Concerning Omega Blocks, Deformed Jet Streams, Melting Ice And Unstoppable Global Warming

No, the blistering temperatures-  recently felt in Europe - were no illusion or bad dream, as the map from the WSJ shows. (July 26, 'Europe Battles Record Heat And Drought', p. A1, A7).  What gives?  The past five years have been the hottest on record, including the record single year in 2016. The 10 hottest years have all occurred in the past two decades. The highest above-average conditions were recorded across Alaska, Greenland and large swathes of Siberia. Large parts of Africa and Australia were warmer than normal, as was much of Central Asia.

 Meanwhile, last summer's high temperatures and low rainfall in Europe scorched crops and pastures from England to Germany - causing river levels to fall so low that transportation on major arteries such as the Rhine ground to a halt. Contrast that with the image of the Rhine below - near the Swiss-German border- which was from our visit in 2014:

In addition, we've since learned  (in the wake of the European heat wave) the jet stream is again misbehaving in what's called an "Omega block", e.g.


  Which has almost single-handedly generated the recent European heat wave.  As I've written in previous posts on climate change- global warming, the warping of the jet stream is itself tied to greenhouse warming.  Typically, it keeps cool air near the poles, but if the Arctic heats up, as our data shows, then the air over it becomes unstable. Thus, in the winter, we behold Arctic amplification".  In papers and seminars delivered at the Geophysical Institute  over 1985-1990 Prof. Gunther Weller first pointed out that a much warmer Arctic also means a much more unstable polar region with more frequent intrusions ("waves")  of the polar vortex,  leading to frigid temperatures in parts of the U.S. such as we've seen the past few years.  In the summer, an opposite sort of effect manifests - as shown in the diagram with warm, dry air being trapped within a 'buckling' jet stream.  According to climatologist Jennifer Francis - quoted in The Financial Times, 'Climate Change: How The Jet Stream Is Changing Your Weather',  Aug. 6):

"The climate change aspect is contributing to these very persistent, big waves of the jet stream."

Further, she believes the undulations of the jet stream are becoming bigger, more pronounced, because of climate change.  This take almost exactly follows Prof. Weller's earlier models for Arctic warming and the consequences from an unstable jet stream.

This inevitably means the current phase of warming is uneven, mainly because the Arctic is warming much faster.  This is because the decrease in sea ice means the ocean is absorbing more heat from the Sun.  This alone is causing many unforeseen consequences from the spreading noxious Sargassum seaweed around he Caribbean, to the proliferation of Great Whites and other sharks near U.S. shores, as well as the noisome outbreaks of the "red tide".  Other less reported phenomena have also emerged but which few know or have read about, That includes the spread of an antibiotic -resistant fungus, Candida auris, and the increase in the size of hornets and wasps as an adaptation to warmer temps.

As the temp difference between poles and tropics narrows the jet stream will weaken further and the swings in shapes will become much more dramatic

One thing we've learned in the past three months, is the heat is not simply going to abate. We are now living in highly unusual climatic times, and this even before 200 cubic km of ice disappeared from Greenland in July alone.  More recently, the sudden melting of 11 billion tons of Greenland ice in one singular event, sending a massive fresh water input into the North Atlantic - likely affecting the thermohaline circulation.(THC)

The currents associated with the THC ensure warmer water (such as in the Gulf of Mexico) and are transported to the northern hemisphere.  Hence, it's actually a part of the greater scale ocean circulation.  The applicable concern hearkens back to a theory of Dr. Walter Broeker - then a geo-scientist at Columbia University- who hypothesized that a sufficiently large discharge of fresh water (e.g. fro melting ice) into the North Atlantic would dramatically lower surface water density( Fresh water is less dense than salt water of the normal sea).  Then the lower density water would not sink and hence not pull warm surface water from the equator up towards Europe.   

The paradoxical result?   The Earth, initially in the throes of global warming, would now see Europe plunged into another ice age on account of the thermohaline current disruption - from melting ice and higher precip - arising from (you guessed it) global warming.


For an insight into the Thermohaline circulation:

Martin Stendel of the Danish Meteorological Institute warned (ibid.) of how crucial it is to understand the 'knock on' effects of a hotter planet, especially in terms of atmospheric currents and changes in the jet stream.  Many of these changes have to do with non-linear or "forcing" changes associated with the relevant greenhouse gases.

It is instructive at this point to look at the Earth's greenhouse gases and their forcing contributions  as well as removal times.  

---

Table 1: Removal times and climate forcing values for specified atmospheric gases and aerosols (up to the year 2000).

Greenhouse gases:

Carbon Dioxide >100 years, 1.3 to 1.5  W/ m²
 
Methane  ~ 10 years, 0.5 to 0.7 W/ m²

Tropospheric Ozone 10-100 days, 0.25 to 0.75  W/ m²


Nitrous Oxide 100 years, 0.1 to 0.2  W/ m²


Perfluorocarbon Compounds >1000 years, 0.01  W/ m² (Including SF6) 

Fine Aerosols:

Sulfate :   10 days -0.3 to -1.0 W/ m²

Black Carbon: 10 days 0.1 to 0.8 W/ m²

---

.
Stendel - like Prof. Weller before him- acknowledges these can appreciably exacerbate effects of climate change, and are little understood by the general population.  As he explains (ibid.)


"We have background warming and we have enhancement due to the non-linear effects, like the changes in the general circulation."


This, of course, has major implications for the melting ice sheet 
and means that sea levels could rise faster than expected. The most  recent report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast between 45cm and 82cm of sea level rise by the end of this century if emissions keep increasing. A growing number of scientists think that may be too low. 

As Prof. Stendel puts it: "That probably underestimates the upper range of global sea level rise."


Indeed.  And right now my take is that climate scientists need to do a better job of educating the general public - using basic thermal physics- on the import of forcing and non-linear changes.  This could also help the mainstream media get a better handle on reporting climate change events, and avoiding errors like sloppy conflation, and minimizing the import of climate catastrophes - such as with Hurricane Maria hitting Puerto Rico in 2017.  See  e.g.

The Media Are Complacent While the World Burns | The Nation

https://www.thenation.com/article/climate-change-media-aoc-gnd-propaganda/

Excerpt:

"Judging by the climate coverage to date, most of the US news media still don’t grasp the seriousness of this issue. There is a runaway train racing toward us, and its name is climate change. That is not alarmism; it is scientific fact....The US mainstream news media, unlike major news outlets in Europe and independent media in the United States, have played a big part in getting it wrong for many years. It’s past time to make amends....

News stories about Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, this spring’s floods in the Midwest, and other extreme-weather events almost never mention climate change, though scientists have been drawing the connection for decades. Instead, human-interest fluff prevails. In an 18-month period, TV and print outlets gave 40 times more coverage to the Kardashians than to the acidification of oceans caused by excessive amounts of carbon dioxide.

This journalistic failure has given rise to a calamitous public ignorance, which in turn has enabled politicians and corporations to avoid action. According to polls by Pew and others, as recently as the 2016 presidential race, only half of the people in this country said they thought that climate change was occurring and was attributable to human activities, and only 27 percent said they knew that almost all climate scientists held this view."

------
The most profound aspect of all the recent events is that global warming leading to planetary catastrophe may well be unstoppable. The reason? Not only the release of methane from peat bogs and Arctic tundra but now the discovery the rate of  CO2 concentration increase has amped up. 

It has now accelerated from 400 ppm in 2013 to 415 ppm now. That is an approximately 6 year interval for a per year change in concentration of :
(415 ppm - 400 ppm)  / 6 yr  =   15 ppm / 6 yr  =  2.5 ppm/  yr.

This is 25 % higher than the previous average rate of increase, i.e. 2.0 ppm/ yr. Given we know that every increase in CO2 concentration by 2 ppm increases the radiative heating effect by 2 W/ m²,  we also know that the associated radiative heating is now significantly higher. The spike over 'natural variability' is clearly evident below:

 This junp in concentration accounts for a major part of the increase of atmospheric temperature with CO2 concentration. It also is not on the radar of most of the national media.  This is clear when one grasps on reading most media accounts that most climate reports (like the IPCC one cited earlier) understate the threat,   See e.g.


Climate report understates threat

Excerpt:

"So far, average temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius. Adding 50 percent more warming to reach 1.5 degrees won’t simply increase impacts by the same percentage—bad as that would be. Instead, it risks setting up feedbacks that could fall like dangerous dominoes, fundamentally destabilizing the planet. This is analyzed in a recent study showing that the window to prevent runaway climate change and a “hot house” super-heated planet is closing much faster than previously understood."

The job of the media is now to convince citizens of the global commons that climate change is no longer merely an inconvenient, intermittent nuisance but an existential threat. One that will wreak havoc with increasing intensity and devastation over the coming years.

See also:

Energy Policy | Environmental Policy | Nonfiction

Motivating Climate Action: A Review of Per Espen Stoknes "What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming."

And:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/02/world/greenland-ice-sheet-11-billion-intl/index.html

And:

Energy Policy | Environmental Policy

The Green New Deal Must Be Global

by William Minter | August 9, 2019 - 5:19am | permalink

What 2014 Holds: More Climate Disasters

Massive fires, and now floods, seem to be more and more in the future of Colorado with each passing summer - the rest of the nation will see havoc too - ramping up this year.

As 2014 dawns the question on many people's minds is what sort of events it will bring. While the political and economic landscape remains somewhat uncertain, as well as the geopolitical (including the global surveillance system) we can pretty well predict that climate will continue toward chaos. We already got a taste of it last year with hundreds of massive wildfires, burning areas the size of whole states while pumping ever more CO2 into the atmosphere. We also beheld torrential rains and epic floods such as here in Colorado. All indicators point to even more climate instability this year with devastating tornadoes in the spring, followed by even more extended heat waves and wild fires and floods.

Are we at a tipping point? It's hard to say but we are certainly close. Climate scientist Bill McKibben notes there are three numbers we had better keep close track of if we want to preserve even a semblance of a livable world ('Mystery of the Three Scary Numbers', UTNE Reader, Jan-Feb, 2014, p. 18):

- 2 degrees Celsius or 3.6  degrees Fahrenheit

- 565 gigatons or 565 thousand million tons

- 2, 795 gigatons


The first number is the highest we can afford the global mean temperature to increase over this century without seeing the planet go into the crapper. We are talking the cusp of the runaway greenhouse effect, though many scientists don't want to scare too many people by outright saying so. They don't want to induce panic. According to McKibben, even a 2C increase is fraught with danger and passing that threshold will make our current wildfires, floods etc. look like a walk in the park. It's a number we don't wish to surpass or shouldn't. Many of us won't be around if it is surpassed (mainly baby boomers) but we do owe it to our offspring and their offspring to give a damn.

The second number represents the peak of humanity's carbon budget. It's the most carbon we can afford to pour into the atmosphere without triggering the 2 C temperature increase.  For reference, humans poured some 30.6 gigatons into the atmosphere in 2011 and it is projected that unless massive carbon cuts go into effect we will pass the 565 gigaton threshold in 16 years. That means we will likely trigger the 2 C increase in that time - with all the havoc that implies. Think of no more seasons, wilting heat in the high 100s lasting for most of the year for most of the country and regular tornadoes, storms that make what we saw last year look like minor ripples on a pond.

The third number is perhaps the most worrisome of all and the one that instills fear into most who know what the future portends if we don't stop our reckless foolishness -including the fracking craze. It represents the total stored reserves of carbon held by coal, gas and oil companies. It was first highlighted and brought to global attention by the Carbon Tracker Initiative - a group of London financial analysts and environmentalists.  It is what the fossil fuel industry plans to exploit in the future by its whole spectrum of methods, whether deep sea drilling, oil shale fracking or natural gas fracking.

It is, in other words, five times more carbon than will already blow a gasket in our world and send it toward runaway greenhouse perdition. Can you picture this scene unfolding everywhere and never ending:


In other words, as the UTNE piece observes:

"Burning those fossil fuels we would enter a world of science fiction dystopia: a rise in sea levels not seen in human history, species extinction, droughts, super storms, heat waves from hell....and consequences you cannot imagine".

What does McKibben say?

He states clearly and emphatically just because the reserves are there, we are not to use them! We need to "leave at least 80 percent of the fossil fuels in the ground"

Humans have a choice: either survival (even then barely tolerable) or being cast into a finite and terrestrial version of 'hell' if they can't control their energy demands.

This year may be the last in which we can actually exercise a degree of choice!

Are School Standards REALLY To Be Challenged on Climate Change?

On some mornings I have to administer a sound pinch to be sure it is the year 2012 and not 1812. I mean, you pick up the paper and there are front page headlines about allowing "birth control" as part of health care, states promoting abstinence- only programs, and now ....after challenges to evolution...new challenges to proposed new teaching standards to do with global warming-climate change. Why must so many have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century?

According to a piece in yesterday's WSJ ('School Standards Wade Into Climate Debate', p. A6),

"Several national bodies are set to release a draft of new science standards that include detailed instruction on climate change. The groups preparing the standards include the National Research Council which is part of the National Academies. They are working from a document they drew up last year that says climate change is caused in part by man-made events such as the burning of fossil fuels. The document says rising temperatures could have 'large consequences' for the planet"

This draft is coming none too soon, and I've already blogged on the enhanced risk of delusion spreading amongst our grade and especially high school students:


http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/our-students-at-risk-of-delusion-on.html

As I noted therein, part of the problem is too little basic science or basic physics education, such as the reason for CO2 (as well as other greenhouse gases such as methane)to be connected to heat trapping. That is, these greenhouse gases possess the ability to absorb heat in the form of solar infrared radiation. This ability is directly contingent on the molecular vibrations undergone by the particular greeenhouse gas molecule which allow it to absorb and re-emit incident radiation. The particular radiation in this case is also different, namely infrared or heat radiation, as opposed to ultraviolet. (Which has a much shorter wavelength).

The inherent problem in too little education is that most students (not to mention their parents) are unaware of the electro-magnetic spectrum and where infrared resides, for example, in relation to x-ray or ultraviolet wavelengths. They also don't grasp that infrared radiation is explicitly what we define as HEAT.

The other side of the problem of too little education, is too much mis-education! The Eos report I cited ( 'What Do U.S. Students Know About Climate Change?, EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, Vol. 92, No. 51, 20 December, 2011, p. 477) put the blame for this on :

"climate myths and misinformation that are perpetuated by a small but vocal group of politicians and climate change skeptics."

It added:

"Relative to climate experts, the skeptics have an unreasonable large platform in the media and on web sites"

This is quite true and explains how it could arise, as the WSJ piece observes, that the father of a student at Corte Madiera School in Portola Valley, Calif. would actually file a formal complaint against a 6th grade teacher at the school for showing "An Inconvenient Truth" to her class. This character, I kid you not, actually demanded the teacher "either apologize to her students or be fired".

The guy actually charged the teacher with "brainwashing" her students! This shows how far the agnotologists and their insane PR cult have gone in this country to invert science. See also my earlier blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/as-i-noted-in-earlier-blog-httpbrane.html

How could the skeptics have been allowed to gain such an upper hand that they could have parents believing that those who teach the consensus on global warming are brainwashers?
A major reason is the American corporate media which is so obsessed with the "crossfire" and fight syndrome, they they're more interested in charging a dust -up than getting the truth out.

But because of incidents like this, and the enhanced PR grip of agnotology on the issue, we are seeing even more of these interests attempt to interject themselves into the climate science issue. None more than the Heartland Institute, a front for the fossil fuel lobbies and their interests like the Global Warming Coalition before them. According to the WSJ piece:

"Heartland is pursuing a competing effort to develop a K-12 curriculum that questions the idea of manmade global warming"

In other words, this group of conservo propagandizers seeks to widen the rift even more between the scientifically knowledgeable and those in the grip of agnotology and PR. Thus, the reality based community will be rendered even small if these guys get their way. According to David Wojick, a consultant (quite obviously from a PR firm) designing the plan:

"Teaching the scientific debate instead is a grand challenge"

Great! Except there IS NO "scientific debate"! This is exactly what the agnotologists want people to believe. But amongst climate scientists, those actually doing the work, the issue is long since settled. (See e.g. Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22) authored by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman who found that (p. 24): “the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

Those facts are these:

1)Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been burning exponentially more fossil fuel to power their societies.

2)This has led to a steady accumulation of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere.

3) CO2 derives its heat-retention properties via the vibrations associated with its molecule.

4) Its toll over time is assessed by the fact that its deposition -activity time is close to a century. This means that every ton of carbon or CO2 deposited continues its influence up to a century after entering the atmosphere. Also, each additional ton added multiplies the effect of the original amounts.

5) The cumulative effect by now is that we are adding 2 parts per million of CO2 concentration each year, to an existing concentration of ~ 374 ppm, with a runaway greenhouse effect threshold near 450 ppm. This 2 ppm in CO2 concentration also adds 2 W/m^2 each year to the solar insolation.

This means at the current levels of CO2 -carbon generation we are barely 50 years from the runaway greenhouse effect which has the potential to convert Earth to another Venus.

Clearly then, if the Heartland bunch is allowed to get its way and have such a specious curriculum inserted into high school science teaching, our educational levels will be set back as far as they were when the Discovery Institute developed its "intelligent design" alternatives to teaching evolution- which were adopted by a number of school boards (Another reason, btw, to get rid of all local school boards, and have a nationalized educational system like Barbados- adhering to national standards across subjects. Besides, this would do away with the need for property taxes altogether since such a system would be supported by federal taxes exclusively. An objective easily accomplished once we cease being idiots and launching wars of choice with billions a month in costs!)

After all, would we allow historical contrarians in the form of Holocaust deniers to enter history class rooms with a "new, alternative curriculum that doesn't merely accept the consensus that the Holocaust occurred, but rather seeks the challenge of teaching the historical debate"?

I don't think so!

The most amusing item in the WSJ piece, and which showed in no uncertain terms how truly dumb so many in this country are was the mention that the proposed new draft curriculum (from the National Research Council) could be a "sticking point for some states". Noting that one state, South Dakota, had already passed a resolution declarng that "climate change should be taught as a theory rather than a proven fact".

What the fuck do these idiots think a THEORY is? Are they even qualified to make such a statement? Have any of them even had high school physics? Are they the least bit aware that a theory represents the culmination or apotheosis of scientific hypothesis -testing, falsification, and confirming predictions and hence.....embodies scientific fact to the greatest practical degree in terms of accepted quality assurance (provided by the body of published peer-reviewed research)?

Or are they too DUMB to know that, and actually mistake theory for speculation, because they: a) have a limited vocabulary, in addition to b) chronic scientific illiteracy (and maybe (c), IQs below 70)?

What we cannot do is turn over American science education to the likes of such clueless yahoos, imbeciles and lunk heads. If they choose to ruin their own kids' futures by passing off bollocks as vetted science, then fine. But they can't be allowed to impose their imbecile standards on everyone else!

The Pseudo-Science Agnotologists Strike Again!

As I noted in an earlier blog:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/our-students-at-risk-of-delusion-on.html

It's no wonder our college and even high school students are beginning to fall into the snare of climate denialism when supposed "scientists" rush to be a part of the ongoing agnotology. As I have pointed out repeatedly, agnotology, derived from the Greek 'agnosis' - the study of culturally constructed ignorance- is achieved primarily by sowing the teeniest nugget of doubt in whatever claim is made (and as we know NO scientific theory is free of uncertainty).

Moreover, Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied it to the trend of skeptic science sown deliberately and for political or economic ends . In other words, the supporters of agnotology - whoever they may be- are all committed to one end: destroying the science to enable economic profit and hence planetary ruin. Proctor also notes these special interests are often paid handsomely to sow immense confusion on the issue. Just a few years ago, in fact, Heritage Foundation offered $10,000 per article written by a "scientist" to try to refute global warming. We don't know how many takers there were, but I've counted over 200 letters or articles (usually op-eds like the one shown) in which either single hacks or groups of them have attempted to disparage global warming or insist "there's no need to panic". Well, there damned well is need to panic, as this year's unfolding weather disasters, including new heat waves and droughts will show.

But let's look at this latest idiotic article on offer in today's WSJ, in which it is claimed to be "signed by 16 scientists at the end of the article". Before getting to some of their bollocks, let us inquire into exactly WHO these people are. Do they have the gravitas or the disputative basis of real climate scientists? Going through the list, one finds:

Jan Breslow: Head of Biogenetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University

Roger Cohen, fellow American Physical Society. No specialty given, but as a recent commenter has pointed out, he's a "retired ExxonMobil Researcher and Engineer. Also a defender of the serial disinformationist, Lord Monckton (WUWT).He has been doing AGW denial talks for years". Maybe a denier cousin of S. Fred Singer! In any case, we write him off as having zero gravitas.

Edward David: Member, National Academy of Engineering

Michael Kelly, Professor of Technology, Univ. of Cambridge

Richard Lindzen, prof. of atmospheric sciences, MIT

James McGrath, prof. of Chemistry, Virginia Technical University

Bert Rutan, aerospace engineer

Harrions H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut

Nir Shaviv, prof. of astrophysics, Hebrew University

There are also four meteorologists listed and I will tackle them first. At first blush one might believe a meteorologist is perfectly qualified to discuss climate science. But not so fast! The meteorologist generally focuses attention on near term changes and trends, based on high pressure areas, lows, etc. not long term predictions.

Indeed, the Jan.-Feb. 2011 Issue of The Columbia Journalism Review featured a piece entitled ‘Hot Air: Why Don’t TV Weathermen Believe in Climate Change?’

In the article by Charles Homans, assorted reasons were put forward as to why many TV weathermen (especially ensconced in the Weather Channel) as well as a significant number of member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) don’t buy climate change. Among them:

1- Given their familiarity with the defects in their own extended predictions, meteorologists looking at long range climate questions (such as global warming effects) are predisposed to “see a system doomed to terminal unpredictability”.

2- Most skeptic meteorologists (like Bob Breck an AMS-certified chief meteorologist at New Orleans WVUE) didn’t properly recognize the limits of their own scientific training – and hence the implausibility of their pronouncing on climate science.

3- Because of (2) the skeptic meteorologists tend to see their own “informed intuition” as the source of some kind of ersatz scientific authority – particularly if the skeptics are also excellent communicators, or fancy themselves so.

Some of the paradoxical statistics that were cited in the article, based on surveys carried out by Emory University Journalism lecturer Kris Wilson, included:

- 29% agreed with Weather Channel mogul John Coleman’s take that global warming was “the greatest scam in history”.

-Only 24% believed that humans were responsible for most of the change over the past half century.

- 50% were certain this wasn’t true and that humans weren’t responsible.

-Only 17% of the opinionated TV weathermen “received a graduate degree, a prerequisite for an academic researcher in any scientific field”.

Similar trends appear to correlate to Australian and European meteorologists but not quite to the same extent as for Americans. In any case, one would not expect to find much in the way of insight or illumination on global warming and its predictions from this lot.

As for Lindzen, about the only atmospheric scientist listed, I already lambasted him in earlier blogs:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/richard-lindzens-fantasies-1.html

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/06/richard-lindzens-fantasies-2.html


Now, what about the others? Do we really, REALLY want to take serious advice on CLIMATE change from biogeneticists, chemists, former astronauts, "professors of technology" or engineers? Give me a break! Even astrophysicists - like Shaviv, are not entitled to be taken with more than a grain of salt unless they regularly keep pace with all the latest information - via professional journals. Though my specialty is certainly in space physics, solar physics, I regularly (weekly) receive and read Eos Transactions of the Americal Geophysical Union, which usually contains at least one current climate article (already refereed) in each issue. Many of my blogs have been based on research from this journal, i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/06/latest-climate-news-not-sanguine.html

In many of my blogs I've also repeatedly cited the actual results from REAL climate scientists, as opposed to pretenders! Specifically, I've referenced the scientific consensus on global warming reported in Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22, by P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24) :

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

The authors concluded (p. 24) :

“The challenge appears to be how to effectively communicate this fact (non-existent debate among real climate specialists) to policy makers and a public that continues to mistakenly perceive debate exists among scientists”


The problem, of course, is that so long as pseudo-climate scientists are given large header displays and article space in the likes of The Wall Street Journal, this perception problem will continue and many people will mistake the views of these pretenders for those of actual climate scientists.

Speaking of which, let's end by taking a brief look at some of the crap they've all subscribed to by lending their names. The article states:

"The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless, odorless gas exhaled at high concentrations by each of us and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle"

So these ludicrous morons insult our intelligence with the obvious, while not saying a solitary word about the 800-billion CO2- spewing vehicles sending gigatons of carbon into the planet's atmosphere each year. (Terry Gerlach of the U.S. Geological Survey showed from his time series studies that the projected anthropogenic CO2 emission rate of 35 gigatons per year is 135 times greater than the 0.26 gigatons per year emission rate for volcanoes).

Nor is one statement made on the key central point which one would have thought at least one of these 16 might have noticed: ALL Greenhouse gases' (including CO2 and methane) ability to absorb heat in the form of solar infrared radiation is directly contingent on the molecular vibrations undergone by the particular gas molecule which allows it to absorb and re-emit incident radiation. It is THIS property which confers the capacity to warm our atmosphere if present beyond a certain limiting concentration. And it is the aforementioned CO2 spewing vehicles that create the effect, hence making THEIR effluent a definite pollutant!

The clueless article next refers to a "lack of warming for more than a decade" - recycling once again a profound canard that was engendered by some idiot denier types in assorted tropes and news bytes ca. 2008-09. This bollocks evidently originated in a paper appearing in Nature – written by Dr. Noel Keenlyside et al, and which made a tentative claim for monotonic global cooling since ca. 1998. This 'jumped the shark' and become embedded into the warming skeptics' arsenal of disinfo and set real global warming science education back at least a decade in my estimation.

I say it "jumped the shark" because despite hundreds of efforts to correct it, it still surfaces like a Zombie immune to extirpation, as evinced in this absurd WSJ piece. So now, when one broaches warming anywhere, he is met with specious citations of the Keenlyside et al paper as "proof" it isn't happening.

At the root of this misapprehension by the faux skeptics is misinterpretation of the data appearing in the paper - not at all helped by the media (like the WSJ) which have also misconstrued it. Even Editors who fully know the actual original source still can't be bothered to consult it, they'd rather get their info 2nd hand (like from the 'Investor's Business Daily') then bloviate how global warming is wrong, or "hyped" in sundry editorials.

People prone to the denial weltanschauung then read these superficial reports, miss the key core clues, and bruit it all about that they (deniers, skeptics) were right all along. Instead of taking shortcuts, skeptics could have retrieved the ACTUAL paper from Nature! They could have studied the paper's key figure, the one that looks at past and (forecast) future global temperatures, "Hindcast/forecast decadal variations in global mean temperature, as compared with observations and standard climate model projections".

The first thing they’d have noted about the figure -indeed, one major source of confusion - is that each point represents a ten-year centered mean. That is, each point represents the average temperature of the decade starting 5 years before that point and ending 5 years after that point. Thus, the statistics for potential “cooling” could not possibly have been justifiably extrapolated beyond 1998 + 5 = 2003. Yet imbeciles all over the place (like the 16 who supported this WSJ piece) have insisted it is ongoing.

Second, the skeptics would have spotted the red line in the Nature publication and – if bright enough – beheld that it was the the actual global temperature data from the U.K.'s Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research. They ought to have asked: Why does the red line stop in 1998 and not 2007? Again, it’s a running 10-year mean, and the authors use data from a Hadley paper that ends around 2003, In effect, they can't do a ten-year centered mean after 1998.

Lazy deniers, however, have parlayed this simple statistical peculiarity of the data into believing that global warming factually STOPPED in 1998!

Third, at least one genius denier might have spotted the black line in the Figure, which was actually one of the IPCC scenario projections, labeled 'A1B.' It denotes a relatively high-CO2-growth model -- but actual carbon emissions since 2000 have wildly outpaced it. A further check by skeptics of the solid green line - the "hindcast" of the authors – e.g. how well their model compared to actual data (and the A1B scenario) could also be done. The lazy morons would have seen that, if extended (in dashes) through 2010 and finally to 2025, it JOINED up with A1B!
Another grievous source of confusion that has been misused by the deniers is the authors statement:

“Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming”

But what they really mean by that statement is not what a simple reading of that sentence would suggest: They do not mean that "the global surface temperature may not increase over the next ten years starting now."

What they meant is what the lead author, Dr. Noel Keenlyside, later provided in a clarification letter to the publicaton: They were predicting no increase in average temperature of the "next decade" (2005 to 2015- relative to their data timeline) over the previous decade, which, for them, is 2000 to 2010! And that is, in fact, precisely what the figure shows -- that the 10-year mean global temperature centered around 2010 is the roughly the same as the mean global temperature centered around 2005.

What is dismaying to those who have done research is how deficient the average denier-skeptic is, and how difficult it is to impart correct interpretation of data minus the bogey of ideology which stalks every word written on global warming. (And as Prof. Porter has observed, agnotology always makes its greatest incursion into the most contentious issues - especially those with political or economic consequences. )

As one 'Physics Today' report noted two years ago, it is as if those political and economic facets actually trump the SCIENCE.

That so-called scientists themselves would actually be a party to this spread of such misinformation is a travesty. It signifies for me that every last one of them ought to have their credentials repealed and Ph.D.s sent back forthwith. They don't deserve them!

Our Students at Risk of Delusion on Climate Change

The newly issued report entitled 'What Do U.S. Students Know About Climate Change?, EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, Vol. 92, No. 51, 20 December, 2011, p. 477) was sobering to say the least. The report noted for example, that if a cross section of undergraduates are asked climate questions - one is liable to get a whole set of "hair raising responses".

Examples (ibid.):

"The greenhouse effect is caused by a hole in the ozone layer which allows in more sunlight".

""Humans are not the main cause of climate change"

These responses and many others disclose that while a plurality of students (83%) are concerned about climate change, "many have significant misconceptions about the fundamental science behind it".

The article -report notes that the best documented of these involves confusion between stratospheric ozone (O3) destruction and the Greenhouse effect. What this shows me is that the students are sadly lacking in both chemistry and physics preparation. This is a warning that perhaps our colleges and universities need to do more. I suggest it needs to start as early as high school where U.S. students typicall take only one year of each science subject - i.e. biology, chemistry and physics in separate years, while students in Barbados take 5 consecutive years of subjects - mainly physics and chemistry. Hence the latter are much better prepared and less likely to make gross errors or confuse issues such as noted concerning the erosion of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect.

In the case of stratospheric ozone depletion, what is happening is that solar UV radiation is disrupting ozone (O3) as a result of the presence of chemicals called chloro-fluourocarbons. This means the ozone layer, which protects us from the UV radiation, is progessively weakened ...and yes, a "hole" may ultimately occur within it. This "hole" then admits more UV radiation which can cause more blindness and severe sunburns, skin cancers if people aren't protected.

The greenhouse effect, on the other hand, is due to increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. This particular gas - as well as some others (e.g. methane) are important in terms of the capacity to warm our atmosphere if present beyond a certain limiting concentration. That is, they possess the ability to absorb heat in the form of solar infrared radiation. This ability is directly contingent on the molecular vibrations undergone by the particular greeenhouse gas molecule which allow it to absorb and re-emit incident radiation. The particular radiation in this case is also different, namely infrared or heat radiation, as opposed to ultraviolet. (Which has a much shorter wavelength).

The other side of the problem of too little education, is too much mis-education! The Eos report puts the blame for this on "climate myths and misinformation that are perpetuated by a small but vocal group of politicians and climate change skeptics."

It adds:

"Relative to climate experts, the skeptics have an unreasonable large platform in the media and on web sites"

The web site pathology is understandable, because the blogosphere is replete with wild speculations and skepticism about a whole range of fare. The media is more difficult to countenance, since by now NO skeptic ought to be permitted a platform to spiel his nonsense and especially in the interest of a pseudo-objectivity - being paired off vs. a serious climate expert. This should no more be permitted than allowing a Holocaust denier to pair off against a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz. There is no equivalence here, and it isn't a matter of "free speech". The denier has no basis at all to have his spurious voice heard! (And in Germany and Austria would be locked up for expressing these views).

But American corporate media, so obsessed as they are with the "crossfire" and fight syndrome, are always interested more in charging up a dust up than getting the truth out.

This is sad, because the way things are, students often retain their misconceptions "even after focused instruction on the topic". And this was despite the fact that students' depth of understanding of the greenhouse effect increased, e.g. during courses given on climate change.

This resistance suggests they've been infected by a mind virus and its disinfection likely requires more rigorous methods than mere counter teaching them the actual scientific evidence and data.

Another undertaking suggested for experts by the authors, is to formulate a compilation of "accepted explanations" which can serve as the minimal knowledge students can be expected to have. Such accepted explanations will also dampen the variations of emphasis and cause that many students are subject to, when they do hear or see actual climate experts...such as Michael Mann, and others. They will also come to understand that environmental activists like Patrick Moore, a former Canadian Greenpeace Foundation president and now a global warming critic, are not real climate experts or climate scientists. such discrimination of sources will enable students to pay more attention to the real experts and less to the hobbyists or others who claim to be experts.

Once more, the best web site source for information and news from real climate experts is:

http://www.realclimate.org/

Meanwhile, the Table from the Eos report with examples of student misconceptions is shown.