (or stabilization trend) when would such evidence be recognized as a fever reduction - that the patient was on the mend? How do we not know NOW that this isn't the case - that our climate's fever is breaking?

Will humans 100 years from now be told by earth scientists that data has just been analyzed which proves that their heroic ancestors (us) managed to avert a climate disaster and that it's now confirmed that the warming trend ended 75 years ago? YOU ARE NO LONGER QUARANTINED AND CAN RESUME A NORMAL LIFE. Of course, such an announcement would be idiotic and pointless - no one will know, or care, what a 'normal' way of live is. CONVENIENT.

Dr. Chameides,

Thanks for your kind wishes. A brief review of paleoclimatology's available information suggests that even the most catastrophic predictions of today's global warming proponents are minor compared to the fluctuations that have occurred in the last 65 million years. While I am not convinced of CO2's role in warming, there is certainly evidence that the earth's climate is slightly warmer relative to 100 years ago, assuming consistent measurement accuracies of course.

However, in broader geologic terms, the earth is much cooler than it has been in the past. In fact, based upon the previous pattern of warming and cooling, the earth is likely to experience significant cooling in the future, albeit in scales larger than the ones being discussed above. The causes for this have been theorized to include methane releases, volcanic activity, variation in the earth's orbit around the sun and even the sun's orbit around the galactic center as well as its "dipping" through the galactic plane.

In other words, there are numerous reasons proposed for earth's climate change, and we're talking about temperature changes an order of magnitude greater than those being discussed here with regards to CO2. It seems to me that rather than rather than spending billions on research directed at avoiding these changes, research might be better directed at finding ways to live with such changes.

And when it comes to policy, certainly conservation and efficiency are noble goals. But wholesale shifts in how energy is produced and the costs related to such shifts should be weighed against the possible gains. In my view, such massive shifts in the cost of energy production for such a small and theoretical benefit does not make any sense.

Further, little is ever discussed of the possible benefits of warming. After all, a warming of the planet by even a few degrees seems to carry far less negative impact on human habitability than what appears to be the inevitable cooling that will likely occur at some point in the future. I mean, surely there are some benefits to warming, just as there are disadvantages. The disadvantages of an ice age are quite pronounced - considerably less agricultural land, whole civilizations forced to move south, less flowing fresh water, etc. Why are such benefits of warming never discussed by the proponents of global warming?

Again, I appreciate your time here. I look forward to hearing more about the effects of global warming on habitability, both positive and negative.

Eggman, I don't know if I can give you exactly what you want, but why don't you start with this report from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences: dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate-change-final.pdf.

For your information, the academy was established by Congress when Lincoln was president to advise the nation on scientific and technical issues.

It is THE independent scientific organization America uses to resolve complex issues like climate change, and the academy has stated that "(t)he scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action ... to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions." (www.nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf)

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com
Twitter: theGreenGrok

Dr. Chameides,

I'd like to thank you for not only submitting your article to PopSci, but also for continuing to respond to the comments of your skeptics.

However, there is one submitter to whom (I believe) you gave an incomplete response. Keith Stauffer brought up the issue of water vapor, as a whole, contributing much more to global warming than CO2.

You responded with:

"...please consider the following: the National Academy of Sciences, established by Congress to advise the nation on scientific and technical issues, has stated the science is certain enough and the time for action has arrived."

If water vapor is at least an order of magnitude more significant than CO2 in terms of global warming, doesn't spending trillions of dollars and reshaping our economy based on CO2 production seem like tinkering around the edges of the problem rather than working towards a significant solution?

If you could discuss the issue of water vapor and it's impact on global warming, I would greatly appreciate it.

boiaarni,

I think the reason water vapor isn't usually considered is the fact that we cannot control the level of water vapor in the atmosphere without also controlling the level of CO2. The amount of water a particular volume of air can hold is proportional to the air temperature, hence "relative humidity" in your daily weather report. Adding energy to the system via heat, therefore, will also increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. For this reason, CO2 is a higher priority of focus, since by increasing the greenhouse effect CO2 is playing on the atmosphere we are also increasing the amount of water vapor in it. Note, also, that burning carbon fuel emits two exhaust products: CO2 (or CO if the limiting reactant is oxygen) and H2O. Burning any fuel that emits CO2 will also emit water vapor.

One interesting point I don't see discussed much; the statistics are thrown around occasionally to show that the current CO2 level in the atmosphere is higher than any other known point in time. If this is true and CO2 is indeed the primary contributing factor to the global warming trend, then a simple reduction in CO2 emissions will not curb the trend. A more drastic approach would be needed, one that reduces emissions to below the level in which CO2 is being reprocessed and removed from the system by the environment. Going from "Above the safe level and rising" to just "Above the safe level and rising slowly" is not an effective compromise.

Dr. Chameides chose to ignore my question about annual five-year averages rather than only four of them. Someone else independently created five-year running average charts from a different popular source.
"GISS Feb Reported: Trend Since Jan 2001 still negative."
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/giss-feb-reported-trend-since-jan-2001-still-negative/

The problem with global temperature is roughly the same as with sea level. There has been a general increase over 150 years in both. The problem is finding a tight correlation between either and CO2 concentration. The chart above shows that temperatures went up when CO2 did not measurably. The serious CO2 increase only began with World War II. Temperatures went up in the decade before it, and then stopped for decades while CO2 rose, then rose along with CO2, and have now stalled, although CO2 continues to climb.

Sea level has been rising at a remarkably stable rate, since before CO2 began rising and without any appreciable dependence on temperature.

There are computer models that predict faster rising sea levels and rising temperatures as a consequence of CO2. There are computer models that project stock market performance. Computer models are not proof.

Maybe temperatures are driven upwards by CO2 but the trend is temporarily masked by other factors. I don't know. I don't mind hearing this hypothesis, which is not unreasonable, but I object to being preached to by people who have no proof.

I suspect the vertical access for the graphs climate change 1 and climate change 2 are somewhat misleading. they should be "temperature anomaly" not "temperature change". Then, the graph would show that while temps of the last 10 years is above the 100 year average, or baseline temp, they have been declining since the high in 1998.

As for melting glaciers, Greenland's melting has actually been decelerating over the last 17 years. And, the inland ice mass is thickening, probably offsetting any melting at the coast.

Regarding Antarctica, only the western Antarctic Peninsula has had melting and that ice loss has been offset by the increase in ice mass in the eastern half of the continent. Strangely, underwater volcanic activity, rather than man-made global warming is the most likely cause of the AP melt.

As for ocean temps warming, the Argos buoys have recorded a slight cooling over the last 5 years contrary to the computer models and the assumptions of the AGW theory.

As for 1998 and 2006 being the hottest years, turns out the data was wrong due to the Y2K bug and the warmest years in the US were 1934, 1998 and 1921.

The urban heat island effect is relevant if sensors are placed near artificial heat sources. there has been numerous incidents of surface station sensors places near AC exhaust vents, on top of concrete pads, etc. Therefore, better to trust satellite data vs. surface station data.

It's fun to see the global warming alarmists spin and back pedal as data keeps upending their dire predictions. Recall the prediction that we'd get more and more severe hurricanes because of global warming after Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005? We've had three of the most quiet and mild hurricane seasons since. Recall the prediction that 2007 would be the hottest ever? One of the biggest temperature declines. How about the prediction that the Arctic would be ice free at the end of the summer of 2008? The icecap increased from 2007 by an area the size of Germany.

However, politicians need to scare folks into higher taxes and more regulation of our private lives so what's a little corruption of the scientific process for some research funds or the greater good? Hansen and his ilk are like the tobacco scientists, the scientists that pushed overpopulation in the 1970's or eugenics in the first half of the 20th Century. History will look on these years as the time science and media were compromised by a pseudo-religion.

Chefboiaarni:

You are correct, water vapor, not CO2, is the most important greenhouse gas.

An increase in CO2 in and of itself causes a relatively small warming. But that small warming from CO2 is amplified by a water vapor feedback process: water vapor concentrations increase as temperatures increase (and vice versa). We've all seen this temperature-water vapor dependence. It's why dew forms at night (when temperatures cool and the air holds less vapor) and burns off during the day (as temperatures rise, allowing the air to hold more water vapor); it's also why water beads up on a cold window pane in the winter.

So when CO2 increases, temperatures increase slightly; these higher temperatures cause an increase in water vapor, which causes an additional increase in temperatures, which causes an increase in water vapor, and so on. The result is a vicious cycle with a much larger temperature increase than would have happened if only CO2 increased.

That’s the theory, but does the feedback really exist?

Satellite observations show that it does: they show that water vapor concentrations have increased in the past decades as predicted by the water vapor theory. (See this 2008 article from Geophysical Research Letters www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL035333.shtml and this 2009 article from Science www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/323/5917/1020 .) To be fair, I should point out that a recent paper by Paltridge and co. reports a negative trend in water vapor in the upper troposphere based on high-altitude balloon measurements, so-called radiosondes (www.springerlink.com/content/m2054qq6126802g8). But as any climate scientist will tell you and in the authors' own words: "radiosonde humidity measurements are notoriously unreliable and are usually dismissed out-of-hand as being unsuitable for detecting trends of water vapor in the upper troposphere." In other words, be very cautious in assuming that the trends they report are accurate. The authors themselves recognize that their results are inconsistent with the satellite data and make no claim that the satellite data are incorrect or that their data are correct.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

Twitter: theGreenGrok

GreenGrok: Thanks for the article (dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate-change-final.pdf). It was well written and certainly addresses many issues.

I particularly like the fact that it points out the areas that we don't fully understand, and those that we are fairly confident about. I would recommend this article to anyone who is interested in climate change. Particularly skeptics. If you don't know both sides of the argument then you really don't know anything.

My one complaint is that it does talk a bit about Carbon Sequestration which in my mind is a horrible idea. I hate the idea of taking CO2 and sweeping it under the rug. That is treating the symptom, not the problem (The problem being the creation of the CO2, not the presence of the CO2).

I think that what we need to do is the following:

A) Continue putting money into research on the causes of Climate Change and predicting Climate Change.

B) Hedge our bets. In case Climate Change is real and while we wait for the data to prove/disprove it, put some money and effort into technologies and ideas to solve the problem. But we need to focus on those ideas which address the actual problem (Burning Fossil Fuels). We should also focus our efforts on those technologies that have long term benefits regardless of whether Climate Change is real or not. Reducing or eliminating our reliance on fossil fuels is a good idea because one day we will run out. This will happen whether climate change exists or not. Also, reducing pollution is good for our health so that is another good reason.

C) Stop sensationalizing. I think a big part of the problem is both sides pointing to single events and ideas and saying that they prove or disprove climate change. People also try to blow the ideas out of proportion. Hurricane Katrina is case and point. Climate Change supporters point to Katrina and say that this is what our future will look like. Katrina sucked. No doubt about that. But the major problem in Katrina was the failure of the levies (a man made issue), not the storm itself. One hurricane does not prove Global Warming. Just like a few years of cooler weather does not disprove Global Warming.

Anyway, thanks again GreenGrok for all your info. I wouldn't say I am a convert as of yet, but I believe that knowing both sides of the argument is important. I also think you make a strong enough point that I would support well thought out ideas to reduce our impact on the climate. Though in truth I probably would have supported those to begin with.

Let me respond to several more of the comments in a single post.

a3halpha - We will know better in 2.5 years; in the mean time, this is what the data show in terms of the actual average temperatures over the past several 5-year increments.

thekillsaw2.0 - Another point of view! Thanks for the comments.

URwrite - That's why I believe we should start slow and steady and see how things play out.

Just like if your kid has a fever, you give him or her some Tylenol right away rather than wait for the fever to break on its own. The first things we need to do are no-brainers - become more efficient; invest in modern, low-carbon technologies.

Does not seem all that regimented to me.

------
Dr. Bill Chameides
Dean, Duke University

Nicholas School of the Environment

www.nicholas.duke.edu | www.TheGreenGrok.com

Twitter: theGreenGrok

Dr. Chameides,

Thanks again for sticking around to answer questions on this subject. This article (http://www.popsci.com/environment/gallery/2009-03/top-ten-greenhouse-gases) here at PopSci indicates that water vapor makes up 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on earth. Can you confirm this range and comment on it's ambiguity?

Further, could you also indicate what the effective percentages are for the other primary greenhouse gases Methane and Carbon Dioxide (and the other gases listed in the article if you happen to have the data handy)? Do scientists know how much each of these gases contribute to the total greenhouse effect?

Finally, several of the gases listed in the article are used in the semiconductor industry. Can you confirm whether any of these gases would be required for the manufacture of photovoltaic (PV) cells?

GreenGrok: I read this in a book today and I thought you might appreciate this quote. The quote is not referring to Climate Change, but in the context of the novel I don't think it is a huge stretch to use it in referring to climate change. In any case I think it quite nicely sums up one of the recurring themes of your posts.

"A life spent shaping a world I want [my Children] to inherit, not one I fear [my children] shall inherit, this strikes me as a life worth the living." - David Mitchell, "Cloud Atlas"

I appreciated reading these exchanges. One assumption by the GW denialists, however, needs to be corrected. Taking measures to stop CO2 emmissions is not some great economic sacrific. it can be as simple as turning off your car and walking into the restaurant instead of sitting in your car and idling as you wait to get up to the drive in window. Actually, most of what brings down CO2 emissions is healthy for all involved.
The only people who might lose economically are the purveyors of fossil fuel, unfortunately, their influence and their ability to manipulate public opinion is vast. db

Bucnews' assertion is wrong. Reducing CO2 emissions requires great economic sacrifice. Obama's cap-and-trade plan would cost $2 trillion. Other countries have opposed cap-and-trade plans and resistance to Kyoto II precisely because of the cost. Thankfully, it looks like even Obama will be ditching cap-and-trade and instead will focus on health care reform for now.

What brings down CO2 emissions isn't healthy for all involved. Ethanol use has resulted in food shortages, price hikes and clearing out of rain forests to raise food crops. CO2 is necessary for plant life. More abundant and healthy plant life provides more food for us carbon-based life forms.

It sounds like Bucnews has drunk the alarmist Kool Aid. Amazing what a former C-average student and divinity school dropout can pull.

First of all Dr. Bill i think you are a brilliant leader in the scientific community and if half of these sceptics understood the science as a whole instead of picking out the little inacurracies in the measuring equipment and so on and so forth then we would be well on our way to solveing this problem instead of argueing whether or not we are the cause of this. Here is the fundamental difference in our civilization in the midevil warming period as compared to now is that in the midevil period the population of the planet had not even reached 1 billion people yet and the only air pollutants we emitted then were from burning wood and maybe very small amounts of coal and oils but not the high carbon concetrates we use today. Now the Earth is populated with almost 7 billion people ( most of whome were born in the last 130 years ) and the people on this blog must forget about that little thing called the industrial revolution in which we started consuming these fossil fuels at rates that would have been unfathomable to the people in the midevil period and heres the big variable in this is that we now have machinery like automobiles and gas and coal powered turbines that each of them by themselves probably emits more carbon in one day than an entire country emitted in the midevil period. thats my first argument with most of these bloggers. I guess they add thier automobiles and electric bills into this natural cycle thier talking about. Just think about this for a second in a non scientific way try to imagine yourself in the midevil period say you lived in England for instance and you go outside to tend to the crops what do you see? any highways? pavement? skyscrapers? a 747 flying across the sky? any powerplants? cars, tractor trailors? oil derricks? no you see none of that do you, you see prestine countryside and trees everywhere absorbing the little bit of carbon the population was emitting get my point those things you think are in the natural cycles of this planet are actually not there were no plastic bags floating in the ocean or beaches covered in cigarette lighters it was us and nature coexisting together. Its not just global warming or climate change i worry about its the complete exploitation of the natural world i mean i can walk outside my house to the creek and walk down the creek and find so much trash, abandoned cars all kinds of unnatural things. Its disgusting do you think the people in the midevil period had that problem? I dont. Its so bad that i have seriously debated reclassifying the human species from mammals to parasites. I love this planet and all i see anymore is destruction on a massive level. Thats just something i think about on a daily basis. I mean when you think of the USA you think of freedom and civil liberties and our individual rights but what about this planet and the rest of the creatures that inhabit it dont they have rights to dont they deserve the same liberties and freedoms we take for granted? I know we are changing this planet in every way!! I am only 26 years old and i have watched these changes with my own 2 eyes and they are not natural!!! Here is a little experiment i want all the critics of climate change to try. I want you to grab a glass of water, go out to your car and start it, now hold the glass of water to the exhaust pipe until it turns a funky shade of yellow, now drink it!!! Bad idea right? then what could possibly make you think we are not at the very least contributing to global climate change? Our planet is crying out for help and it seems to me that very few are listening and it brings tears to my eyes to know that my children probably wont be able enjoy all of the things i consider beautifull in this world and its because of us and our subsudized life styles i mean we are all subsudized by oil all of us when we go to the store and buy something we are not paying the price it actually cost to produce that item and its all because of fossil fuels and to think that because we have grown that selfish and lazy that our selfishness and laziness may equate to the total destruction and demise of everything we hold dear to us is sickening. thats all i have to say to the critics and thank you Dr. Bill for your attempts to turn things around but after reading these articles i honestly dont think its going to happen!!!

Listening to the news, I heard about research that supports the fact that driving to work, breathing the air pollutions that oil powered vehicles on the road are producing, is as bad as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. The advice to deal with this problem is to close the outside air vent and to use A/C. The problem with that suggestion is days when you need to use the defroster. The defroster will not work without opening the outside air vent.

I say it time we find another way of getting to work, find a better way to pick up groceries, a cleaner way to get to doctor's office. We need to replace our oil powered vehicles with vehicles built and powered by renewable power sources.

Ellen

Bill,
Your efforts to enlighten are admirable. I think the populace would be better served if you spent more time writing your articles for the masses than in nitpicking with individual pro-pollutionists in the comment section. They are tying up your time, keeping you from spreading important science to a greater audience.

Keep up the good work!

Bottom line the planet has been around for billions of years and gone through natural cycles all that time. It is the ultimate huberous to think that our effect on the climate is going to stop or reverse what the planet already had in mind. All we have ever done is hasten or delay the inevitable. CLimate change is a fact of existance and instead of trying to prevent it our energies would be better spent on learning to adapt to the coming changes whatever they may be. Earth friendly housing is a start, free energy, less pollution are all great ways to preserve the human race.

I recently got the DVD for BBC - Planet Earth and was blown away by the impact we have made in last 40-50 years on the delicate ecosystem. There are so many species living in co-existence and our desire for natural resources is killing the ecosystem. The planet has so much beauty in the deep forests of Amazon and peaks of Himalayas which we should explore and cherish rather than destroy.

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Global warming is our problem, to solve it not only by one country, we must work together to make our planet become a better place for our children.
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