Archive for the ‘Junk Science and Enviromarxism’ Category

“A [Junk] Scientist’s Misguided Crusade” Against Keystone XL

March 5, 2013

More improper activity from the Million Dollar Bureaucrat

A Scientist’s Misguided Crusade

By JOE NOCERA
Published: March 4, 2013

Last Friday, at 3:40 p.m., the State Department released its “Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement” for the highly contentious Keystone XL pipeline, which Canada hopes to build to move its tar sands oil to refineries in the United States. In effect, the statement said there were no environmental impediments that would prevent President Obama from approving the pipeline.

Two hours and 20 minutes later, I received a blast e-mail containing a statement by James Hansen, the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA — i.e., NASA’s chief climate scientist. “Keystone XL, if the public were to allow our well-oiled government to shepherd it into existence, would be the first step down the wrong road, perpetuating our addiction to dirty fossil fuels, moving to ever dirtier ones,” it began. After claiming that the carbon in the tar sands “exceeds that in all oil burned in human history,” Hansen’s statement concluded: “The public must demand that the government begin serving the public’s interest, not the fossil fuel industry’s interest.”

As a private citizen, Hansen, 71, has the same First Amendment rights as everyone else. He can publicly oppose the Keystone XL pipeline if he so chooses, just as he can be as politically active as he wants to be in the anti-Keystone movement, and even be arrested during protests, something he managed to do recently in front of the White House.

But the blast e-mail didn’t come from James Hansen, private citizen. It specifically identified Hansen as the head of the Goddard Institute

[...]

Yet what people hear from Hansen today is not so much his science but his broad, unscientific views on, say, the evils of oil companies.

[...]

For a midlevel scientist at the Goddard Institute, what signal is Hansen sending when he takes the day off to get arrested at the White House? Do his colleagues feel unfettered in their own work? There is, in fact, enormous resentment toward Hansen inside NASA, where many officials feel that their solid, analytical work on climate science is being lost in what many of them describe as “the Hansen sideshow.”

[...]

NYT OpEd

Hansen should be fired and prosecuted for misusing his office and title as a NASA director in an effort to push his political agenda (the Hatch Act).

The Hatch Act grew out of nineteenth-century concerns about the political activities of federal employees. As early as 1801, President Thomas Jefferson issued an Executive Order that said federal workers should neither “influence the votes of others, nor take part in the business of electioneering.” He saw such activities as “inconsistent with the spirit of the Constitution.” Jefferson was primarily concerned with what government employees did while in office; subsequently, concerns developed in another area. Throughout the nineteenth century, appointments to the federal bureaucracy were viewed as the natural spoils of political success. The prevalent awarding of jobs for political loyalty created a so-called spoils system and, ultimately, a reaction against it.

 

LINK

Global Warming to Endanger Breakfast by 2080!!!

February 27, 2013

First it was wheat and now it’s coffee.  What’s next? Bacon & eggs?

This is nothing but alarmist nonsense…

Researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and the Environment and Coffee Forest Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia looked at how climate change might make some land unsuitable for Arabica plants, which are highly vulnerable to temperature change and other dangers including pests and disease.

They came up with a best-case scenario that predicts a 38 per cent reduction in land capable of yielding Arabica by 2080. The worst-case scenario puts the loss at between 90 per cent and 100 per cent.

If global climate warming change disruption is likely to wipe out the most prevalent coffee bean in a few decades, the previous few hundred years of warming should have “left a mark” on global coffee production… Right?

I downloaded the latest HadCRUT4 temperature and Mauna Loa CO2 data from Wood for Trees and global coffee bean production from FAOSTAT and it appears that coffee bean trees like warmer temperatures…

And they really like a carbon dioxide-rich diet…

The “how climate change might make some land unsuitable” model was built from the IPCC’s totally bogus emissions scenarios. The modeled scenarios A1B, A2A and B2A.

The models say that “business as usual” will lead to A1-type scenarios (turn Earth into Venus and wipe out coffee). The models say that drastic cuts in carbon emissions are required to stay in the B2-type scenario range.

The actual data indicate that the B2-type scenario is the worst case possibility if we keep “business as usual”. 

Furthermore, HadCRUT4 shows absolutely no global warming since late 2000…

Now, if I take HadCRUT4 back to the beginning of 1997, I get this…

(Note: I built this graph back in November.)

Let’s look at the equation of the trend line:

y = 0.0048x – 9.2567

The key part of the equation is the number right before “x.” That’s what’s called the “slope” of the function. The slope is 0.0048 °C per year. This works out to about half-a-degree (0.5 °C) Celsius per century. For reference purposes, the IPCC “forecasted” 1.8 to 4.0 °C per century over the next 100 years, depending on their various socioeconomic scenarios. Here’s the real kicker… The IPCC “forecasted” 0.6 °C of warming over the next century in a scenario in which CO2 remains at the same level as it was in 2000. This is reminiscent of Hanson’s failed 1988 model. The IPCC forecast more warming in a steady-state CO2 world than has actually occurred since 1997.

Now let’s look at the “R²” value…

R² = 0.0334

R² is the “coefficient of determination.” It tells us how well the trend line fits the data. An R² of 1.0 would be a perfect fit. An R² of 0.0 would be no fit. 0.0334 is a lot closer to 0.0 than it is to 1.0. R² is related to explained variance. The linear trend line “explains” about 3.3% of the variation in the temperature data since 1997. 96.7% of the variation was due to natural climatic oscillations (quasi-periodic fluctuations, if you prefer) and stochastic variability.

The scenarios in which coffee beans *might* be threatened, “forecasted” 1.8 to 4.0 °C of warming in the 21st century based on “business as usual” carbon emissions. The actual warming since 1998 has been less than the scenario in which atmospheric CO2 levels stopped rising at the beginning of this century.

Data Sources:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, FAO Statistics Division.  Coffee bean data downloaded on Feb. 27, 2013.

Hadley Centre.  HadCRUT4 tropical temperature data downloaded on February 27, 2013 from Wood for Trees.

NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory.  Mauna Loa CO2 data downloaded on February 27, 2013 from Wood for Trees.

How Green Was My Bankruptcy? U. S. Army Edition.

January 23, 2013

Great News! Siemens will generate an 18% return on investment on a project that will have a negative return on investment (-9%)… All at the taxpayers’ expense!

At first glance, this looked too good to be true…

White Sands breaks ground on Army’s largest solar array

April 26, 2012

By Ms Miriam U Rodriguez (ATEC)

White Sands Missile Range leaders came out to break ground and to commemorate the start of a renewable energy project at the site of the new Solar Photo Voltaic Array Project, the Army’s largest solar array, April 19 on WSMR.

A 42-acre tract of land located about ¼ mile northeast of the Las Cruces Gate next to main post will be the site where 4.115 MW of single-axis vertical azimuth-tracking ground-mounted solar Photo Voltaic panels will be installed.

[...]

In conjunction with the 4.115 MW project, WSMR will also be installing a 350 kW solar PV Carport at the parking lot for the Headquarters Building 100.

[...]

The total cost of both projects is $16.8M with a cost of $3.77 per Watt.

The solar project is being funded within an Energy Savings Performance Contract (ESPC) utilizing an Energy Services Agreement (ESA) that the Huntsville Army Corp of Engineers (COE) has awarded to Siemens on behalf of WSMR. Under the awarded task order, Siemens will maintain and operate the equipment and will provide the energy to WSMR. This agreement is for a period of 25 years. The simple payback is 18.1 years. The energy being provided will cost the same that WSMR is currently paying the local utility company which is a blended rate of $0.08/kWh.

[...]

US Army

$3.77 per Watt is less than $4 million per MW. That’s a big deal. Solar PV usually runs from $5 to $8 million per MW of installed capacity and $0.08/kWh is dirt cheap by solar standards. $0.08/kWh is only 25% more expensive than the levelized generation cost of natural gas-fired electricity generation.

On top of all that, the Army didn’t have to pay any of the $16.8 million construction cost. Siemens would recoup its costs by selling the electricity to the Army at the current market rate. What a deal for the taxpayers! Green energy for the same price as dirty old energy!

(more…)

Is Yoko Ono smarter than a 4th grader?

January 14, 2013

First up: Yoko Ono and friends…

‘Fracking kills’: Yoko Ono joins star-studded cast fighting against hydraulic natural gas drilling in upstate New York

John Lennon’s son Sean Lennon, actress Debra Winger, songstress Natalie Merchant and “The Avengers” actor Mark Ruffalo have also spoken out in opposition to the extraction process criticized for potentially contaminating water supplies and damaging the environment.

By Glenn Blain / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Friday, January 11, 2013

ALBANY — Hydrofracking is not the most glamorous of issues but the gritty subject is bringing a lot of glitz to the state Capitol.

Yoko Ono, the widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon, and son Sean Lennon became the latest celebrities to visit Albany Friday to press for a ban on the controversial natural gas drilling.

“Fracking kills,” Ono said at a press conference with other drilling opponents. “And it doesn’t just kill us, it kills the land, nature and eventually the whole world.”

[...]

NY Daily News

Now it’s the 4th graders’ turn…

Fourth-graders have concluded fracking’s bad

By Steve Israel
Published: 2:00 AM – 01/13/13
If it were up to nearly four dozen future voters at a Middletown elementary school, fracking would be banned in New York — and the rest of the world.

Just listen to what those fourth-graders at Maple Hill Elementary School have to say about the controversial natural gas extraction method of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking:

“It could cause methane explosions, poison water and kill people. It killed cattle,” says 9-year-old Philip Gazer.

“Sometimes, because of fracking, earthquakes could happen,” says 9-year-old Sagnik Chakraborty, citing minor earthquakes in Ohio apparently caused by the underground injection of fracking waste.

Bottom line for the fourth-graders in the classes of Mary Hayes and Patricia McGorry?

“We don’t want to be poisoned by fracking,” says 11-year-old Nancy Jaime.

[...]

Recordonline

 

There you have it.  Yoko Ono is either not smarter than a 4th grader or she has a strong desire to spend winters freezing in the dark.    The wellhead price for natural gas in the US is currently in the range of $3.00 to $3.50/mcf.

The shale boom is the single biggest reason why natural gas prices are so low in the USA compared to most of the rest of the world…

Without fracking, there would be no shale boom and US natural gas prices could be $8/mcf or higher.

Mr. Bill Visits Byrd Station: Oh Noooooo!

December 26, 2012

First the breath-taking headlines…

  • Scientists Report Faster Warming in Antarctica, New York Times
  • West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate, BBC
  • West Antarctica warming much faster than previously believed, study finds, NBC
  • Western Antarctica is warming three times faster than the rest of the world, Grist

Oh noes out the wazzoo!!!

What could possibly have caused such an out-pouring of Mr. Bill impersonations?

Apparently this did…

Central West Antarctica among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth

David H. Bromwich,1, 5 Julien P. Nicolas,5, 1 Andrew J. Monaghan,2 Matthew A. Lazzara,3 Linda M. Keller,4 George A. Weidner4 & Aaron B. Wilson1
Nature Geoscience Year published: (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1671

Received02 May 2012 Accepted15 November 2012 Published online23 December 2012

Abstract

There is clear evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is contributing to sea-level rise. In contrast, West Antarctic temperature changes in recent decades remain uncertain. West Antarctica has probably warmed since the 1950s, but there is disagreement regarding the magnitude, seasonality and spatial extent of this warming. This is primarily because long-term near-surface temperature observations are restricted to Byrd Station in central West Antarctica, a data set with substantial gaps. Here, we present a complete temperature record for Byrd Station, in which observations have been corrected, and gaps have been filled using global reanalysis data and spatial interpolation. The record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4±1.2 °C, establishing central West Antarctica as one of the fastest-warming regions globally.

[...]

Nature Geoscience

The manufactured “record reveals a linear increase in annual temperature between 1958 and 2010 by 2.4±1.2 °C.” That’s a 50% margin of error on the reconstruction that supposedly corrected the recording errors.

I haven’t purchased access to the paper (nor do I intend to); however, the freely available supplementary information includes a graph of their reconstructed temperature record for Byrd Station. It looks very similar to the NASA-GISS graph that doesn’t show any significant recent warming trend.

Figure 1. Bromwich et al., 2012 compared to the GHCN data.

The NASA-GISS data (GHCN & SCAR) for Byrd Station are in two segments: 1957-1975 and 1980-2012. The 1957-1975 series depicts a moderately significant (R² = 0.19) warming trend of about 1.0 °C per decade. The post-1980 series depicts a statistically insignificant (R² = 0.01) trend of 0.3 °C per decade.

Figure 2. Byrd Station temperature record from NASA-GISS (GCHN & SCAR, not homogenized).

Bromwich et al., 2012 get their 2.4 °C of warming from 1958-2010 (0.4 °C per decade) by stitching together the fragmented data sets. If I just combine the two NASA-GISS series, I get a trend of about 0.4 °C per decade…

Figure 3. Composite of NASA-GISS segments show no warming since 1991.

But, almost all of that warming took place before 1988. And Byrd Station has seen no warming (actually a slight cooling) since 1991.

Furthermore, the corrected temperature record of Bromwich et al., 2012 actually depicts more cooling since 1991 than the uncorrected data…

Figure 4. NASA-GISS temperature series overlaid on Bromwich et al., 2012 “corrected” temperature series (black curve). My Mk I eyeball analysis tells me that the corrected data actually show more cooling since 1991 than the uncorrected data.

Wheat: The Goldilocks Crop and the Impending Extinction of Pasta

December 10, 2012

It is apparently becoming too warm to grow wheat…

Bakken Oil Boom and Climate Change Threaten the Future of Pasta

Dec 10, 2012 12:00 AM EST

Temperatures are rising. Rainfalls are shifting. Droughts are intensifying. What will we eat when wheat won’t grow.

A world without pasta seems inconceivable. Mac-and-cheese-loving children across the United States would howl in protest. Italy might suffer a cultural heart attack. Social unrest could explode in northern China, where noodles are the main staple.

But if humans want to keep eating pasta, we will have to take much more aggressive action against global warming. Pasta is made from wheat, and a large, growing body of scientific studies and real-world observations suggest that wheat will be hit especially hard as temperatures rise and storms and drought intensify in the years ahead.

[...]

Three grains—wheat, corn, and rice—account for most of the food humans consume. All three are already suffering from climate change, but wheat stands to fare the worst in the years ahead, for it is the grain most vulnerable to high temperatures. That spells trouble not only for pasta but also for bread, the most basic food of all. (Pasta is made from the durum variety of wheat, while bread is generally made from more common varieties, such as red spring.)

“Wheat is a cool-season crop. High temperatures are negative for its growth and quality, no doubt about it,” says Frank Manthey, a professor at North Dakota State University who advises the North Dakota Wheat Commission. Already, a mere 1 degree Fahrenheit of global temperature rise over the past 50 years has caused a 5.5 percent decline in wheat production, according to David Lobell, a professor at Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

[...]

Newsweek

This is really funny because it wasn’t that long ago that it was too cold to grow wheat…

Little Ice Age

by Edna Sun

February 15 , 2005 — It was only a few hundred years ago that the earth experienced its last ice age. Global temperatures started falling during the 1300s and hit their lowest points in the late 1700s and early 1800s. New Yorkers could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island across a frozen harbor, while Londoners held “Frost Fairs” on a solid Thames River. Glaciers advanced in China, New Zealand, and Peru, and snow covered Ethiopian peaks. Diseases, aided by the change in climate, spread quickly throughout Europe and Asia. Iced waters delayed shipping from ports, growing glaciers engulfed farms and villages, tree lines receded, and agriculture deteriorated, leading to centuries of poor harvests, famine, and social unrest. Though the average global temperature dropped only one to two degrees Celsius below what they are today, the cold spell nevertheless drastically affected life at this time.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

Global temperatures naturally fluctuate slightly from year to year. However, in the past 10,000 years, there have been three relatively long global cold spells. The Little Ice Age (LIA) is the most recent and best documented, especially in Europe

It may have had a greater effect on history than its predecessors because it immediately followed several centuries of unusually warm temperatures. Between 800 and 1200, Europe basked in a warm spell known as the “Medieval Warm Period” (MWP); temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than they are today.

[...]

Fatal Harvest

During the LIA, summers were wet and unusually cold and the growing season was shortened. Widespread crop failure resulted in famine that killed millions of people. To avoid starvation, people would eat the planting seed for next season, which created more of a shortage the following year.

During the MWP European farmers primarily grew cereal grains such as wheat, barley, and rye, which flourished. But the long thin stalks of these crops made them vulnerable to the strong winds and heavy rainfall that came during the LIA. The temperature drop in northern Europe made it difficult to raise these grains and many farmers gave up trying. Less grain was produced, creating a severe shortage and raising prices.

[...]

PBS

“[A] mere 1 degree Fahrenheit of global temperature rise over the past 50 years has caused a 5.5 percent decline in wheat production.”  Yet wheat and cereal production flourished during the Medieval Warm Period, when “temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than they are today”…

Obviously wheat can’t handle any temperature. The LIA was too cold. Today it’s too warm for wheat, even though the wheat flourished during the warmer MWP.  I guess the Goldilocks temperature for wheat must have occurred sometime between 1975 and 1980, since Newsweek reported that we were on the verge of a new ice age in 1975 and anthropogenic global warming began with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 (intentional sarcasm).

Whenever I run into an Alarmists Gone Wild non sequitur, I always check the math.

Wheat production data for the period 1961-2010 are available from FAOSTAT and temperature data can easily be downloaded from Wood For Trees.

Figure 1. Wheat yield and production have more than doubled over the last 50 years. Data sources: FAOSTAT and Hadley Center & UEA CRU (via Wood for Trees). Yield is in hectograms per hectare (Hg/Ha), area harvested is in hectares (Ha) and production is in tonnes.

This explains why wheat liked the Medieval Warm Period and disliked the Little Ice Age. 

The only explanation for this sort of nonsense, is Alarmists Gone Wild…

“Wheat is a cool-season crop. High temperatures are negative for its growth and quality, no doubt about it,” says Frank Manthey, a professor at North Dakota State University who advises the North Dakota Wheat Commission. Already, a mere 1 degree Fahrenheit of global temperature rise over the past 50 years has caused a 5.5 percent decline in wheat production, according to David Lobell, a professor at Stanford University’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

Wheat yield and production have more than doubled over the past 50 years.

In fairness to Mr. Hertsgaard, someone in another Internet forum I frequent suggested that maybe the article was just referring to durum production in North Dakota. The headline did mention the Bakken (mostly in North Dakota) and cited a durum expert (Frank Manthey, a professor at North Dakota State University) and durum is used in pasta.

Durum is a cool-season crop and that warmer summers might have an impact on North Dakota durum production. Production and yield data are available from the North Dakota Wheat Commission.  A cross-plot of North Dakota durum yield vs. seasonal temperatures does support the claim that warmer summers could cause a drop in durum yield…

A 1 °F rise in average summer temperature could reduce durum yield by 1.6 bushels per acre. That’s in the neighborhood of a 5.5% decline.

However, all of the global warming in North Dakota over the past 50 years has occurred in winter…

Winter warming has no correlation to durum yield (R² = 0.0194).

Durum production and acreage planted increased from 1961-1981 and then have decreased since 1981, while yield has steadily increased.

Total North Dakota wheat production has increased over the last 50 years.

A Brief History of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Record-Breaking

December 3, 2012

The World Meteorological Organization (I always think of Team America: World Police whenever “World” and “Organization” appear in the same title) recently announced that atmospheric greenhouse gases had once again set a new record.

Greenhouse gases reach another new record high!

Records are made to be broken

I wonder if the folks at the WMO are aware of the following three facts:

1)  The first “record high” CO2 level was set in 1809, at a time when cumulative anthropogenic carbon emissions had yet to exceed the equivalent of 0.2 ppmv CO2?

 

Figure 1. The Original CO2 “Hockey Stick.”  CO2 emissions data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC).  The emissions (GtC) were divided by 2.13 to obtain ppmv CO2.

 2) From 1750 to 1875, atmospheric CO2 rose at ten times the rate of the cumulative anthropogenic emissions…

 

Figure 2. Where, oh where, did that CO2 come from?

3) Cumulative anthropogenic emissions didn’t “catch up” to the rise in atmospheric CO2 until 1960…

 

Figure 3. It took humans over 100 years to “catch up” to nature.

The emissions were only able to “catch up” because atmospheric CO2 levels stalled at ~312 ppmv from 1940-1955.

The mid-20th century decline in atmospheric CO2

The highest resolution Antarctic ice cores I am aware of come from Law Dome (Etheridge et al., 1998), particularly the DE08 core.  Over the past decade, the Law Dome ice core resolution has been improved through denser sampling and the application of frequency enhancing signal processing techniques (Trudinger et el., 2002 and MacFarling Meure et al., 2006).  Not surprisingly, the higher resolution data are indicating more variability in preindustrial CO2 levels. 

Plant stomata reconstructions (Kouwenberg et al., 2005, Finsinger and Wagner-Cremer, 2009) and contemporary chemical analyses (Beck, 2007) indicate that CO2 levels in the 1930′s to early 1940′s were in the 340 to 400 ppmv range and then declined sharply in the 1950′s. These findings have been rejected by the so-called scientific consensus because this fluctuation is not resolved in Antarctic ice cores.  However, MacFarling Meure et al., 2006 found possible evidence of a mid-20th Century CO2 decline in the DE08 ice core…

The stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 1940s and 1950s is a notable feature in the ice core record. The new high density measurements confirm this result and show that CO2 concentrations stabilized at 310–312 ppm from ~1940–1955. The CH4 and N2O growth rates also decreased during this period, although the N2O variation is comparable to the measurement uncertainty. Smoothing due to enclosure of air in the ice (about 10 years at DE08) removes high frequency variations from the record, so the true atmospheric variation may have been larger than represented in the ice core air record. Even a decrease in the atmospheric CO2 concentration during the mid-1940s is consistent with the Law Dome record and the air enclosure smoothing, suggesting a large additional sink of ~3.0 PgC yr-1 [Trudinger et al., 2002a]. The d13CO2 record during this time suggests that this additional sink was mostly oceanic and not caused by lower fossil emissions or the terrestrial biosphere [Etheridge et al., 1996; Trudinger et al., 2002a]. The processes that could cause this response are still unknown.

[11] The CO2 stabilization occurred during a shift from persistent El Niño to La Niña conditions [Allan and D’Arrigo, 1999]. This coincided with a warm-cool phase change of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation [Mantua et al., 1997], cooling temperatures [Moberg et al., 2005] and progressively weakening North Atlantic thermohaline circulation [Latif et al., 2004]. The combined effect of these factors on the trace gas budgets is not presently well understood. They may be significant for the atmospheric CO2 concentration if fluxes in areas of carbon uptake, such as the North Pacific Ocean, are enhanced, or if efflux from the tropics is suppressed.

From about 1940 through 1955, approximately 24 billion tons of carbon went straight from the exhaust pipes into the oceans and/or biosphere.

Figure 4. Oh where, oh where did all that carbon go?

If oceanic uptake of CO2 caused ocean acidification, shouldn’t we see some evidence of it? Shouldn’t “a large additional sink of ~3.0 PgC yr-1″ (or more) from ~1940–1955 have left a mark somewhere in the oceans?  Maybe dissolved some snails or a reef?

Had atmospheric CO2 simply followed the preindustrial trajectory, it very likely would have reached 315-345 ppmv by 2010…

Figure 5. Natural sources probably account for 40-60% of the rise in atmospheric CO2 since 1750.

Oddly enough, plant stomata-derived CO2 reconstructions indicate that CO2 levels of 315-345 ppmv have not been uncommon throughout the Holocene…

Figure 6. CO2 from plant stomata: Northern Sweden (Finsinger et al., 2009), Northern Spain (Garcia-Amorena, 2008), Southern Sweden (Jessen, 2005), Washington State USA (Kouwenberg, 2004), Netherlands (Wagner et al., 1999), Denmark (Wagner et al., 2002).

So, what on Earth could have driven all of that CO2 variability before humans started burning fossil fuels?  Could it possibly have been temperature changes?  

CO2 as feedback

When I plot a NH temperature reconstruction (Moberg et al., 2005) along with the Law Dome CO2 record, it sure looks to me as if the CO2 started rising about 100 years after the temperature started rising…

Figure 7. Temperature reconstruction (Moberg et al., 2005) and Law Dome CO2 (MacFarling Meure et al., 2006)

The rise in CO2 from 1842-1945 looks a heck of a lot like the rise in temperature from 1750-1852…

Figure 8. Possible relationship between temperature increase and subsequent CO2 rise.

The correlation is very strong.  A calculated CO2 chronology yields a good match to the DE08 ice core and stomata-derived CO2 since 1850.  However, it indicates that atmospheric CO2 would have reached ~430 ppmv in the mid-12th century AD. 

Figure 9. CO2 calculated from Moberg temperatures (dark blue curve), Law Dome ice cores (magenta curve) and plant stomata (green, light blue and purple squares).

The mid-12th century peak in CO2 is not supported by either the ice cores or the plant stomata.   The correlation breaks down before the 1830′s.  However, the same break down also happens when CO2 is treated as forcing rather than feedback.  

CO2 as forcing

If I directly cross plot CO2 vs. temperature with no lag time, I get a fair correlation with the post DE08 core (>1833) data and no correlation at all with pre-DE08 core (<1833) data…

Figure 10.  Temperature and [CO2] have a moderate correlation since ~1833; but no correlation at all before 1833.

If I extrapolate out to about 840 ppmv CO2, I get about 3 °C of warming relative to 275 ppmv.  So, I get the same amount of warming for a tripling of preindustrial CO2 that the IPCC says we’ll get with a doubling.

Figure 11. CO2 from the Law Dome DE08 core plotted against Moberg’s NH temperature reconstruction.

Based on this correlation, the equilibrium climate sensitivity to a doubling of preindustrial CO2 is ~1.5 to 2.0 °C.  But, the total lack of a correlation in the ice cores older than DE08 is very puzzling.

Ice core resolution and the lack a CO2-temperature coupling before 1833

Could the lack of variability in the older (and deeper) cores have something to do with resolution?  The DE08 core is of far higher resolution than pretty well all of the other Antarctic ice cores, including the deeper and older DSS core from Law Dome.

Figure 12. The temporal resolution of ice cores is dictated by the snow accumulation rate.

The amplitude of the CO2 “signal” also appears to be well-correlated with the snow accumulation rate (resolution) of the ice cores…

Figure 13. Accumulation rate vs. CO2 for various ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland.

Could it be that snow accumulation rates significantly lower than 1 m/yr simply can’t resolve century-scale and higher frequency CO2 shifts?   Could it also be that the frequency degradation is also attenuating the amplitude of the CO2 “signal”?

If the vast majority of the ice cores older and deeper than DE08 can’t resolve century-scale and higher frequency CO2 shifts, doesn’t it make sense that ice core-derived CO2 and temperature would appear to be poorly coupled over most of the Holocene?

Why is it that the evidence always seems to indicate that the IPCC’s best case scenario is the worst that can happen in the real world?

Brad Plummer’s recent piece in the Washington Post featured a graph that caught my eye…

Figure 14. The IPCC’s mythical scenarios.  I think the shaded area represents the greentopian range.

It appears that a “business as usual” (A1FI) will turn Earth into Venus by 2100 AD. 

But, what happens if I use real data?

Let’s assume that the atmospheric CO2 level will rise along an exponential trend line until 2100.

Figure 15. CO2 projected to 560 ppmv by 2100.

I get a CO2 level of 560 ppmv, comparable to the IPCC SRES B2 emissions scenario…

Figure 16. IPCC emissions scenarios.

So, business as usual will likely lead to the same CO2 level as an IPCC greentopian scenario.  Why am I not surprised?

Assuming all of the warming since 1833 was caused by CO2 (it wasn’t), 560 ppmv will lead to about 1°C of additional warming by the year 2100.

Figure 17. Projected temperature rise derived from Moberg NH temperature reconstruction and Law Dome DE08 ice core CO2.
Projected Temp. Anom. = 2.6142 * ln(CO2) – 15.141

How does this compare with the IPCC’s mythical scenarios?  About as expected.  The worst case scenario based on actual observations is comparable to the IPCC’s best case, greentopian scenario…

Figure 18. Projected temperature rise derived from Moberg NH temperature reconstruction and Law Dome DE08 ice core CO2 indicates that the IPCC’s 2°C “limit” will not be exceeded.

 

Conclusions

  • Atmospheric CO2 concentration records were being broken long before anthropogenic emissions became significant.
  • Atmospheric CO2 levels were rising much faster than anthropogenic emissions from 1750-1875.
  • Anthropogenic emissions did not “catch up” to atmospheric CO2 until 1960.
  • The natural carbon flux is much more variable than the so-called scientific consensus thinks it is.
  • The equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) cannot be more than 2°C and is probably closer to 1°C.
  • The worst-case scenario based on the evidence is comparable to the IPCC’s most greentopian, best-case scenario.
  • Ice cores with accumulation rates less than 1m/yr are not useful for ECS estimations.

The ECS derived from the Law Dome DE08 ice core and Moberg’s NH temperature reconstruction assumes that all of the warming since 1833 was due to CO2.  We know for a fact that at least half of the warming was due to solar influences and natural climatic oscillations.  So the derived 2°C is more likely to be 1°C.  Since it is clear that about half of the rise from 275 to 400 ppmv was natural, the anthropogenic component of that 1°C ECS is probably less than 0.7°C.

The lack of a correlation between temperature and CO2 from the start of the Holocene up until 1833 and the fact that the modern CO2 rise outpaced the anthropogenic emissions for about 200 years leads this amateur climate researcher to concluded that CO2 must have been a lot more variable over the last 10,000 years than the Antarctic ice core indicate.

Appendix I: Another Way to Look at the CO2 growth rate

In Figure 15 I used the Excel-calculated exponential trend line to extrapolate the MLO CO2 time series to the end of this century.  If I extrapolate the emissions and assume 55% of emissions remain in atmosphere, I get ~702 ppmv by the end of the century, with an additional 0.6°C of warming.  A total warming of 2.5°C above “preindustrial.”  Even this worse than worst case scenario results in about 1°C less warming than the A1B reference scenario.  It falls about mid-way between A1B and the top of the greentopian range.

Appendix II:  CO2 Records, the Early Years

Whenever CO2 records are mentioned or breathtaking pronouncements like, “Carbon dioxide at highest level in 800,000 years” are made, I always like to take a look at those “records” in a geological context.  The following graphs were generated from Bill Illis’ excellent collection of paleo-climate data.

Greenhouse gases reach another new record high! Or did they? The “Anthropocene” doesn’t look a heck of a lot different than the prior 25 million years… Apart from being a lot colder.

The “Anthropocene’s” CO2 “Hockey Stick” looks more like a needle in a haystack from a geological perspective. And it looks to me as if Earth might be on track to run out of CO2 in about 25 million years.

One of my all-time favorites! Note the total lack of correlation between CO2 and temperature throughout most of the Phanerozoic Eon.

In the following bar chart I grouped CO2 by geologic period.  The Cambrian through Cretaceous are drawn from Berner and Kothavala, 2001 (GEOCARB), the Tertiary is from Pagani, et al. 2006 (deep sea sediment cores), the Pleistocene is from Lüthi, et al. 2008 (EPICA C Antarctic ice core), the “Anthropocene” is from NOAA-ESRL (Mauna Loa Observatory) and the CO2 starvation is from Ward et al., 2005.

“Anthropocene” CO2 levels are a lot closer to the C3 plant starvation (Ward et al., 2005) range than they are to most of the prior 540 million years.

[SARC ON] I thought about including Venus on the bar chart; but I would have had to use a logarithmic scale. [SARC OFF]

Appendix III: Plant Stomata-Derived CO2

The catalogue of peer-reviewed papers demonstrating higher and more variable preindustrial CO2 levels is quite impressive and growing.  Here are a few highlights:

Wagner et al., 1999. Century-Scale Shifts in Early Holocene Atmospheric CO2 Concentration. Science 18 June 1999: Vol. 284 no. 5422 pp. 1971-1973

In contrast to conventional ice core estimates of 270 to 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), the stomatal frequency signal suggests that early Holocene carbon dioxide concentrations were well above 300 ppmv.

[…]

Most of the Holocene ice core records from Antarctica do not have adequate temporal resolution.

[…]

Our results falsify the concept of relatively stabilized Holocene CO2 concentrations of 270 to 280 ppmv until the industrial revolution. SI-based CO2 reconstructions may even suggest that, during the early Holocene, atmospheric CO2 concentrations that were .300 ppmv could have been the rule rather than the exception.

The ice cores cannot resolve CO2 shifts that occur over periods of time shorter than twice the bubble enclosure period. This is basic signal theory. The assertion of a stable pre-industrial 270-280 ppmv is flat-out wrong.

McElwain et al., 2001. Stomatal evidence for a decline in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the Younger Dryas stadial: a comparison with Antarctic ice core records. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 17 pp. 21–29. ISSN 0267-8179…

It is possible that a number of the short-term fluctuations recorded using the stomatal methods cannot be detected in ice cores, such as Dome Concordia, with low ice accumulation rates. According to Neftel et al. (1988), CO2 fluctuation with a duration of less than twice the bubble enclosure time (equivalent to approximately 134 calendar yr in the case of Byrd ice and up to 550 calendar yr in Dome Concordia) cannot be detected in the ice or reconstructed by deconvolution.

Not even the highest resolution ice cores, like Law Dome, have adequate resolution to correctly image the MLO instrumental record.

Kouwenberg et al., 2005. Atmospheric CO2 fluctuations during the last millennium reconstructed by stomatal frequency analysis of Tsuga heterophylla needles. Geology; January 2005; v. 33; no. 1; p. 33–36…

The discrepancies between the ice-core and stomatal reconstructions may partially be explained by varying age distributions of the air in the bubbles because of the enclosure time in the firn-ice transition zone. This effect creates a site-specific smoothing of the signal (decades for Dome Summit South [DSS], Law Dome, even more for ice cores at low accumulation sites), as well as a difference in age between the air and surrounding ice, hampering the construction of well-constrained time scales (Trudinger et al., 2003).

Stomatal reconstructions are reproducible over at least the Northern Hemisphere, throughout the Holocene and consistently demonstrate that the pre-industrial natural carbon flux was far more variable than indicated by the ice cores.

Wagner et al., 2004. Reproducibility of Holocene atmospheric CO2 records based on stomatal frequency. Quaternary Science Reviews. 23 (2004) 1947–1954…

The majority of the stomatal frequency-based estimates of CO 2 for the Holocene do not support the widely accepted concept of comparably stable CO2 concentrations throughout the past 11,500 years. To address the critique that these stomatal frequency variations result from local environmental change or methodological insufficiencies, multiple stomatal frequency records were compared for three climatic key periods during the Holocene, namely the Preboreal oscillation, the 8.2 kyr cooling event and the Little Ice Age. The highly comparable fluctuations in the paleo-atmospheric CO2 records, which were obtained from different continents and plant species (deciduous angiosperms as well as conifers) using varying calibration approaches, provide strong evidence for the integrity of leaf-based CO2 quantification.

The Antarctic ice cores lack adequate resolution because the firn densification process acts like a low-pass filter.

Van Hoof et al., 2005. Atmospheric CO2 during the 13th century AD: reconciliation of data from ice core measurements and stomatal frequency analysis. Tellus 57B (2005), 4…

Atmospheric CO2 reconstructions are currently available from direct measurements of air enclosures in Antarctic ice and, alternatively, from stomatal frequency analysis performed on fossil leaves. A period where both methods consistently provide evidence for natural CO2 changes is during the 13th century AD. The results of the two independent methods differ significantly in the amplitude of the estimated CO2 changes (10 ppmv ice versus 34 ppmv stomatal frequency). Here, we compare the stomatal frequency and ice core results by using a firn diffusion model in order to assess the potential influence of smoothing during enclosure on the temporal resolution as well as the amplitude of the CO2 changes. The seemingly large discrepancies between the amplitudes estimated by the contrasting methods diminish when the raw stomatal data are smoothed in an analogous way to the natural smoothing which occurs in the firn.

The derivation of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) to atmospheric CO2 is largely based on Antarctic ice cores. The problem is that the temperature estimates are based on oxygen isotope ratios in the ice itself; while the CO2 estimates are based on gas bubbles trapped in the ice.

The temperature data are of very high resolution. The oxygen isotope ratios are functions of the temperature at the time of snow deposition. The CO2 data are of very low and variable resolution because it takes decades to centuries for the gas bubbles to form. The CO2 values from the ice cores represent average values over many decades to centuries. The temperature values have annual to decadal resolution.

The highest resolution Antarctic ice core is the DE08 core from Law Dome.

The IPCC and so-called scientific consensus assume that it can resolve annual changes in CO2. But it can’t. Each CO2 value represents a roughly 30-yr average and not an annual value. 

If you smooth the Mauna Loa instrumental record (red curve) and plant stomata-derived pre-instrumental CO2 (green curve) with a 30-yr filter, they tie into the Law Dome DE08 ice core (light blue curve) quite nicely…

The deeper DSS core (dark blue curve) has a much lower temporal resolution due to its much lower accumulation rate and compaction effects. It is totally useless in resolving century scale shifts, much less decadal shifts.

The IPCC and so-called scientific consensus correctly assume that resolution is dictated by the bubble enclosure period. However, they are incorrect in limiting the bubble enclosure period to the sealing zone. In the case of the core DE08 they assume that they are looking at a signal with a 1 cycle/1 yr frequency, sampled once every 8-10 years. The actual signal has a 1 cycle/30-40 yr frequency, sampled once every 8-10 years.

30-40 ppmv shifts in CO2 over periods less than ~60 years cannot be accurately resolved in the DE08 core. That’s dictated by basic signal theory. Wagner et al., 1999 drew a very hostile response from the so-called scientific consensus. All Dr. Wagner-Cremer did to them was to falsify one little hypothesis…

In contrast to conventional ice core estimates of 270 to 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv), the stomatal frequency signal suggests that early Holocene carbon dioxide concentrations were well above 300 ppmv.

[...]

Our results falsify the concept of relatively stabilized Holocene CO2 concentrations of 270 to 280 ppmv until the industrial revolution. SI-based CO2 reconstructions may even suggest that, during the early Holocene, atmospheric CO2 concentrations that were >300 ppmv could have been the rule rather than the exception (⁠23⁠).

The plant stomata pretty well prove that Holocene CO2 levels have frequently been in the 300-350 ppmv range and occasionally above 400 ppmv over the last 10,000 years.

The incorrect estimation of a 3°C ECS to CO2 is almost entirely driven the assumption that preindustrial CO2 levels were in the 270-280 ppmv range, as indicated by the Antarctic ice cores.

The plant stomata data clearly show that preindustrial atmospheric CO2 levels were much higher and far more variable than indicated by Antarctic ice cores. Which means that the rise in atmospheric CO2 since the 1800′s is not particularly anomalous and at least half of it is due to oceanic and biosphere responses to the warm-up from the Little Ice Age.

Kouwenberg concluded that the CO2 maximum ca. 450 AD was a local anomaly because it could not be correlated to a temperature rise in the Mann & Jones, 2003 reconstruction.

As the Earth’s climate continues to not cooperate with their models, the so-called consensus will eventually recognize and acknowledge their fundamental error. Hopefully we won’t have allowed decarbonization zealotry to bankrupt us beforehand.

Until the paradigm shifts, all estimates of the pre-industrial relationship between atmospheric CO2 and temperature derived from Antarctic ice cores will be wrong, because the ice core temperature and CO2 time series are of vastly different resolutions. And until the “so-called consensus” gets the signal processing right, they will continue to get it wrong.

References

Anklin, M., J. Schwander, B. Stauffer, J. Tschumi, A. Fuchs, J.M. Barnola, and D. Raynaud. 1997. CO2 record between 40 and 8kyr B.P. from the Greenland Ice Core Project ice core. Journal of Geophysical Research 102:26539-26545.

Barnola et al. 1987. Vostok ice core provides 160,000-year record of atmospheric CO2.
Nature, 329, 408-414.

Berner, R.A. and Z. Kothavala, 2001.  GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time, American Journal of Science, v.301, pp.182-204, February 2001.

Boden, T.A., G. Marland, and R.J. Andres. 2012. Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A. doi 10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2012

Etheridge, D.M., L.P. Steele, R.L. Langenfelds, R.J. Francey, J.-M. Barnola and V.I. Morgan. 1998. Historical CO2 records from the Law Dome DE08, DE08-2, and DSS ice cores. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.

Finsinger, W. and F. Wagner-Cremer. Stomatal-based inference models for reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 concentration: a method assessment using a calibration and validation approach. The Holocene 19,5 (2009) pp. 757–764

Fischer, H. A Short Primer on Ice Core Science. Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Institute, University of Bern.

Garcıa-Amorena, I., F. Wagner-Cremer, F. Gomez Manzaneque, T. B. van Hoof, S. Garcıa Alvarez, and H. Visscher. 2008. CO2 radiative forcing during the Holocene Thermal Maximum revealed by stomatal frequency of Iberian oak leaves. Biogeosciences Discussions 5, 3945–3964, 2008.

Illis, B.  2009. Searching the PaleoClimate Record for Estimated Correlations: Temperature, CO2 and Sea Level. Watts Up With That?

Indermühle A., T.F. Stocker, F. Joos, H. Fischer, H.J. Smith, M. Wahlen, B. Deck, D. Mastroianni, J. Tschumi, T. Blunier, R. Meyer, B. Stauffer, 1999, Holocene carbon-cycle dynamics based on CO2 trapped in ice at Taylor Dome, Antarctica. Nature 398, 121-126.

Jessen, C. A., Rundgren, M., Bjorck, S. and Hammarlund, D. 2005. Abrupt climatic changes and an unstable transition into a late Holocene Thermal Decline: a multiproxy lacustrine record from southern Sweden. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 20 pp. 349–362. ISSN 0267-8179.

Kouwenberg, LLR. 2004. Application of conifer needles in the reconstruction of Holocene CO2 levels. PhD Thesis. Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology, University of Utrecht.

Kouwenberg, LLR, Wagner F, Kurschner WM, Visscher H (2005) Atmospheric CO2 fluctuations during the last millennium reconstructed by stomatal frequency analysis of Tsuga heterophylla needles. Geology 33:33–36

Ljungqvist, F.C.2009. Temperature proxy records covering the last two millennia: a tabular and visual overview. Geografiska Annaler: Physical Geography, Vol. 91A, pp. 11-29.

Ljungqvist, F.C. 2010. A new reconstruction of temperature variability in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere during the last two millennia. Geografiska Annaler: Physical Geography, Vol. 92 A(3), pp. 339-351, September 2010. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0459.2010.00399.x

Lüthi, D., M. Le Floch, B. Bereiter, T. Blunier, J.-M. Barnola,  U. Siegenthaler, D. Raynaud, J. Jouzel, H. Fischer, K. Kawamura,  and T.F. Stocker.  2008. High-resolution carbon dioxide concentration record 650,000-800,000 years before present. Nature, Vol. 453, pp. 379-382, 15 May 2008.  doi:10.1038/nature06949

MacFarling Meure, C., D. Etheridge, C. Trudinger, P. Steele, R. Langenfelds, T. van Ommen, A. Smith, and J. Elkins (2006), Law Dome CO2, CH4 and N2O ice core records extended to 2000 years BP, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L14810, doi:10.1029/2006GL026152.

McElwain et al., 2001. Stomatal evidence for a decline in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the Younger Dryas stadial: a comparison with Antarctic ice core records. J. Quaternary Sci., Vol. 17 pp. 21–29. ISSN 0267-8179

Moberg, A., D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén. 2005.
Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data. Nature, Vol. 433, No. 7026, pp. 613-617, 10 February 2005.

Morice, C.P., J.J. Kennedy, N.A. Rayner, P.D. Jones (2011), Quantifying uncertainties in global and regional temperature change using an ensemble of observational estimates: the HadCRUT4 dataset, Journal of Geophysical Research, accepted.

Pagani, M., J.C. Zachos, K.H. Freeman, B. Tipple, and S. Bohaty. 2005. Marked Decline in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations During the Paleogene. Science, Vol. 309, pp. 600-603, 22 July 2005.

Rundgren et al., 2005. Last interglacial atmospheric CO2 changes from stomatal index data and their relation to climate variations. Global and Planetary Change 49 (2005) 47–62.

Smith, H. J., Fischer, H., Mastroianni, D., Deck, B. and Wahlen, M., 1999, Dual modes of the carbon cycle since the Last Glacial Maximum.  Nature 400, 248-250.

Trudinger, C. M., I. G. Enting, P. J. Rayner, and R. J. Francey (2002), Kalman filter analysis of ice core data 2. Double deconvolution of CO2 and δ13C measurements, J. Geophys. Res., 107(D20), 4423, doi:10.1029/2001JD001112.

Van Hoof et al., 2005. Atmospheric CO2 during the 13th century AD: reconciliation of data from ice core measurements and stomatal frequency analysis. Tellus 57B (2005), 4

Wagner F, et al., 1999. Century-scale shifts in Early Holocene CO2 concentration. Science 284:1971–1973.

Wagner F, Aaby B, Visscher H, 2002. Rapid atmospheric CO2 changes associated with the 8200-years-B.P. cooling event. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 99:12011–12014.

Wagner F, Kouwenberg LLR, van Hoof TB, Visscher H, 2004. Reproducibility of Holocene atmospheric CO2 records based on stomatal frequency. Quat Sci Rev 23:1947–1954

Ward, J.K., Harris, J.M., Cerling, T.E., Wiedenhoeft, A., Lott, M.J., Dearing, M.-D., Coltrain, J.B. and Ehleringer, J.R.  2005.  Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 102: 690-694.

The Atlantic Magazine’s “5 Charts About Climate Change That Should Have You Very, Very Worried”… Worried about scientific illiteracy.

November 27, 2012

I ran into this gem on Real Clear Energy this morning…

Figure 1. The only thing to worry about here is the scientific and mathematical illiteracy of the authors of this article.

The article cites terrifying new reports commissioned by the World Bank and the CIA and then launches into a graphical cornucopia of nonsense.

(more…)

Election Day 2012: An ill wind blew and the fat man sang!

November 8, 2012

This post of Anthony’s inspired to compose this graphical illustration of how “an ill wind blew and the fat man sang”…

Figure 1. Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy Storm Track Map (NOAA/NWS), President Obama & Gov. Christie (Washington Post), Fox News Exit Poll (WUWT), RCP Poll Average (Real Clear Politics) and Sandy’s landfall (CIMSS/Univ. Wisconsin-Madison/NASA/NOAA via WUWT).

Acting like the president for four days out of the last four years turned the tide… And a good Envirostatist never lets a “serious crisis to go to waste”…

America’s Choice 2012

Climate change is back on the table
By Steve Hargreaves @CNNMoney November 7, 2012

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Climate change is once again a hot topic in the Untied States.

Hurricane Sandy brought the issue back into the spotlight just days before the presidential election. Pundits were quick to note the irony of a massive superstorm striking after three presidential debates that didn’t mention climate change once.

After the storm, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg evoked the issue again, pointing to climate change specifically in an unexpected, last-minute endorsement of President Obama.

And if there was any lingering doubt about the issue being back in the limelight, the president dispelled it Tuesday night by mentioning global warming in his acceptance speech alongside other priorities like budget and tax reform.

“We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet,” he said.

[...]

CNN Money

Never minding the fact that extra-tropical cyclone Sandy was anything but unprecedented; nor was it the new normal, the storm and President Obama’s appearance of competence were apparently enough to sway about 3% of the electorate. So, no doubt, Mr. Obama and his merry band of Envirostatists will be repeating this page from their playbook…

 

Election Day 2012: An ill wind blew and the fat man sang!

Frankenstorm-steria: Five degrees of Separation from Reality and Eleventy Gazillion Joules Under the Sea

November 2, 2012

 I ran across this really bizarre blog post from “The Energy Collective” on Real Clear Energy…

This bit is just “nutty”…

Five degrees:

The Atlantic ocean is five degrees warmer than is was when most of you were born. Let that sink in for a minute. The entire Atlantic ocean averages five degrees warmer.

What does that mean for hurricanes? Hurricanes get their power by feeding on the warm water under them. That means that a warmer Atlantic has a lot more fuel to contribute. How much more? Hard to say for sure but the the number is astronomical. Take the top inch of ocean surface below hurricane Katrina (125,000 sq. miles) then run out the math to heat that volume by five degrees. What you get is an amount of energy in that water eight times greater than was released in all the nuclear tests in the history of the world.

[...]

“The Atlantic ocean is five degrees warmer than is was when most of you were born.” Really?
I was born in 1958. I don’t have a handy temperature plot of the Atlantic Ocean, but the folks a the UK Hadley Center & Climategate CRU do have a plot of Northern Hemisphere sea surface temperatures. If the Atlantic has warmed by 5 degrees since 1958, it should show up on this plot, unless the North Pacific Ocean has been cooling…

Figure 1. HadSST Northern Hemisphere (Hadley/CRU via Wood for Trees)

I get a warming of 0.3-0.5°C since I was born… And only about 0.6°C of warming since the last time a Whig held the presidency…

Figure 2. HadSST… What five degrees?

The author noted that, “We’ve only been aware that the earth revolves around the sun for some 500 years.” This is true. It’s also true that New England was hit by at least four storms, rivaling Sandy, between 1300 and 1650 AD. But our temperature records only go back to about 1850.

Fortunately, there are little critters living in the oceans called “Foraminifera,” or Foram’s as we tend to call them in oil exploration. Foram’s have the capacity to act as geochemical thermometers. Globigerinoides ruber is a particularly good geochemical thermometer. Back in 1996, Lloyd Keigwin of WHOI published a really good paper in which he reconstructed a 3,000-yr record of the sea surface temperature of the Sargasso Sea.

Keigwin was able to calibrate his proxy temperature series to a 50-yr long instrumental record (Station S). Station S matches the HadSST NH quite well…

Figure 3. HadSST and Sargasso Sea Station S (Keigwin, 1996)

If we add in the Foram proxy record, we can see how warm the Atlantic Ocean was back when those pre-1650 monster storms hit New England…

Figure 4. HadSST, Sargasso Sea (Keigwin, 1996) and Major New England Hurricanes (Donnelly, 2001)

The 1351 AD (±56-yr) storm occurred when the Atlantic was most likely a bit cooler as when I was born. The 1425 (±21-yr) storm occurred when the Atlantic was most likely a bit warmer than I was born. The 1635 and 1638 storms occurred when the Atlantic was a lot cooler than when I was born. And the 1815 storm occurred when the Atlantic was a bit cooler than when I was born.

It appears to me that the climatological state of the Atlantic Ocean hasn’t really been a controlling factor in the frequency of major storms hitting New England. If a climatologically warm Atlantic was the cause of these monster storms, the Medieval Warm Period must have been a veritable hurricane nightmare…

Figure 5. HadSST, Sargasso Sea (Keigwin, 1996) and Major New England Hurricanes (Donnelly, 2001)

And the Minoan Warm Period must have been an absolute hurricane apocalypse, even though the Atlantic was only about 2°C warmer than when I was born.

Well, that’s enough on the “five degrees”… On to the really nutty bit…

Gazillions of joules!

A five degree rise for just the first inch of ocean, for a static area 900 miles in diameter (the size of hurricane Sandy) requires 95-million terajoules of energy. If we assume it gets used the most efficiently it can be, a ton of coal gets you about 35 gigajoules. That means we’d need a cube of coal .9 of a mile/side to generate the energy needed to heat just that first inch of water five degrees. All that energy is a fraction of the heat being trapped, just a fraction. We’re going to see a lot more storms get charged up this way.

The best way to alarm the scientifically illiterate is to convert 0.8°C into eleventy gazillion joules.

Ocean Heat Content for the upper 700 meters of the oceans increased by about 16 gazillion (10^22) Joules over the last 40 years or so! 16 gazillion is a huge number! Unfortunately for Warmists, 16 gazillion is a very tiny number relative to the volume of the top 700 meters of the oceans and the heat content that normally resides in the oceans…

Figure 6. Change in Ocean Heat Content from Levitus et al., 2009 via Bob Tisdale – Climate Observations (http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/the-warming-of-the-world-oceans-0-700-meters-in-degrees-c/)

16 gazillion Joules is enough heat to increase the average temperature of the upper 700 meters of ocean by a whopping 0.168 degrees Centigrade.

The average temperature of the upper 700 meters of ocean is somewhere in the ballpark of 10 degrees Centigrade…

Figure 7. Approximate average oceanic thermocline (Windows to the Universe).

How much heat content is required to raise the temperature of the upper 700 meters of ocean from 0 to 10 degrees Centigrade?

A bit less than 950 gazillion Joules.

16 gazillion is less than 2% of 950 gazillion.

More fun with gazillions of Joules

This is a graph from a Skeptical Science post…

Figure 8. An unreliable representation of recent changes in Earth’s total heat content (Skeptical Science).

Frightening, right?

In addition to lacking any context, the title of the graph is amazingly and ignorantly wrong. There’s a lot more to the Earth than water, ice and air… There’s that whole solid(ish) thing in the middle.

The heat flow at the surface (the coolest part of the solid Earth) of the Earth is ~47 Terawatts (TW). A Joule is 1 Watt*second of power. 47 TW is 47,000,000,000,000 joules per second (47*10^12 J/s). Over the 40-yr period (1969-2008) the Earth’s heat flow transferred 6 gazillion (10^12) Joules of heat from the interior to the surface. That 6 gazillion is a very tiny fraction of the total heat content of the Earth (~12,600,000,000 gazillion Joules). So the SkepSci graph doesn’t even come close to capturing the “change in the Earth’s total heat content.”

Here’s a little more context… Unsurprisingly, ocean heat content and sea surface temperature are highly correlated…

Figure 9. Cross-plot of ocean heat content (Levitus, 2009) and sea surface temperature (Hadley/CRU via Wood for Trees).

So, we can very easily estimate OHC from SST to see what the OHC was
doing before we started measuring it…

Figure 10. Historical ocean heat content calculated from HadSST and OHC (Levitus, 2009).

Wow!!! The OHC had to have increased by 13 gazillion Joules from 1910-1941. How did that happen? CO2 was mired in the “safe” range of 310-320 ppmv (assuming Antarctic ice cores are accurate sources of paleo-CO2 data).


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