The Futile Effort To Misrepresent James Hansen's Climate Predictions From 1988 Continues

 Incredibly, in the face of all the evidence the denier brigade continues its incessant drumbeat to ignore what's happening all around us and regard climate change-global warming as a myth, or at least its predictions as sensationalized and exaggerated. Here in Colorado no one is stupid or ignorant enough to believe either of those tropes. The current drought has seen the least snowpack in almost ten years and all the signs are there for a severe fire season such as we last beheld in 2012-13, e.g.

Indeed, the "416 Fire" has already wrought massive destruction in La Plata County and it's only June.  Recall for reference here that an NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) projection given in 2002 forecast the American West would see extended drought, hotter weather and fire conditions into the near and distant future ...on account of climate change-global warming.    Right now seven Colorado counties classify as disaster areas because of the drought and things will only get worse as the summer progresses. Meanwhile, several rivers have reached peak flows, the Rio Grande - which originates in our state - is  down to barely 250 cubic feet per second compared to over 1400 cfs several years ago.

But the global warming "exaggerations"  nonsense keeps churning, the latest appearing June 22,  WSJ, p. A15 by two lackeys from the Libertarian CATO Institute (Pat Michaels, and Ryan Maue).  Of course, according to Libertarian ideology every manjack must cope on his or her own, such as in Puerto Rico after being flattened by Hurricane Maria. You are not supposed to "grovel" to the government for any "handouts", but do what Ayn Rand would have: do for yourself even if it means drinking toxic water out of waste dumps. Hey, at least you won't die of thirst!

According to the CATO pawns all of  James Hansen's forecasts from 1988 were either wrong or overblown by the media.  Hansen delivered three "scenario" forecasts, A, B and C with A based on "accelerating emissions" for CO2, B based on more moderate emissions, and C "the least likely" e.g. only constant emissions commencing in 2000. We now know the last was a pipedream - see top graphic-  given the relentless increase in global mean temperatures.  Despite this,  Michaels and Maue  insist: "scenario C is the winner" because:

"Global surface temperatures have not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger than usual El Nino of 2015-16."

But this bejabber flies in the face of the data during that time span and shown the top graphic.  Thus, "14 of the 15 warmest years occurred since 2000." This was including 2014 which "broke all records".

What gives? Are the CATO authors ignorant or just low IQ dupes? Actually, mainly ignorant.  A first clue appeared thanks to Thomas Karl, Director of the National Centers for Environmental Information of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a June 4, 2015 paper which appeared in the journal Science.

This concerned inconsistent data treatment, particularly in processing sea surface temperatures - especially as measured by buoys.   This error was likely compounded in conjunction with the misinterpretation of Hadley UK Center future projections on climate that I've already discussed at length, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/06/george-will-no-warming-for-last-16.html

I would even venture to say that the preponderance of false judgment by too many (mainly conservatives like George Will, i.e. in his first and only recent appearance on Bill Maher's Real Time) is due to inadequate study of the climate backstory. That includes the role of changing carbon isotope ratios over geological time, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/12/carbon-isotope-ratios-and-climate.html

As Thomas Karl noted, quoted in Eos Transactions - Earth & Space Science (July 1, 2015):

"The biggest takeaway is there is no slowdown in global warming".

Indeed, he added that warming the past fifteen years is the "strongest it's been since the latter half of the 20th century". Putting an exclamation point on that, July that year (2015) was the hottest July since records were initiated.

A good summary of the paper may be accessed at:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2015/noaa-analysis-journal-science-no-slowdown-in-global-warming-in-recent-years.html 

Why the measurement difficulty? Well, because the data gathering and process of analysis are inherently complex.  In order to achieve such a measurement as how Earth's average global temperature is increasing, there's a lot of "sausage making".  First, scientists must combine thousands of measurements from Earth's surface, taken by land instruments, ships. buoys and orbital satellites.

Second, each of these has its own random errors, all of which must be identified. Not only must researchers comb through the data to eliminate these errors, they must also correct for any differences in how each type of instrument measures temperature.

Thus, the authors of the Science paper had to dig into NOAA's global surface temperature analysis data to examine how sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were being measured. SSTs are measured in various ways:

-  collecting ocean water in a bucket and measuring its temperature directly

- measuring the temperature of water taken in by a ship engine as a coolant

- using floating buoys moored in the various oceans

Each technique records slightly different temperatures in the same region so scientists have to adjust the data. In the past couple decades the number of buoys has increased - adding 15% more coverage to the ocean. But because buoys tend to read colder temperatures than ships at the same locations, a measurement bias is introduced which must be corrected for. This was the primary task set out by Karl et al.  They corrected for the bias by adding 0.12C to each buoy temperature. 

By then combining the ocean data with improved calculations of air temperatures over land around the world, Karl and colleagues found that overall global surface warming over 2000-14 was 0.116C per decade or more than twice the estimated 0.039C starting in 1998 that the IPCC had reported.

 

Basically then the WSJ's  CATO contributors are guilty mainly of rank ignorance in: a) not knowing how sea surface or other global temperatures are processed, and b) failing to appreciate the significance and why the rise in temperatures fully comports with Hansen's model.

All of this also comports with the latest data from the United Nation's World Meteorological Association that notes the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has now reached 403 parts per million.   

Note here that every increase in CO2 concentration by 2 ppm increases the radiative heating effect  by 2 W/m².  Further, the increase has been by 3 ppm since 2015-16. So no surprise the UN Report concluded:  

 

"Geological records show that the current levels of CO2 correspond to an equilibrium climate last observed in the mid-Pliocene (3 - 5 million years ago) , a climate that was 2-3 degrees Celsius warmer  - where the Greenland West Antarctic Ice sheets melted - leading to sea levels that were 32- 64 feet higher than those today."

This, of course, torpedoes the CATO authors next claim e.g.

"In a 2007 case deposition Mr. Hansen stated that most of Greenland's ice would soon melt raising sea levels 23 feet over the course of 100 years."

Hmmm....looks like Hansen was pretty spot on to me, judging from the UN WMO report!  Indeed, it looks like he was way too conservative, projecting only 23 feet increase in sea level vs. the 32- 64 feet from the WMO report based on now being in a Ploiocene climate (given the CO2 concentration at 403 pm). 

Again, the two CATO clowns misjudge and misinterpret as when they cite a Nature paper  which "found only modest ice loss after 6,000 years of much warmer temperatures than human activity could ever sustain".

Failing to note that the latest findings (June 13, Nature) disclose Antarctic ice melt has tripled since 2007.   They use this to project a 15 cm sea level rise by 2100 - but this study takes no account of the Greenland melting rate - which is accelerating faster from Jokulhlaup (cf. Jokulhlaup Observed in Greenland ice sheet’, appearing in Eos: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (Vol. 89, No. 35, 26 Aug. 2008, p. 221). The cited paper specifically noted an increased frequency in occurrence of “jokalhlaups”or sudden glacial bursts of melting runoff from glaciers. It was this phenomena that also played a role in the “unusual cracks" that set off the separation of a “chunk of ice the size of Manhattan” (19 sq. miles)from Ellesmere Island in Canada’s northern Arctic. In the case of the increasing Greenland Jokulhlaup we are looking not just at one massive breakoff, but the loss of perhaps 45% of the entire Greenland ice sheet on account of the underground splintering effects producing ever larger cracks in the ice and the inability of it to support the overlying permafrost and other ice. Thus, onset will be sudden and perhaps more like a "terror attack" from nature.

So again,  the CATO authors did not do due diligence in the preparation of their article. Other missteps are also in evidence, e.g.

 

"Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No, satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature."

Again, wrong.  According to SciCheck, a division of FactCheck.org:

"The most recent analysis of what’s known about the effect of climate change on hurricane activity comes from the June 28 draft of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report.  One of that report’s key findings said that human activities have “contributed to the observed increase in hurricane activity” in the North Atlantic Ocean since the 1970s. The Gulf of Mexico, where Harvey formed, is part of the North Atlantic Ocean.

The draft report echoes the findings of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2013 assessment report, which found that scientists are “virtually certain” (99 percent to 100 percent confident) that there has been an “increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s” in the North Atlantic Ocean."

Again, this follows logically from the current 403 ppm concentration of  CO2  in the atmosphere which also must be tied to higher surface temperatures (see the graphic again) and also note he planet is currently  subject to a radiative heating effect equivalent to 2.5 x 10 ⁷  TJ injected each year into the atmosphere or roughly 400,000 Hiroshima size A-bombs.   This in turn conforms to the observed  addition of 2 ppm  per year  in CO2 concentrations and an associated heating increase per year of             2 W/m².    

Result?  The temperature of the planet is currently out of balance by 0.6W/ m²  and this is almost entirely due to the annual rate of CO2 concentrations increasing. This is not due to any natural phenomenon but to human injection of carbon and other greenhouse gases into the planet's climate system. The end result of which is to RAISE global temperatures!. 

The CATO clowns then dig themselves in deeper, asking:

"Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage to the U.S. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such damage measured as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product"

But that is because gross domestic product is an unreliable measure, given it omits so many "externalities"  i.e. the loss in potable water, electric access after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.  And as noted in the WSJ :'The Hurricane Lull Couldn't Last', (Sept. 1, p. A15):

"The U.S. has seen 20 storms causing a billion dollars or more in damage since 2010, not including Harvey, compared with nine billion-dollar floods in the full decade of the 1980s." 

This definitely shows an alarming increase in damage, never mind the  bogus invocation of % of GDP    As  Financial Times contributor David Pilling explained in a TIME Viewpoint article ('Why GDP Is A Faulty Measure Of Success',  Feb. 5, p. 41):

"Invented in the 1930s, the figure is a child of the manufacturing age - good at measuring physical production but not the services that dominate modern economies. How would GDP measure the quality of mental health care or the availability of day care centers and parks in your area?  Even Simon Kuznets, the Belarussian economist who practically invented GDP, had doubts about his creation."

GDP is supposed to measure the total production and consumption of goods and services in the United States. But the numbers that make up the Gross Domestic Product by and large only capture the monetary transactions we can put a dollar value on. Almost everything else is left out: old growth forests that maintain cooling and act as CO2 repositories, watersheds, animal habitats, e.g. the Everglades, and costs of infrastructure maintenance. But ALL of these count toward  the physical security and welfare of a society, and assume particular import after being majorly impacted in a monster hurricane - such as the type seen over the past decade.

Michaels and Maue claim next that the "list of what didn't happen is long and tedious"  - but I could counter that by asserting the list of my subsequent demolitions of your arguments about Hansen's  "failed" predictions is also long and tedious.  For example, the dynamic duo argue:

"Hansen's models and the UN's don't consider more precise measures of how aerosols emissions counter warming caused by greenhouse gases"

Which is pure poppyock, because we've known for decades - from thermal physics - the effects of aerosols on global warming, and the former don't even make the cut of an ant fart in the wind. In this regard, .one can't forget or omit diffusive reflection and re-transmission of radiation, say arising from particulates . Chandrasekhar in Radiative Transfer, (Dover Publications) shows that for angles of incidence in the range : 0.5 < i < 0.8 radian, diffusive reflection allows the radiation reflected normal to the incidence direction to actually have higher intensity than the original. (E.g. for optical depths 1.0 < < 2.0).

In effect, if conditions in the lower atmosphere incorporate such optical depths (and angles of incidence for scattering, diffusive reflection), on account of increased presence of particulates, aerosols, then we will expect to find an "anomaly" say in the temperature. The most alarming aspect of global dimming in this regard - as made public by global dimming researchers (e.g. Dr Peter Cox) is that it has obviously deceived many (like the CATO clowns) into underestimating the true power of the greenhouse effect, including the role of CO2.

Hence, Michaels and Mauer's tripe is expected only if one hasn't properly reckoned the presence of dimming particulates- aerosols ,  especially their scattering, re-reflection (and hence false albedo effects) into global warming models! 

The key clue to the REAL agenda of the authors and their persistent misdirection is embodied in this remark:

"Why should people world wide pay drastic costs to cut emissions when the global temperature is acting as if the cuts have already been made?"

Actually, my fine pair of CATO clowns, the global temperatures are NOT acting any such way other than in your fevered imaginations.  Again, see the top graphic of continuous increases in worldwide temperatures.  The point here is that Maue and Michaels have exposed their hand as primarily concerned with economic costs, hence they qualify as agnotologists - not climatologists.  Stanford historian of science Robert Proctor has correctly tied this shtick 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. 

Michaels and Maue fit this profile to a tee, and is the biggest reason why their op-ed needs to be taken with a grain of salt, or ... with the gravitas of a solitary ant fart.

Human Influence On Climate Tracked To The 1930s

Thermal graphic with Earth's long term warming trend, showing temperature changes from 1880 to 2015 as a rolling 5-year average.  Orange regions indicate temperatures warmer than the 1951-1980 baseline average. Blue represents temperatures cooler than the baseline.

We know that in recent years, as the effects of climate change have ratcheted up, climate scientists have attempted to determine whether extreme weather events (extended heat waves, droughts, 'thousand year' floods etc.) are more likely to occur, e.g. as CO2 concentrations have increased along with global mean temperatures. Associated with this line of research, specialists have also tried to ascertain the extent to which past extreme events can be attributed to human influences on global climate.

Now, a breakthrough appears to have been made as published in Geophysical Research Letters, April 2, 2016 by Andrew King et al. See abstract at link below:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL067448/abstract

While noting "numerous extreme events" for which effects may be attributed to human-induced climate change, the researchers also note:

" it is likely that for temperature extremes occurring over previous decades a fraction of their probability was attributable to anthropogenic influences."

The question at hand, of course, becomes what fraction of their probability? If ALL the extreme events could be tied to human influence then the probability is P = 1.0. If it is 1 out of 5 extreme events, then P = 0.20. (Based on the standard frequency model for computing an empirical probability).  But technically we would expect the probabilities to vary somewhat with the category assessed, so expect to find differences in terms of heat waves, droughts etc. A more meaningful tag would therefore be "record breaking hot years".  This category would not only subsume heat waves but also the median level of high night time temperatures for regions, which most researchers regard as a key global warming parameter.

In this case, King et al - based on examining past hot years and seasons that exceeded the range of natural variability (going back to 1900) -  found that humans have likely caused the 16 most recent record- breaking hot years experienced up to 2014. This means that for this category and defined subset of data the probability for human -induced effects was 1.0.

They further found   the human influence extended back in time to at least 1937.   Their focus for the extreme heat events covered five regions, including: central England, central Europe, central U.S., east Asia and Australia.  The question that arises is: Why has it taken so long to track back the human agency in these events?

The researchers, in fact, showed that  the emergence of the human signal had been delayed in the same regions owing to a cooling period  in the 1970s that arose from presence of particulates and aerosols.  After the Clean Air Act and similar bills were passed, those particulates disappeared and the cooling was no longer as evident. Aerosols remained and gave way to the global dimming phenomenon which also concealed about a third of global warming. But when aerosols were also controlled - after similar legislation, global dimming receded and warming assumed dominance. With that change, the unmistakable human contribution became more apparent.

One of the other profound conclusions to emerge from the work is that minus human-induced climate change the recent record hot years, including 2014 and 2015 would not have occurred.

These documented changes and signals should get the attention of the climate change deniers, especially those who dispute any role for humans in global warming.  It is abundantly clear by now that humans - pumping out dozens of gigatons of carbon each year, are responsible for at least 60 percent of the  0.6W/ m²   by which the temperature of the planet is currently out of balance. (Every 2 ppm increase in CO2 concentration increases the radiative heating effect by 2 W/ m².)

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/tom-engelhardt/68960/tomgram-michael-klare-the-rise-of-the-right-and-climate-catastrophe

Ozone Hole Continues to Increase - Projected At Least Until 2040

Antarctic ozone hole as it appeared in 2006, highlighted in purple and blue. It marked the largest hole area yet observed at more than 273 million square kilometers. (From EOS Transactions, Vol. 96, No. 10, p.28).


It seems strange that many believe the problem of the growing ozone hole over Antarctica is now solved, and no longer a problem. Nothing could be further from the truth and new research reveals the extent of the problem. In truth, atmospheric scientists have observed as the ozone hole has formed every spring from the Southern Hemisphere.

The origin is no mystery and the erosion of the ozone layer,  caused by enormous inputs of CFCs or chloro-flourocarbons, has been known for at least 40 years. Each CFC molecule, as the late Carl Sagan pointed out in a 1979 article, is capable of eliminating tens of thousands of ozone molecules (each composed of 3 oxygen atoms) that form the protective barrier against harsh UV or ultraviolet radiation. The type that causes more skin cancers and cataracts. Humans caused this massive ozone erosion, which reached up to 70% of the ozone layer over the South Pole by late 1979- through the use of chemicals including: aerosols, solvents and refrigerants.

When these CFCs reach the stratosphere, the chlorine atoms are liberated by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, which incept the erosion of the ozone. The peril arising from this erosion reached the point that by 1987, the nations of the world agreed to the "Montreal Protocol" to halt the harmful emission of these CFCs.  As a result the hole quit growing by the mid-1990s.

That's the good news. The bad news is that recovery of the protective ozone shield has been slow because many of the ozone depleting chemicals can last in the atmosphere up to 100 years - a lot of time to keep causing damage, erosion.

Despite the fact CFCs are no longer being emitted in any vast quantities, atmospheric scientists don't forecast the ozone hole to disappear until at least 2070.  They calculate that the gradual destruction of CFCs already in the atmosphere causes chlorine to decline each year by roughly 20 parts per trillion or 0.5%. However, as reported in EOS Transactions, Vol. 96, No. 10, p.28, Earth-orbiting satellites indicate that the natural variability of chlorine levels over Antarctica is up to ten times larger than the expected annual decline. 

In fact, in some years the chlorine levels have declined as much as 200 parts per trillion or 5% but in other years it increased by 150 ppt.  According to Strahan et al (Journal Of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres, 2014) it will take a decade of exclusive chlorine declines to be certain that the Montreal Protocol has caused the ozone hole to shrink.

Currently, it is low temperatures in the Antarctic that play the largest role in determining the size of the ozone hole. For example, in 2006, the combination of very low temperatures and high chlorine levels produced the largest ozone hole ever. It won't be until 2040, according to the authors, that we'll be able to expect the chlorine levels to have fallen enough that the ozone hole will he smaller than it is today, even given a very cold year.

Given these natural fluctuation issues, we are left with years of monitoring both temperature and chlorine levels before it can definitively be said that the declining trends can be attributed to the Montreal Protocol. Yes, the Protocol has evidently worked, but the inordinate lifetimes of the CFCs has made full removal extremely difficult, and requiring an extended time frame. 

This is also a cautionary tale for those who deny climate change-global warming, since an analogous situation applies. As reported in EOS Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (Vol. 91, No. 30, 27 July, 2010),  CO2 is so long-lived in the atmosphere (~ 100 years for each molecule from the time deposited) and so much has been injected by humans, "it could effectively lock the Earth and future generations into warming not just for decades or centuries but literally for thousands of years."

Something to think about!