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Global Warming Study Finds No Grounds for Climate Skeptics' Concerns
Independent investigation of the key issues skeptics claim can skew global warming figures reports that they have no real effect
Climate sceptics' criticisms of the evidence for global warming make no difference to the emerging picture of a warming world, according to the most comprehensive, independent review of historical temperature records to date.
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, investigated several key issues that sceptics claim can skew global warming figures and found they had no meaningful effect on world temperature trends.
Researchers at the Berkeley Earth project compiled more than a billion temperature records dating back to the 1800s from 15 sources around the world and found that the average global land temperature has risen by around 1C since the mid-1950s.
This figure agrees with the estimate of global warming arrived at by major groups that maintain official records on the world's climate, including Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), and the Met Office's Hadley Centre, with the University of East Anglia, in the UK.
"My hope is that this will win over those people who are properly sceptical," Richard Muller, a physicist and head of the Berkeley Earth project, told the Guardian.
"Some people lump the properly sceptical in with the deniers and that makes it easy to dismiss them, because the deniers pay no attention to science. But there have been people out there who have raised legitimate issues," he said.
In the Berkeley Earth project, Muller sought to cool the debate over climate change by creating the world's largest open database of temperature records, with the aim of producing a transparent and independent assessment of global warming.
The initial reluctance of government groups to release all their methods and data, and the fiasco over emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in 2009, gave the project added impetus.
The team, which includes Saul Perlmutter, joint winner of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate, has submitted four papers to the journal Geophysical Research Letters that describe their work to date.
Going public with results before they are peer-reviewed is not standard practice, but Muller said the decision to circulate the papers before publication was part of a long-standing academic tradition of sanity-checking results with colleagues. "We will get much more feedback from making these papers public before publication," he said.
Climate sceptics have criticised official global warming figures on the grounds that many temperature stations are poor quality, based largely in cities, and that data are tweaked by hand. However, the Berkeley study found that the so-called urban heat island effect, which makes cities warmer than surrounding rural areas, is locally large and real, but does not contribute significantly to average land temperature rises. This is because urban regions make up less than 1% of the Earth's land area.
And while stations considered "poor" might be less accurate, they recorded the same average warming trend.
"We have looked at these issues in a straightforward, transparent way, and based on that, I would expect legitimate sceptics to feel their issues have been addressed," Muller said.
Nevertheless, one prominent US climate sceptic, Anthony Watts, claimed to have identified a "basic procedural error" concerning time periods used in the research, and urged the authors to revise the paper.
Jim Hansen, head of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the Guardian he had not read the research papers but was glad Muller was looking at the issue, describing him as "a top-notch physicist".
"It should help inform those who have honest scepticism about global warming," said Hansen. "Of course, presuming that he basically confirms what we have been reporting, the deniers will then decide that he is a crook or has some ulterior motive. As I have discussed in the past, the deniers, or contrarians, if you will, do not act as scientists, but rather as lawyers. As soon as they see evidence against their client (the fossil fuel industry and those people making money off business-as-usual), they trash that evidence and bring forth whatever tidbits they can find to confuse the judge and jury."
Peter Thorne at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites in North Carolina and chair of the International Surface Temperature Initiative, said: "This takes a very distinct approach to the problem and comes up with the same answer, and that builds confidence that pre-existing estimates are in the right ballpark. There is very substantial value in having multiple groups looking at the same problem in different ways.
"Openness and transparency is a must, particularly now with climate change being so politicised, but more to the point, with the huge socioeconomic decisions that rest on it."
Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at UEA who was at the centre of the Climategate incident, said: "I look forward to reading the finalised paper once it has been reviewed and published. These initial findings are very encouraging and echo our own results and our conclusion that the impact of urban heat islands on the overall global temperature is minimal."
Some scientists were critical of the project and Muller's decision to release the papers before they had been peer reviewed. Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at Exeter University said: "These studies seem to confirm the global warming estimated from the existing datasets, which is pleasing but not exactly a surprise to those of us who know how carefully the existing datasets are put together.
"It is surprising, however, that the authors believe that this news is so significant that they can't wait for peer review, especially when their conclusions aren't exactly revolutionary."
The Berkeley Earth project has been attacked by some climate bloggers, who point out that one of the funders is linked to Koch Industries, a company Greenpeace called a "financial kingpin of climate science denial".
Muller points out the project is organised under the auspices of Novim, a Santa Barbara-based nonprofit organisation that uses science to find answers to the most pressing issues facing society and to publish them "without advocacy or agenda".
Other donors include the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (funded by Bill Gates), and the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley Lab. The next phase of the project will focus on warming trends in the oceans.
70 Comments so far
Show AllIt is difficult to understand how anyone could dispute the simple fact of a warmer climate. Anyone who does any kind of gardening in the temperate zone must notice the dramatic way the temperatures simply don't fall on even the clearest calmest nights like they used to. Even the normally cold PA/MD/WV highlands have seen a frost yet. Oddly, higher elevations did see a few inches of wet snow on Oct 2, yet above freezing temperatures on the clear nights that followed.
It's actually very easy to understand: oil companies alone make ten of billions each year on fossil fuels. They spend millions every year on propaganda and political corruption to protect their cash cows because they're obviously highly motivated by the enormous profits to do so, regardless of the catastrophic consequences.
Just follow the money.
"It is difficult to understand how anyone could dispute the simple fact of a warmer climate."
I've been following Muller's work a bit. One thing he found is that some parts of the world do show a cooling trend, even though the global average temps are rising.
Muller seems to be a pretty credible researcher. As this article indicates, he knows the difference between honest sceptics and dogmatic deniers. He recognized, correctly, that the ClimatGate emails demonstrated fraud. He also recognized that many temperature-monitoring stations were indeed poorly located. Therefore, he went back to went back to Square One wherever necessary, any re-analyzed data.
We'll have to see what comes out of the peer review; there's always the chance that he made some sort of systematic error in his analyses. But since the behaviors blamed for AGW are almost all destructive, unsustainable lunacies, there's no reason to delay changing the way we live until peer reviewers weigh in.
---"He recognized, correctly, that the ClimatGate emails demonstrated fraud."---
Correctly? An independent investigation of this so-called "climate gate", showed nothing of the sort. All authors of the illegally hacked e-mails which were supposed to show scientific fraud were cleared of all the allegations of misconduct. Casual conversation in e-mails shows nothing.
"Correctly?"
Yes. Here's where you can read the report from the Institute of Physics (IOP), which the House of Commons commissioned to investigate the case.
http://www.iop.org/policy/consultations/energy_environment/file_41855.pdf
Here's where you can read Richard Muller's reaction to ClimateGate, and his recognition that the sceptics' doubts (as opposed to the deniers') were legitimate:
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/04/qa-with-richard-muller-a-physicist.html
Let's remember, too, that we don't get to have it both ways. We can't embrace the present article's support for global warming, then turn around and say that Muller was all wet regarding the ClimateGate emails,
The second link you provide says nothing about fraud in the climate-gate emails. It just says that they were discussing proxy (paleoclimate) data, not contemporary measurements. So it iseems inappropriate to say, based on this link, that Muller felt that the guys in England were engaged in fraud.
Richard Muller is a known crank, a loyal employee of the Koch brothers. It hardly matters whether Muller agrees with the other dimwits who have unsuccessfully attempted to smear climate scientists at Hadley CRU.
See: Koch-funded scientist Richard Muller makes up story about Al Gore, Ralph Cicerone, and polar bears.
Muller has given presentations in which he has misrepresented the "climategate" emails (specifically the infamous "Hide the decline" one) .
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-crock-watching-muller-trying-hide-decline
Muller is extremely arrogant and I think he genuinely believed when he began the BEST project that the results of his project were going to show climate scientists to be a bunch of incompetent fools (at best) .
He apparently thought he was going to upend climate science and be looked upon as some sort of hero.
This was Muller's last chance to make a name for himself scientifically. His physics sure hasn't done it for him (Richard Who?).
But instead of being lionized as a giant of science like his mentor Alvarez (who won a Nobel Prize), Muller will go down in history as merely a footnote who ended up confirming the results of others (climate scientists like Jim Hansen and even Phil Jones who was caught up in the climategate affair) in almost every regard.
It's actually very ironic -- and more than a little humorous.
And perhaps the funniest part of all is that Muller has put the last nail in the coffin of Tony Watts, one of the biggest purveyors of "climate confusion" on the web, who was initially all for the BEST project but now has nothing good to say about it -- now that it has contradicted virtually all his claims about the supposed effects of poor surface station siting on the temperature record (which turned out to be nil).
It's all rather amusing.
"One thing he found is that some parts of the world do show a cooling trend, even though the global average temps are rising.
He recognized, correctly, that the ClimatGate emails demonstrated fraud.
He also recognized that many temperature-monitoring stations were indeed poorly located. Therefore, he went back to went back to Square One wherever necessary, any re-analyzed data.".
Anyone with an internet connection a few minutes can (and should) look into your claims..
First, Muller is hardly the first one to recognize that the warming has not been uniform the world over. Climate scientists have NEVER claimed that every square inch of the earth has experienced a temperature increase. That's simply a straw man.
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Second, your claim about the emails demonstrating fraud is an outright lie -- and libel as well. The fact is, several investigations CLEARED the scientists involved of any wrongdoing.
Third, Muller and the other members of the "BEST" team are hardly the first to analyze the data to see what effect (if any) station siting had on the result (almost none). NOAA did the same and came to the same conclusion: it had very little impact.
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Fourth, your claim that "We'll have to see what comes out of the peer review; there's always the chance that he made some sort of systematic error in his analyses" either shows a lack of understanding or is simply disingenuous.
The FACT is, Muller is no tthe only one involved in the BEST project. He is only one of several scientists (a Nobel prize winning physicist among them). And Muller et al are hardly the first to analyze the climate data and it would be a very large coincidence indeed if their independent analysis is plagued by some "systematic errors" that have just happened to yield results that are extremely similar to the results found by other scientists (eg, at NASA, NOAA, HadCru). Possible? o f course. So is being abducted by aliens. But likely? Not very
Fifth: your sentence "But since the behaviors blamed for AGW are almost all destructive, unsustainable lunacies, there's no reason to delay changing the way we live until peer reviewers weigh in" is simply INCOHERENT. It's jibberish.
But on the offhand chance that you meant "there is no reason to change the way we live until peer reviewers weigh in", then I'd just have to say that your claim that we have to wait for peer review in this one case greatly exaggerates the importance of the BEST project. The results of Muller et al basically agree with those of climate scientists. These are not original results, simply yet another confirmation of a large body of evidence that shows the earth is warming and that human's are largely responsible (through burning of fossil fuels)
And your comment about waiting for peer review is actually a real hoot given all the non-peer-reviewed crap that people like yourself post on the web about climate science all the time.
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But as i said, people can confirm what i am saying by simply doing a little research. And they should.
But they should most certainly NOT listen to you. Because you simply can't bring yourself to admit that climate scientists got the temperature record right and that all the "skpetic' claims of climate scientists fraudulently "manipulating" data to get the outcome they want (warming) are just outright lies.
I don't think you got my point: Muller did things the right way, and his conclusions support global warming. Even if they didn't, we should still move toward a sustainable lifestyle.
To answer some of your objections:
"Anyone with an internet connection a few minutes can (and should) look into your claims."
Of course they should. So I just posted the links above, See my post of Oct 21 2011 - 8:03am.
"First, Muller is hardly the first one to recognize that the warming has not been uniform the world over."
I never said he was. Just that when he went back and re-analyzed data to take into account the issues raised by honest skeptics, his results confirmed that.
"And your comment about waiting for peer review is actually a real hoot given all the non-peer-reviewed crap that people like yourself post on the web about climate science all the time."
I have not done this. If you say otherwise, then prove your accusation by giving the links where I did. Be sure to provide details on how you --supposedly-- identified me as the author.
"But they should most certainly NOT listen to you."
Funny--that's the same thing the deniers say when they're shown Muller's work.
But no biggie. I've found out the hard way that there's not much of a constituency for digging into original sources to see what was really said, on just about *any* subject.
"I've found out the hard way that there's not much of a constituency for digging into original sources to see what was really said, on just about *any* subject."
..which of course, is what you (and others like you) rely on so heavily when you make false claims like "the Climategate emails demonstrated fraud" -- found to be false by several investigations/reviews. (and spare me the conspiracy theories about all the scientists being in cahoots and covering for one another)
..and your claim that "Muller did things the right way" seems to imply that everyone else did it wrong, which is simply nonsense.
First, "right" is a subjective term. There are lots of different quite valid ways of doing things in science that yield the same answer. In fact, when the same answer "pops" out from many different methods, scientists gain confidence in the results. That's the whole point of doing independent analysis.
Muller's results are nearly the same (within the associated uncertainties) as those arrived at by scientists at NASA, NOAA and even HadCru using quite different (though perfectly valid) methods.
But its pretty clear that you simply can't admit to yourself that climate scientists (at NASA, NOAA and HadCru) got this stuff right (and with valid methods) all on their lonesome.
But there's nothing I can do to help you on that one.
And no one needs to trust me on this. Anyone can download the data, methods and even computer code (eg, from NASAGIS where it has been available for YEARS) and redo the analysis themselves
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There was no fraud in the emails. And we already have tons of evidence and proof of AGW. In fact, as has always been the case, there hasn't been a single published paper to prove anything BUT AGW.
Which is worse: somebody like Rick Perry, who alters and suppresses data in order to serve Big Oil; or somebody like Oblahblah, who simply doesn't give a damn what the truth is while serving Big Oil?
And, here's another story on a different kind of warming: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/10/03/american-inferno/
Apparently, we can warm not only the atmosphere, but the ground below our feet!
Yeah, burning coal mines are an old story. One correction to the article - there are no coal mines in the Carolinas.
Although the burning coal seam story might be old to you, it's new to me. I had no idea that this was happening until today. Not a single person I forwarded this story to today had heard of it, either, and I'd say that they represent a "more informed" portion of the population than the average American. Strange, huh?
Hm. Not sure where she got her information on locations of coal seam fires. She doesn't say that there are mines in Carolinas, just coal veins (seams) that are burning. Sometimes, I wish citations were more rigorously used in journalism....
Over the years I've seen several news articles on burning coal seams, as well as documentaries and references to these in science-oriented magazines. Perhaps your "more informed portion of the population" isn't really so well-informed as you may think.
Information is easily available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_seam_fire
I'm a scientist who regularly reads scientific journals that touch on many different topics across the sciences. I haven't seen a single article on this topic. In fact, I just searched the journal Science, one of the top-ranked scientific journals in the world, and it didn't bring up a single hit for "Centralia, Pennsylvania." There is a grand total of one article on the topic of "coal seam fires" from 2003, even when searching the archives (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/299/5610/1177.2.summary). Nature, which is similarly ranked as Science, also has a grand total of one article devoted to the topic that pulls up after a search for "coal seam fire," dating from 2007 (http://www.nature.com/news/2007/071122/full/news.2007.281.html).
The "friends" I was referring to earlier are professors at various universities around the country, people who are experts in various humanities and science fields. They're informed. And, yes, after reading that article, I had found the wikipedia entry. However, wikipedia isn't always accurate - I have had to go in and correct more than a few entries in which the science was wrong. Therefore, I tend to take wikipedia entries "with a grain of salt."
If you lived in Centralia, PA you'd know what a coal seam fire is about. Read "The Day The Earth Caved In" by Joan Quigley
If you lived in any of the Appalachian coal fields you would know about and smell the coal seam/mine fires. The shale-waste piles from coal mining (called "boney piles" in PA) used to burn (spontaneous combustion, lightning or man-made fires) for decades too. They used to deliberately allow them to burn, because the by-product would be a hard red clinker called "red dog" which was useful for road gravel or spreading on the roads in winter.
I have lived near places where Appalachian MTR was going on, but only briefly. Never heard about these coal seam/mine fires, even when living there. But, then again, a lot of bad things go on there that aren't widely broadcast through the MSM.
Will check out that book... and maybe visit Centralia, PA in the near future to have a first-hand experience with the place.
The seams catch fire because mining provides the seam with an air/oxygen supply.
They can't catch fire otherwise - although there is a single odd case of a mountain in Australia, that smokes and emits nasty sulfurous fumes, and has been doing so for thousands of years based on the Aborginal's accounts. The first white settlers thought it was volcanic, later it was determined to be a coal seam slowly burning away.
Going further back in time, in the Archean era, about 2 billion years ago, natural uranium deposits below the water table would go critical and run as natural nuclear reactors for thousands of years. This was possible because 2 billion years ago the uranium was much richer in shorter lived U235, and so only needed water, and a sufficiently rich ore deposit, for the reaction to start and proceed naturally.
I was mistaken - there is a small amount of coal in central N. Carolina that was mined in the past, particularly during the civil war. It lies in a fault basin holding the only sedimentary rocks in the state young enough to have coal.
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing, too.
There's a similar situation with peat-bog fires in Russia, which can burn underground for months. This is a novel situation because peat-bogs rarely dry out enough to catch fire. Muscovites went through hell last year because of inextinguishable peat-bog fires.
Russia's peatland fires seen burning for months
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Expect goalposts to be moved shortly, and it all to be blamed on AlGore.
Global warming? Global cooling? Climate change?
$cientists and $ceptics should use a more accurate term for describing the phenomena. What is happening is called GLOBAL CLIMATE OSCILLATION. How odd that I know this... but the so called "experts" [sic] do not.
And those who think human industrial activity since 1850 has nothing to do with the ever increasing GLOBAL CLIMATE OSCILLATION are condemning their children and grandchildren to suffer a global extinction event before 2100.
Rabbits in denial soon succumb to the jaws of a wolf. And cows cheering the butcher always suffer betrayal. Old Coyote Knose... that ewe folks had better wake up soon! The DOCTRINE OF PERPETUAL GROWTH of the human population and the global consumer economy (a.k.a.: the Amerikan Dream) on Planet Over Birth-Earth, a host organism of finite space and finite resources, cannot be sustained. Perpetual growth in a closed loop system (the Earth) is not progress. It is cancer! Full blown cancer! See it! See it! Hear the wolves howling outside the door.
Certainly climate changes over time--due to such things as the Earth's precession, change in its axial tilt, and its orbital position with regard to the sun--and these things make for predictable changes. What's different about the present warming is its rapidity and the fact that it appears not to be connected with other natural "forcings." The current changes are not related to these periodic and predictable astronomical events; it is not an oscillation so much as an explosive burst along a sine curve of warming and cooling. That is what makes it so scary.
Very effective animated graphic. Does anyone know how to copy/paste or embed this for later use?
Out at the Berkeley Earth website they have an mp4 file you can download:
http://berkeleyearth.org/video/
Americans get what they voted for ... That's OK ... only a few more election cycles before mass extinction
Personally, I almost never get what -- or more precisely who -- I voted for.
I lived in Utah for almost two decades and if you don't vote for a Romney clone (or is it clown?), you don't get what you voted for.
And even after I left Utah and moved to Massachusetts, I was faced with the same choice!
And in the Presidential race, I always vote for Ralph Nader and we all know how that turns out every time.
So, no, I don't get what I voted for.
And no matter where I go, I can't seem to get away from the Romney clones.
The air temperature record only tells part of the warming story. The large amounts of extra heat energy being stored, because of atmosphere greenhouse gases, are being stored in the oceans. As learnt in basic physics, water has a high specific heat capacity, and it takes a large transfer of energy to raise its temperature a small degree. Oceans are two thirds of the earths surface. Most of the atomosphere heat exchanges to the top layers. Deep ocean currents do some mixing and remove some of the heat to deeper layers. The oceans are warming, and helping to melt polar ice sheets.
Current levels of greenhouse gases provide radiative forcing, implying further rise in temperature, and the oceans are a huge store of accumulating heat energy. Further rise in greenhouse gases accelarate the process, and raise the long term equilibration temperature. Global warming is advancing and here for the very long term, very probably longer than human civilisation.
atfault,
Quite right. It's complicated but it is, not just real, but possessing an inertia that is massive. The last time conditions were similar was 55 million years ago.
Although the situation can be ameliorated somewhat by a global switching to 100% renewables (it decelerates the warming trend but does not stop it), with the continued globally insane barbarity of war and nuclear power loving, fossil fuel burning, and corporate owned governments of which the USA is the number one ecosphere destroyer, it doesn't look good.
http://alderstone3.com/?page_id=433
Upton Sinclair said the following:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
When it comes to the new science of climate modeling, that comment by Upton Sinclair is appropriate... I prefer the hands on, on site research of the ISSS teams who seem to have been gagged by someone since the year 2009.. Where are their once annual Arctic methane reports? Nothing since 2009.
Now you're sounding like your denialist employer Anthony Watts again: mouthing off about climate models without the most rudimentary understanding of what models are, how models work, the problems models are intended to solve, and even the distinction between modeling and measurement.
Models are not used for data collection, for observations of the current state of things. Climate models produce projections by representing a toy Earth on which to perform experiments and run scenarios.
Your comment flippantly applies Sinclair's accusation of intellectual dishonesty to climate scientists. Another outrageous anti-scientific smear - typical of Watts, Morano, and Wayne.
Skeptical Science (which focuses on refuting global warming denialists) has a crisp response your corporate talking points:
Climate models have already predicted many of the phenomena for which we now have empirical evidence. Climate models form a reliable guide to potential climate change.
How reliable are climate models?
You can call it carnage on a barbeque stick...it's still trouble ahead and we still aren't doing a real damn thing about it
I'm glad some careful scientists put together another synthesis of climate data sets, I suppose. But this story is puzzling in a couple of ways:
Richard Muller says he hopes this effort will convince the "properly skeptical" (as opposed to the denialists). It's hard to imagine how anyone familiar with the quite well-established properties of atmospheric CO2 could be skeptical of AGW. Mad moron meteorologist Anthony Watts would not be convinced if the ghost of Svante Arrhenius whacked him upside the head with a 100-year-old paper.
The article refers to climategate rather than "climategate" (air-quotes mandatory in oral form), and somewhat validates the denialist accusation that climate scientists haven't made enough of an effort to make their data public. But NASA GISS, for one, makes both data and models available for download from their GISS Datasets and Images webpage.
Aleph Null,
Correct. And there is also a big problem with the public mindset about changes in nature being slow and gradual that corporations continually promote with a "there's no hurry and there's no big crisis" attitude that has been proven scientifically to be false. Since the 1970's, the scientific community has (reluctantly) abandoned the "gradual change" belief because the evidence from ice cores is that our climate ALWAYS changes suddenly when it does change.
From Alder Stone's web site where he lists 11 facts that explain the seriousness of our plight.
1 – Climate states : We are not in control of Earth’s thermostat
Complex systems – including Earth’s climate system – exist stably in a limited number of states, called attractors (a metaphor for the fact that systems act as if they are “attracted” to a particular behavior like a nail to a magnet). The reasons for this are complex, and are determined by feedback relationships among the parts of the system.
For the last 2 – 3 million years, Earth’s climate has oscillated in a quasi-periodic fashion between two states: ice ages – the most common state – and interglacials between them, like the last 11,700 years. Interglacials have occurred approximately every 100,000 years – triggered by orbital changes – and lasted 10,000 to 20,000 years. The trigger for these transitions are slight changes in Earth’s orbit that modify the amount of solar energy hitting the surface, which are then amplified by positive feedbacks (explained below) that cause a shift. (Note: the shift is not “caused” by orbital changes, only triggered by them; the “cause” is the feedbacks in the system.)
But hotter system states have existed in the more distant past. The last very hot spike similar to what we are likely to experience now was the PETM (Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum) 55 million years ago, which lasted 200,000 years.
Policy makers and activists – like Mr. McKibben at 350.org – urgently need to understand the following. The climate system will not stabilize between states any more than a brick will stabilize between standing upright and laying flat, or a human can remain for long in a state between waking and sleeping. Bricks fall over rapidly when they reach a “tipping point”. Humans are generally either awake or asleep, not half way between for more than a few minutes. (Exceptions exist in stressed people, but those are not a healthy state that is stable for long periods.)
Likewise, we cannot adjust the thermostat of Earth by somehow adjusting atmospheric CO2 levels to a desired state. That is, there is no scientific reason to believe that CO2 levels would remain stable at 350 ppm (parts per million), even if we could reduce concentrations to that value from their current level of 390 ppm, which we cannot do for reasons explained below.
We know unequivocally from empirical data (ice core studies) that CO2 levels during the ice ages are most stable at 180 ppm, and interglacials at 280 ppm, but that they will not stabilize between or above those values. We do not know – yet – what the upper level of CO2 (the attractor) will be for the hotter, PETM-like state toward which we are rapidly accelerating.
For the other 10 facts, go here:
http://alderstone3.com/?page_id=433
agelbert,
From the linked essay by Alder Stone Fuller:
The large majority of people addressing the issue of climate change – at least those not still in denial about it, including scientists, activists and policy makers – still assert that we can stop global heating – and thus, large-scale climate change – by reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Bill McKibben’s organization 350.org is a notable example.
But is that a fact supported by science or an unsupported assumption? To my knowledge, no one has justified that assertion with any argument based in science, especially the systems sciences, with any data or any model. It appears to be an assumption, an article of faith.
The assertion in bold is apparently false. James Hansen, for one, has methodically explained the basis of the 350 number in several papers relying on data and models - notably The Case For Young People And Nature (my favorite), and Paleoclimate Implications For Human-Made Climate Change. Hansen is the Richard Feynman of climate science, exceptional not only as a scientist, but also as a teacher. Hansen's papers are refreshingly accessible, he does not present any assumptions, and Fuller would be hard-pressed to identify the leap of faith in Hansen's step-by-step style of presentation.
Central to Hansen's explanation is the concept of the Earth's energy imbalance - which has been assessed at 0.6 to 0.8 W/m2. So long as that number is positive, the Earth will continue warming until it radiates enough heat to space to restore the balance. Atmospheric CO2 holds heat in, reducing CO2 allows heat out. Reducing CO2 to 350 ppm (or thereabouts) would allow 0.7 W/m2 of heat to escape, restoring Earth's energy balance and stabilizing climate.
Climate science is systems science. The chasm that separates a mere meteorologist from a climate scientist is the staggering interdisciplinary burden which must be grasped to approach climate science. The problems in climate science originate, to a degree not commonly appreciated, in a simple lack of sufficient data. Aerosols, clouds, and deep ocean circulation are areas where we don't know enough to understand the response of Earth systems to temperature variations.
But by the same token, climate science is making impressive progress in an almost impossible situation - where the rate of heating imposed by human emissions is unprecedented in geologic history. Fuller, as I understand him, is saying that we should concentrate on adaptiveness (a coinage he distinguishes from adaptation) because CO2 levels will inevitably prove impossible to stabilize.
Joe Romm has said that if we don't keep CO2 from exceeding 450 ppm, it will prove "unimaginably difficult" to keep it from reaching PETM levels of around 1000 ppm (an implicit reference to Earth's methane bomb). Except it would be much worse than the PETM, ecologically, because the rate of heating today is ten times faster. There is reason to doubt that mammals (let alone humans) could survive this, whether by adaptation, adaptiveness, or adaptivity. If that methane bomb is ignited, our goose is pretty much cooked.
Finally, Hansen has been outspoken on the likelihood of nonlinear (i.e. abrupt or exponential) climate change. For instance, both Hansen and Lovelock have pointed to the Pine Island Glacier, which could possibly cut loose with a catastrophic collapse causing a worldwide super-tsunami and an instantaneous sea-level rise of two meters.
No sensible person believes that the CO2 content of the atmosphere will stabilize if we stop burning fossil fuels. The point that does not seem to be evident to a lot of people is that because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the more of it that we release, the more heat will be trapped in the atmosphere, which will exacerbate the current warming trend. So although we do not know precisely what will happen if we stop burning fossil fuels, we DO know what will happen if we continue to burn them. A prudent person opts for the least harmful option.
Your definition of sensible person evidently excludes James Hansen and the 13 other co-authors of the Case For Young People paper, linked above. Take a look. Figure 5, on page 10, shows CO2 peaking at 400 ppm, then declining to 350 ppm around 2100. The caption explains the recommended scenario:
Atmospheric CO2 if fossil fuel emissions are cut 6% per year beginning in 2012 and 100 GtC reforestation drawdown occurs in the 2031-2080 period.
No sensible person lightly dismisses the cautious work of the most eminent climate authorities available. If those concerned about climate change decide to ignore the scientists, like the denialists, then the whole discussion turns into a shouting match. The science is on our side.
One big problem with the 350 ppm is,,, global warming began in ernest before the atmospheric Co2 level had reached 340 ppm.
We must do a whole lot better than Dr. James Hansen's proposal to only reduce our Co2 emissions by 6% to reach the atmospheric Co2 level of 350 ppm by the year 2100.
It is also not necessary for the atmospheric Co2 level to reach 450 ppm to have (runaway) global warming with nothing we could then do to prevent the eventual disaster which happened 55 million year ago with another mass extintion of life... 391 ppm can insure a runaway GW.
I'm sorry,,,, Dr. Hansen's proposal is just not going to work to prevent (runaway) global warming within the next few years, perhaps as few as one, but more likely by 2015, only three more years..... 2100 is a dream and the nightmare will have already awakened long before 2025.
Can anything productive be done to prevent runaway global warming by 2015, or say winthin the next ten years to be very optimestic and "hopeful"? ... Nothing I am aware of. That will be up to our world's top scientists who are usually ignored by the powers who have the power to enact a carbon reduction of massive amounts and do it very, very soon and that is very unlikely going to happen.
We need somethng very dramatic to happen that will literally scare the shit out of everybody. Perhaps a massive, monstrous fresh water ice shelf break off from Antarctica and quickly raise sea levels by two or three + feet would be that scary.. Again; that scenerio is not very likely to occur within the next few years.
Reality and facts are sometimes not at all fun and we often do not wish to hear or accept them.... The global warming skeptics remind me of the human nature practice of ignoring medical symptoms of cancer... For one example,, most men who die of prostrate cancer ignored or denied the symptoms until their "tipping point" of no return was reached. .
The Wikipedia article on runaway climate change conveys a balanced depiction of published scientific discussions of this issue, with more good references to browse through than you can shake a stick at.
My impression from friends and relatives, and from fellow posters here at CD, is that this opinion is held by many: that the Earth is inevitably committed to runaway climate change in the near future. That we are already past the tipping point beyond which warming momentum keeps feeding into itself without external forcings. That the situation is hopeless.
It's a curious phenomenon that this depressing outlook is so widely held, given the lack of published scientific opinions in agreement. There's something exhilarating about doomsaying. There's something liberating about hitting bottom - you are free to do whatever you want, because you couldn't possibly make matters worse.
Conceivably, climate scientists are aware of developments indicating an imminent onset of runaway climate change, and they are not telling us in order to avert mass gloom. But it's difficult for me to imagine all climate scientists participating in such a deception.
You wrote,,, ("It's a curious phenomenon that this depressing outlook is so widely held, given the lack of published scientific opinions in agreement.")... ... I do believe you are mistaken about that.
I had previously posted this link once before but will post it again as you may find it of interest... Scientists indeed are in agreement that we are near a tipping point and runaway GW,,, with no turning back once that occurs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/3340633/Arctic-ice-melting-faster-than-predicted.html
From the article…. (“Dr Martin Sommerkorn, one of the report's authors and Senior Climate Change Adviser at WWF International's Arctic Programme said: "When you look in detail at the science behind the recent Arctic changes it becomes painfully clear how our understanding of climate impacts lags behind the changes that we are already seeing in the Arctic... "This is extremely dangerous, as some of these changes have the potential to substantially increase the warming of the Earth,,, (beyond what models currently forecast.)").
He added,,, ("The pace at which both the Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet is melting has "severely accelerated" and could bring about rapid and unstoppable change in natural systems across the world.
And the scientist's added,,, ("The melting of the Arctic ice is happening quicker than predicted and may now be close to its 'tipping point' when the changes cannot be reversed.")... end quotes
You're bored aren't you? __ Me too, no new climate articles yet to comment on.
I seem to recall you agreed with the scientists who stated if only 2% of the Arctic's methane releases within a short time period it will cause runaway global warming and there will be nothing we then would be able to do to prevent another eventual mass extintion.
I rembber you posting comments about such a possible event in the not too distant future... And you post comments about Dr. James Hansen's opinion of Eath becoming another Venus. If we only do what he proposes that is a distinct possibility.
One thing you seem to ignore is the recent scientific studies which state methane has caused a third of the rise in Earth's temperature,,, not just a sixth as was always believed. Due to that, the release of the Arctic's methane takes on a whole new picture of how deadly serious that actually is.
Of course numerous scientists have issued stern warnings about the severity of the risks entailed in our current level of warming. There's an obvious distinction between all published scientific opinions and Wayne's projections of certain doom, to any who care.
Not caring is part of the attraction of the fatalistic outlook: if there's nothing to be done, then we are released from severe obligations to change the way we live in order to preserve the Earth for future generations, as Hansen urges us. The psychological pressure of global warming worries can be overwhelming - one way to cope is to cop-out, whether through denialism or fatalism.
There are legitimate worries about factors not taken into account by the model Hansen uses in The Case For Young People to project how the recommended carbon phaseout and reforestation will play out. All of the unaccounted factors make the situation even worse:
The methane feedback from thawing permafrost is well-enough understood that the models should be incorporating it, but they are not as yet. NSDIC issued a report in February 2011 about the growth in this methane source, but even the model they used in that study failed to take into account greater warming from thawing permafrost.
Researchers are scrambling to (literally) get to the bottom of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), where even greater methane deposits reside as clathrates beneath a perforated layer of sub-sea permafrost, to assess the stability of these deposits. Shakova has said the current forcing from greenhouse gases would be doubled if 1% of ESAS methane winds up in the atmosphere. Somewhere there's a competent researcher who has done the model runs integrating best / worst case methane releases, but I have not seen those projections.
The problem with aerosols is getting nastier, as noted in a later paper by Hansen himself: because the cooling effect from particulates in industrial emissions is greater than previously thought, the warming effect expected from phasing out emissions is also greater.
The old problem with the Antarctic ozone hole is coming out of remission, while a new problem with an Arctic ozone hole is appearing.
The prognosis is grim, no question about it. If you directly ask a well-rounded expert like Joe Romm "Are we doomed?" he's likely to gingerly hedge his response. But I've yet to hear any scientist flatly contradict Hansen's assertion that "A scenario that stabilizes climate and preserves nature is technically possible."
Say we've already triggered a natural catastrophe which will be impossible to avert. Would that mean our actions today - specifically radical emissions phaseouts - have no chance of reducing the severity of this looming catastrophe? So long as there's even a slight chance of conscientious action mitigating the worldwide ecological catastrophe, it's irresponsible to spread unmitigated gloom.
I don't have any problems with most of your (opinions) there, except for you to believe I wish to just give up.
On the contrary, for the past 8 years I have stated repeatedly that scientists must find a safe way to stop the Arctic methane from releasing and we must do a lot more than just reduce our Carbon output by 6% over an 88 year time frame..
We must reduce it a hell of a lot more,,, like 50% now... But, I do not have any hopes of seeing that done in the next three years or less.
I believe we now have no later than 2015 before the tipping point of no return is reached. So what else can I say,,, that is my opinion and I disagree with Dr. Hanson's proposal as the (only) program needed and you disagre and believe that is all that is necessary... I hope you are correct and we do at least that.. Don't get your hopes up though.
You are entitled to your opinion, but science is not a matter of opinion in the same way political issues are. Some opinions carry much more weight than others in scientific epistemology - where experience, reputation, methodology, and above all reproducible results count for a lot.
September 2016 is around when Maslowski projects a sea-ice free Arctic. Various researchers have warned that Arctic methane feedbacks could become serious after the sea-ice clears, but vaguely, without attaching the onset of runaway climate change so firmly to Maslowski's date as you do. It is this attachment which has no scientific basis I am able to discover. This is an unscientific opinion.
Runaway climate change is really game over. At that point, warming feedbacks keep feeding into themselves, and the reduction of anthropogenic emissions can have at best a marginal effect on how Earth's climate 2.0 turns out. Hansen and Lovelock have openly speculated that runaway climate change could lead to the much more serious runaway greenhouse effect (a.k.a. the Venus Syndrome): the end of life on Earth.
Were the Arctic methane threat only four years from seizing the steering wheel of climate change, I would expect to see the beginning of a more dramatic perturbation of global methane levels than is evident in current data. I would also expect to find one or two climate scientists offering the opinion that a sea-ice-free Arctic means game over. Your opinion far outstrips the most pessimistic scientific opinions I can find.