Thank you for emitting
A recent movie, 'Thank You for Smoking', amusingly highlighted the lengths that PR reps for the tobacco companies would go to distort the public discourse on the health effects of smoking. Lest you thought that was of merely historical relevance, we would like to draw your attention to two of the funniest videos around. Lifting a page straight out of the Nick Naylor playbook, the CEI (an industry-funded lobby group) has launched a new ad campaign that is supposed to counteract all those pesky scientific facts about global warming.
The first ad (both available here) deserves to become a classic of the genre. It contains the immortal lines 'CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life!' - it is beyond parody and without content - and so you should definitely see it. The second ad has a little more substance - but is as misleading as you might expect.
They only discuss one scientific point which relates to whether 'glaciers are melting'. Unsurprisingly, they don't discuss the dramatic evidence of tropical glacier melting, the almost worldwide retreat of other mountain glaciers, the rapid acceleration of fringing glaciers on Greenland or the Antarctic peninsula. Neither do they mention that the preliminary gravity measurements imply that both Antarctica and Greenland appear to be net contributors to sea level rise. No. The only studies that they highlight are ones which demonstrate that in the interior of the ice shelves, there is actually some accumulation of snow (which clearly balances some of the fringing loss). These studies actually confirm climate model predictions that as the poles warm, water vapour there will increase and so, in general, will precipitation. In the extreme environments of the central ice sheets, it will not get warm enough to rain and so snowfall and accumulation are expected to increase.
To be sure, calculating the net balance of the ice sheets is difficult and given the uncertainties of different techniques (altimeters, gravity measurements, interferometers etc.) and the shortness of many of the records, it's difficult to make very definitive statements about the present day situation. Our sense of the data is that Greenland is probably losing mass - the rapid wasting around the edge is larger than the accumulation in the center, whereas Antarctica in toto is a more difficult call.
However, one should step back a bit from what has been going on in recent years, and consider what is likely to happen in the future. The last time the planet may have been a degree or so warmer than today (about 120,000 years ago), sea level was around 5 to 6 meters higher - and that water must have come from Greenland and (probably) the West Antarctic ice sheet. With projected future rises in emissions of 'Life!' (though we like to call it 'carbon dioxide'), these sorts of temperature rises are clearly possible, and the danger that would eventually pose to the continued existence of some ice sheets is clearly cause for concern.
To summarise, while CEI clearly demonstrate that their job (paraphrasing Nick Naylor again) "requires a certain …. moral flexibility", the rest of us can be grateful for the amusement they appear to have accidentally bestowed on the world.
Update 21 May: Engineering Professor Curt Davis says TV Spots are Misrepresenting His Research
18 May 2006 at 9:04 AM
Very funny, but let’s not forget people keep smoking even when they repeatedly see messages telling them that it very seriously damages health. The same is likely to apply to behaviour contributing to GHG emissions.
18 May 2006 at 9:34 AM
More annoying is the fact that one of the two CEI ads refers to two papers in Science that the narrator says undermine the argument that sea level rise is resulting from climate change. But it turns out that both papers actually support the prevailing consensus on climate change. Of course, the CEI doesn’t actually expect anyone to check their “facts.” But I hope we can at least draw some attention to this problem. I detail the incongruencies at http://islandofdoubt.blogspot.com
18 May 2006 at 9:42 AM
Part of the problem is that quitting smoking is something very personal that an individual can do to reduce their risk of cancer or other health problems. But with pollution etc, however good I am about turning off the lights, only driving when necessary, recycling my newspapers etc, there’s hundreds of others who don’t give a proverbial. For example, because our bills are included in the rent, my housemates don’t see what’s wrong with having the heating on and the windows open, or leaving lights or appliances on all night, or running the dishwasher when it’s virtually empty.
How do we turn personal responsbility into real global change?
18 May 2006 at 9:46 AM
Thanks for this. The ads are hilarious, if you don’t care about your grandchildren. Forgive me, but I can’t resist taking this opportunity to note that this episode shows yet again that RC simply must not listen too closely to those who insist that RC should stick rigidly to science and science only. It is impossible to deal with the science, such as it is, in these two commercials without involving
* a sense of absurdity,
* a knowledge of parody (and of self-parody,
in the case of that first ad), and
* an awareness that not all discussions take
place in the earnest, straightforward —
and in my view, admirable — forum that
science can usually assume for itself
within science’s own domain.
RC’s fundamnental purpose is to go outside that domain to correct inaccuracy, and it seems to me that RC has done it well again here.
18 May 2006 at 10:23 AM
Let’s hope the Skeptics (in this case they’re the pro-science people, these labels get confusing) can come up with some podcasts/sound bites/videos from this conference:
http://www.environmentalwars.org/index.php
18 May 2006 at 10:39 AM
Parody … I often wonder what the average annual mileage of an active climatologist might be. Anyway, thank you for emitting.
18 May 2006 at 11:23 AM
Thank you for the clarity of this posting. It notes in simple and clear language, in one place, all the relevant points that would have given me (a lay-person) courage to stand up at a public meeting last year and challenge assurtions against global warming made by a local geologist who is regarded as a national authority on glaciers and polar icecaps.
With lots of charts and graphs of geological ages, real climate change in our life-time was totally dismised; and his own research in measuring the density of icecaps via core samples was used to discount the melting of glaciers. The combination of both points was to used to infer denial of global warming or the possibility of sea-level rise our low-lying region.
To say more re such reductionist scientific presentations necessarily enters political outcomes outside the parameters of this site…but if other scientists (there were many in that room) will not speak up for career reasons [the presentator not only chaired a major research funding body but had castigated the science behind a major report then attracting world headlines] then scientists must do more to assist laypeople in crafting acurate counter replies in language the layperson can master.
18 May 2006 at 11:33 AM
I do like that nice spin about CO2 though - “we breathe it out and plants breathe it in.”
Of course, we require water to live as well. On the other hand, drop yourself in seven feet of the stuff and you won’t last too long. You can also get very sick and die if you drink too much of it and wash all of the vital salts out of your body.
18 May 2006 at 11:36 AM
“With projected future rises in emissions of ‘Life!’ (though we like to call it ‘carbon dioxide’)”
That’s hilarious!
Would make a good basis for a counter-ad!
18 May 2006 at 11:50 AM
“CO2: We call it life”
RealClimate informs us of two ads being put out by the Onion Competitive Enterprise Institute. Punchline: “CO2: they call it pollution, we call it Life!”. If the CEI staff was locked in an airtight room, would they still call CO2…
18 May 2006 at 11:55 AM
>>highlighted the lengths that PR reps
Not true. The main character in this film is a lobbyist. He says so repeatedly. I’m sure tobacco PR reps are just as disgusting, but you should have the facts right.
18 May 2006 at 1:15 PM
In debating a sceptic, what evidence (proof) do we have that the recent spike in temperature is unprecedented over the past 1,000 years?
Thanks
[Response: Absolute proof only exists in mathematics. Evidence that this is likely can be found in all the northern hemispheric reconstructions done so far: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png - gavin]
18 May 2006 at 1:38 PM
so let’s sum up the CEI & Cato Institute platform:
CO2 = Life
Freedom = Slavery
Ignorance = Strength
18 May 2006 at 2:16 PM
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Myron_Ebell
“… Myron Ebell directs the Global Warming and International Environmental Policy project at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition, which was formed on May 6, 1997, “to dispel the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific and risk analysis.”
In March 2001, the nonprofit Clean Air Trust named Ebell its “clean air villain of the month,” citing his “ferocious lobbying charge to persuade President Bush to reverse his campaign pledge to control electric utility emissions of carbon dioxide.”
In September 2003 Greenpeace obtained evidence in the form of a
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/investigation-of-exxon-front-g memo
to Philip A. Cooney dated March 2002, outlining their strategy for dealing with the problems caused by scientifically-based “Climate Action Report 2002″, which the US government had submitted to the UN. …”
18 May 2006 at 3:16 PM
It’s good to know that they must conflate scientists with global warming alarmists, and continue to use phrases like “we’re doomed”.
By g*d, if we cut back on CO2, how are we gonna git the children to school?!?
Best,
D
18 May 2006 at 3:40 PM
devastatingly accurate
18 May 2006 at 4:32 PM
what do you guys think of colecting some cash and do a couter AD?
if your up to it i will be glad to do the production…
18 May 2006 at 4:43 PM
Using the CEI’s logic, one could argue that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to happened to New Orleans. (Water: They call it a terrible flood; we call it “life”.)
18 May 2006 at 4:52 PM
Those ads are repulsive. That ad about the guy’s kid about to get hit by the “climate train” is a good counter ad already. I’m sure someone knows the reference.
The counter ad could be along the lines of “too much of a good thing”. Or too much of a natural thing.
Start off with “Does the Oil industry think that you’re an idiot? Well, they’re sure treating you like one. They’re saying that CO2 emissions are good, so lots of them must be better. We all know what happens when there’s too much of a natural thing.”
Then show:
Food and a fat guy having a heart attack. “We need food to live. But too much of it….”
Rain, then show a flood washing away homes and/or people “Rain helps the crops to grow. But too much of it…”
“CO2 emissions are the same. Plants breathe CO2 in, but too much CO2…..”
then show dying plants, hurricanes and flooded shorelines.
That can be used to counter those “an escalated greenhouse effect that we are not controlling is good” boneheads, too.
18 May 2006 at 4:59 PM
The Glaciers ad is simply lying about what the studies it cites say. I emailed the co-lead author of the Antarctic study to check, and he told me: “Our article does NOT in fact support this statement.” I give more details and other analysis here.
18 May 2006 at 5:18 PM
I’d like to see some facts on how ethanol compares to gasoline in the amount of GHGs emitted.
18 May 2006 at 5:50 PM
This idea about CO2 being “life” seems to draw on a reductionist Western mindset that “analyzes,” cuts things up (like my relative taking the clock apart to see how it works, but can’t put it back together).
What we need is more holistic thinking, maybe a Taoist balance of sorts. Yes, the life world needs CO2, and it needs many many other things, like a good climate.
Or, see how long someone would last in a pure CO2 chamber. I don’t even think plants would like that. I understand they need oxygen at night. If plants could have a say, wonder if they would choose more CO2 or the climate as is today?
18 May 2006 at 5:56 PM
Re #21, when calculating GHGs emitted in producing ethanol don’t forget to figure in the energy needed to pump water for irrigation, and to ship bauxite from the rainforest floors to make tractors, or the loss of rainforests from bauxite mining. And all the paper work & the trees, including ag school. And we have to build those ships to ship the bauxite, then turn bauxite into aluminum. Then we need energy to run the farm machinery.
Supposing windmills pumped the water, and mules pulled the plows. Then it might be making headway in lowering GHGs.
18 May 2006 at 6:14 PM
Regarding corn-based ethanol and other alt. fuels’ lifecycle GHG emissions, take a look at a few papers on a University of California professor’s site:
http://www.its.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/delucchi/
(new draft manuscript here: http://www.its.ucdavis.edu/publications/2006/LCAs_of_Biofuels.pdf )
18 May 2006 at 6:16 PM
Re #20: I wonder if there is any chance that the authors of those studies might be willing to issue a press release saying that they feel that the conclusions of their work have been misrepresented by the ads. If this occurs, this ad campaign could really backfire on CEI!
18 May 2006 at 6:21 PM
Re #22 (Lynn): It’s not drawing on a “reductionist Western mindset”- it’s just political advocacy which tries to emphasize the “good” things about CO2 while completely ignoring the “bad” aspects. Like someone pontificating on the benefits of fire for warmth and cooking, while in the meantime your house is burning down.
I can think of a few choice adjectives for that kind of mindset, but “reductionist Western” would not be one of them…
18 May 2006 at 6:36 PM
I like the ads. They add a little balance.
18 May 2006 at 6:49 PM
Re 21,23 (ethanol)
There’s a recent synthesis article in Science: Farrell et al., Ethanol Can Contribute to Energy and Environmental Goals, Science 27 January 2006: Vol. 311. no. 5760, pp. 506 - 508.
In short, “despite large differences in net energy, all studies show similar results in terms of more policy-relevant metrics: GHG emissions from ethanol made from conventionally grown corn can be slightly more or slightly less than from gasoline per unit of energy, but ethanol requires much less petroleum inputs. Ethanol produced from cellulosic material (switchgrass) reduces both GHGs and petroleum inputs substantially.”
18 May 2006 at 7:57 PM
The scary thing is, that as much as we can try and have an intellectual debate about this ridiculous and immoral campaign, there are about 200 million Americans who don’t know where Antarctica or Greenland are, let alone care, who will quite likely believe this rubbish. It is up to the other 100 million of you to sort it out and make sure that those of us fotunate enough not to live in the US don’t suffer because of your compatriate’s stupidity.
18 May 2006 at 8:14 PM
Are we in danger of running out of CO2? Thanks to CEI for bringing this urgent matter to my attention.
18 May 2006 at 10:32 PM
Lets drink to ethanol!
It would help any discussion regarding ethanol as an alternative, renewable fuel to include the words “ice-free Arctic Ocean” in the same sentence. Then, we could challenge each other to think and speak comprehensively and not simply talk about corn-based ethanol to make us believe we have an “answer” to oil addiction and a plan to recycle carbon.
John McCormick
19 May 2006 at 1:36 AM
Re: #27, “I like the ads. They add a little balance.”
You mean like FOX News’ “balance” as in “fair and balanced”, which really means completely unfair and horribly unbalanced.
Give me a break, jae.
19 May 2006 at 1:50 AM
An aside from this on which someone can comment:
A post on Deltoid was quite startling. See here:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/05/richard_lindzen_claims_global.php
“Eric:
Yeah, it appears that not only was Lindzen cherry-picking, he was cherry-picking with manipulated data. Here’s Lindzen’s graphic and a graphic based on data downloaded from the source he cites.
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/temp/lindzen.html
You can see that he chopped off the temperature for 2003-2005 in order to make it appear to have flattened out when it was rising.
Holy cow.
Posted by: Robert | May 18, 2006 11:50 PM”
19 May 2006 at 1:56 AM
I wrote a counter-ad :::[Carbon dioxide ad - they call it a spot, we call it a stain.] Let me know what you think. If you have any rich friends who have the psychological need to save the planet - I would love to get it produced and run.
Wadard
Global Warming Watch
19 May 2006 at 4:28 AM
Re 21, 23, 28 Ethanol:
For evidence on ghg emissions from ethanol and biodiesel, also look here:
“Energy and greenhouse gas balance for Europe - an update” by CONCAWE ad hoc group on Alternative Fuels, Report 2/02
Source: http://www.senternovem.nl/mmfiles/26601_tcm24-124161.pdf
This shows how much land is needed for a very small reduction in ghg emissions (5.4 million hectares of land in Europe grown under the most energy efficient biofuel crops could reduce Europe’s CO2 emissions by 0.3%). Although some studies use slightly different figures, you are basically looking at an argument as to whether 5.4 million hectares would lead to 0.1%, 0.3% or perhaps 0.8% less CO2 emissions. And that is an awful lot of land, with intensive agriculture being one of the driving forces for the loss of biodiversity, for nutrient overload of the seas (those dead zones of algae bloom), fresh water pollution and soil erosion.
The destruction of rainforests for biofuel production is well-documented, too, and is intensifying. Moreover, I have just seen FAO figures that total world grain output is down for the second year running, and world food stocks are at the lowest level for decades - due to ‘adverse weather conditions’ in prime growing areas (including in the US). It’s a worrying trend and should make us think twice before we decide to burn ever more of the shrinking harvest in cars!
Lester Brown suggests that farmers should be able to get financial rewards for putting wind mills on their farms - that would give you a great deal more energy from far less land use (all the land around the wind mill is still of use for wildlife or farming). That seems a far more sensible approach to me.
Pat, you might want to have a look at the discussion paper I wrote, here: http://portal.campaigncc.org/?q=node/584#comment-533 (with lots more references).
19 May 2006 at 4:39 AM
Re ethanol and other bio-fuels,
Having some experience with LCA’s (life cycle analyses), be it for plastics (bio-plastics need some 5 times more -fossil- energy to produce than “conventional” oil based plastics!), I have the impression that the draft LCA provided by Roger Smith in #24 gives the most accurate answers, because it includes very comprehensive estimates of the emissions impact of land use.
In general, only the transfer of wood cellulose into gas or methanol has a clear advantage in GHG emissions to fossil fuels, others (bio-diesel, ethanol from corn) give near equal to far more GHG emissions.
And what I have seldom read - until now - is the impact of land use itself, besides emissions. If we want to replace a huge part of fossil fuels by biofuels, that will need a lot of extra land. Although in part in combination with animal feed production, current land use is far from sufficient to replace much of the fossil fuel consumption. According to Z-facts, one need about 1.5 times the surface of the USA (including Alaska) growing corn to replace current US fossil fuel use…
That doen’t imply that we shouldn’t replace already a part of fossil fuel by bio-fuels, if it is only to reduce the dependence on not-so-stable countries for oil imports. But research into biofuel processes with a better GHG yield, and engines/processes with better energy yield should have a high priority (including subsidies)…
[Response: I am mostly in agreement with Ferdinand here with regard to the life-cycle costs and potential limits on biofuel. For GHG, reductionn ethanol from corn really looks like a non-starter. I disagree about biodiesel, though, since the Department of Energy studies show something like a 3.5:1 gain in energy output over fossil fuel input, and that’s with soybeans. As my colleague Gidon Eshel pointed out to me, though, continued availability of water for irrigation may become an issue in some places. –raypierre]
19 May 2006 at 6:28 AM
With regards to:
“Are we in danger of running out of CO2?”
In fact, we are, in about a billion years, at least according to Caldeira and Kasting (”The life span of the biosphere revisited, Nature, 360, 721, 1992), because the increased solar luminosity and ensuing global warming will cause the silicates to start reacting with the atmospheric CO2.
As for the question of attribution, let me remind that climatology is still not in a position to predict the global temperature sensitivity to changes in the radiative forcing (e.g., if you open the IPCC TAR, you’ll see that they often mention that the doubling CO2 temperature sensitivity is Tx2 ~ 1.5 to 4.5°C, i.e., uncertain to within a factor of 3!). In other words, we don’t really know what should be the anthropogenic effect. Moreover, there is no direct evidence, no smoking gun, which points to anthropogenic sources as the reason behind global warming. The only reason it is attributed to us humans is because we know GHGs should warm, we see warming, and there is nothing else to blame, but there is (e.g., look at this discussion).
In any case, the question of attribution (i.e., what caused the 20th century warming) is I think very minor, albeit interesting. The real important question is what is Earth’s climate sensitivity since this will determine if doubling the amount of CO2 (say, by 2100AD) will increase the temperature by 1 or by 5°C, and whether CO2 is just plant food or also a pollutant. (Personally, I believe the sensitivity is on the low side, about 1 to 1.5°C, simply because this is how Earth reacted in the past to changes in the radiative budget - See JGR-Space, 110, A08105, 2005 [abstract] [pdf]).
[Response: I’d be quite happy to take care of the problems of the next century now and deal with the problems of the next billion years a bit later. First things first. For that matter, you were quite happy to run roughshod over the basic scientific issues in your quest for a zippy one-liner. You didn’t mention that in Caldeira and Kasting, if the Earth didn’t go to a low CO2 state through enhanced silicate weathering, it would succumb to a runaway greenhouse instead. As I said, we’ll deal with that when we come to it (if we get past the next century intact), but I’d bet it would be a lot easier to grow crops in greenhouses with enhanced CO2 than it would be to live under an 80 bar steam atmosphere at over 1000K. If you need extra CO2, you can cook it out of carbonate rocks for an energy source well under a percent of the available solar energy.
We’ve heard the story about cosmic rays before, and the criticisms discussed in this article still apply for the most part. I agree (as does IPCC) that there is uncertainty, as stated, in the climate sensitivity, but you are completely unjustified in your claim that the cosmic-ray correlation (for which there is still no sound physical basis or quantified mechanism) supports the lower end of the sensitivity range. Much more careful studies, in which the actual radiative forcing can be quantified, pretty much show that the paleoclimate record is compatible with the full IPCC range, with both the higher and lower ends appearing less probable. That’s the situation we’re stuck with for now. It’s for the political process to decide whether to bet the store on the hope that the true sensitivity is at the low end, or to take seriously the consequences of the still very real possibility that the sensitivity is at the high end. It’s interesting that you now say that attribution of 20th century warming is unimportant, just at a time when that begins to seem rather certain. Of course, scientists are always interested in data they can use to test their theories, and that is precisely why the 20th century record is of so much interest. –raypierre]
[Response: I’d like to add a little challenge to Niv. My burning question is: Can galactic cosmic rays (GCR) be the main driver for the global warming over the last 50 years - the time interval that is most relevant to us? I looked at the GCR record, but found no trend in it - e.g. see my paper in GRL and references therein (alternatively see here and here). What’s more, the sunspot record does behave a bit funny in the 19th century - the solar cycle length really jumps between very high and low values (statistical outliers) - and the question is if one really can trust the series when going that far back in time (the observational network was much lower then than today). So, in my opinion, relying on very old evidence for relationship between solar forcing and climate carries a great deal of uncertainties . So when you bring in the question of attribution, and put the notion of GCR-driver next to an enhanced greenhouse gas effect, and can’t even provide evidence for that the chain of events actually takes place, then I reckon you are on thin ice. Also, we know that the climate system has a tendency to respond non-linearly with various feedback mechanisms, so even when one factor play a role, you cannot rule out others just from the climate’s response alone. For more in depth discussion on this, I can recommend my book Solar Activity and Earth’s Climate in a science library near you. -rasmus]
p.s.: An astrophysicist who checked Shaviv’s claimed meteorite clusters found that they are indistinguishable from a random data set, see abstract.]
19 May 2006 at 7:15 AM
AS far as land use for biofuels, haven’t I read something about utilizing algae (perhaps CO2 eating algae feeding on combustion exhaust? At any rate, couldn’t algae farms be situated on non-productive land or even in multi-level urban urban builings using fiber optics to provide sunlight?
19 May 2006 at 8:22 AM
If we became dependent on biofuel/biodiesel, what would happen if we had massive crop failures due to GW?
19 May 2006 at 10:15 AM
jhm - yes there are a couple of companies that are looking at using algae to capture CO2 from coal-fired power plants; GreenFuel Technologies being the one that comes to mind. AFAIK space isn’t an issue as the power plants typically have lots of land surrounding them because of point-of-impingement issues. Also the new designs use a series of tubes to circulate the gas and grow the algae and this greatly reduces the space required compared to the lagoon approach. The process comes full circle when the algae is used to produce ethanol and/or biodiesel…
As someone that has spent a fair amount of time looking at the GHG impacts of ethanol from a LCA perspective, I think everyone is in agreement that corn is the least beneficial, while sugarcane and cellulosic are the most promisisng. Beyond that there is a fair amount of disagreement about the magnitude of benefits for each process/feedstock and ultimately this comes down to differences of opinion about where the boundaries are set within the LCA framework and whether or not the assumptions for the input parameters are accurate (and I doubt DeLucchi’s work is the ‘final’ anwser since it depends heavily on LULUC assumptions which are themselves controversial). For those with library access, a good summary was published recently by the International Energy Association “Biofuels for Transport: An International Summary”.
Another common tactic in the debate is to frame the issue as an either/or between land-for-food and land-for-fuel. The fact is that most corn grown is the U.S. is feed-grade corn, not the kind people eat. Moreover, one of the byproducts of ehtanol production from corn is dried distiller grains — which is used as cattle feed. The only time IMHO where this argument actually holds water is in Brazil where ethanol from sugarcane displaces sugar from sugarcane; right now world sugar prices are at historic highs because more of the sugarcane crop is being diverted to produce ethanol.
Who here wants to suggest that we need more sugar :)?
19 May 2006 at 10:19 AM
>33 many other years differ on those two versions of the Hadley charts. It’s not just the last 2 years that differ, it’s many of them all the way through the sequence. The numbers may not be the same, need to check the cites.
19 May 2006 at 11:23 AM
“Scientists note stunning loss of ice, snow
From elders watching the movement of sea ice in Nunavut to climatologists studying satellite weather maps, people are amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.
Record-warm temperatures have taken their toll on ice cover in Canada’s Arctic waters and snow cover on land.”
(continued)
http://www.cbc.ca/north/story/nor-warming-icemelt.html
19 May 2006 at 12:48 PM
Listening to those ads is like hearing finger nails on a blackboard. It’s hard to imagine anything more misleading.
19 May 2006 at 12:55 PM
“In the Arctic, temperatures were 1 to 8ºF colder than normal and precipitation was 100 to 150% of normal. The snow pack was deeper than normal in most of the region.”
“Sea ice coverage was above normal in the Bering Sea at the start of the month, and the ice then advanced southward as northerly gales blew over the area. By the 15th, there was near record sea ice coverage for mid April in the Bering Sea, and above normal ice in Bristol Bay. At month’s end, the extent of ice coverage was at record high levels in the Bering, and close to normal in Bristol Bay.”
It appears that their ice and cold has moved to Alaska.
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Statewide/departures.html
19 May 2006 at 1:45 PM
FWIW, some comments on this whole thing at Sierra Club Compass, which references Real Climate often and has it in its links list.
19 May 2006 at 1:51 PM
Raypierre said: ” I disagree about biodiesel, though, since the Department of Energy studies show something like a 3.5:1 gain in energy output over fossil fuel input, and that’s with soybeans”
Left unsaid, is that soybeans are one of the poorest crops for growing vegetable oil, and is still more productive than Corn Ethanol. The Hedge plant Jatropha Curcas is native to the Americas, produces even more oil per acre/year, and uses far less water & fertilizer, and doesn’t need tilling and replanting.
Soy is a major player in the Farm subsidies racket.
19 May 2006 at 2:34 PM
re #44; interesting, but for comparison have a look at Alaska’s February on the same site:
http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/Statewide/2006/Feb06.html
We have not yet reached the point that occasional local cooler-than-normal months go away altogether.
More to the point, the Arctic sea ice extent responds to a temperature signal that averages over several years.
The rather dramatic shrinking of the boreal ice cap over the last few years is already at the limits of historical precedent. If the trend continues for a few more years, as appears plausible at least, it will both be a symptom and a cause of the climate of the Arctic experiencing a profound and precipitous climate change, bigger even than what we have now.
19 May 2006 at 2:56 PM
Re 40 (Johnson):
Another common tactic in the debate is to frame the issue as an either/or between land-for-food and land-for-fuel. The fact is that most corn grown is the U.S. is feed-grade corn, not the kind people eat.
Animals eat the corn, and we eat the animals, so it’s still land used for food.
And I’m a little concerned that folks who point out that a new type of fuel will withdraw land from food crops are engaging in a ‘tactic’.
Lastly, this discussion points out (to me anyway) how entrenched we are in this paradigm. In order to maintain our society just as it is (despite calls in other areas for ‘adaptation’), we have to withdraw vast tracts of land from food production, when we suspect that in 45 short years, there will be 3B more people on the planet, requiring ~1M ha more land for food.
Sounds like a non-starter to me.
Best,
D
19 May 2006 at 2:56 PM
raypierre,
First, as for Caldeira and Kasting, you are correct. It was a one liner, I just found the “Are we going to run out of CO2?” question funny and thought Caldeira and Kasting would be a nice anecdote. Obviously, the technology in a billion years would be sufficient to deal with any such problem (assuming our descendents will still exist…)
As for things on shorter time scales. The question of whether cosmic rays affect climate is very important. This is because of several reasons:
(1) If cosmic rays affect climate then you will have another possible explanation to the observed global warming, since overall, the cosmic ray flux (at high energies, those which are responsible for the tropospheric ionization) has increased over the 20th century (increased up to the 1940’s then again from the 1970’s).
[Response: Some say that the cosmic flux has to decrease in order to get a warming, the hypothesis being that they affect the nucleation of cloud condensation nuclei and thus the low cloud cover (personally, I’m still far from convinced!). So, how do you propose that the rays affect the climate (I must have missed something here - admittedly, I didn’t look up all your links…), and why do you think that the other explanation is wrong and yours is true (they clearly cannot both be true). -rasmus]
(2) One can empirically estimate climate sensitivity on different time scales, by comparing actual temperature variations to estimated changes in the radiation budget. This can be done on time scales ranging from the 11-yr solar cycle to the Phanerozoic as a whole. The bottom line is that if the radiative forcing of the cosmic-ray flux / climate link is valid, then a sensitivity of Tx2 ~ 1-1.5° is obtained (and about 2°C if there is no cosmic ray flux climate link, i.e., still relatively low - this is all explained in the linked paper I sent above: [abstract] [pdf]).
[Response: weaker cosmic ray flux -> fewer low clouds -> decrease in sunlight reflected back to space), then you need to explain why the night temperatures appear to increase faster then day temperatures (for any amplification mechanism involving te albedo, you’d expect the opposite, as there is no sunlight to reflect on the dark side of the planet…). My understanding is that there is no evidence for cosmic rays playing a role in the recent global warming. Please explain if you can offer further insight…-rasmus]
As for the validity of the cosmic ray flux, the Rahmstorf et al. critique on the Milky Way spiral arms / ice-age epoch work on did not contain any valid points (see http://www.sciencebits.com/ClimateDebate), this is contrary to the Royer et al. critique which did contain an interesting point. It ended up changing the limit Jan Veizer and I could impose (from Tx2 < 1°C, to about 1-1.5°C), but it did not invalidate the apparent role that cosmic rays appear to play on the multi-million year climate variability).
As for the evidence, there are by now many results pointing towards the cosmic ray climate link. Just to name a few:
- Clear correlation between low altitude cloud cover and cosmic ray flux over the past 2 solar cycles. Incidentally, if you look at this correlation, you will see asymmetric peaks both in the cosmic ray flux and the cloud cover - one is sharp and the other is wide. This is interesting because the cosmic ray flux is the only solar activity related variable that is sensitive to the fact that the cycle is really 22 years (this is because the cosmic rays, which are positively charged, notice the polarity of the solar magnetic field). Take a look at figure 3 at this summary.
(2)
- The latitudinal dependence of the relative change in the cloud cover over the solar cycle is proportional to latitudinal dependence of the change in atmospheric ion density variations (which arise from cosmic ray flux variations), see Usoskin et al. , GRL 31, L16109, (2004).
- On the multi-million year time scale, passages through the spiral arms of the milky way correlate with climate on earth (e.g., this discussion), and on longer time scale, glacial activity correlates with star formation in the milky way.
- The aforementioned empirical determinations of climate sensitivity are much more consistent with each other if the contribution of the cosmic ray flux / cloud cover effect is included in the radiation budget.
- As for the physical mechanism, there is growing understanding that the link is through the role played by charge in growing the condensation nuclei. In particular, there are interesting results by the group of Frank Arnold in Heidelberg, who showed that charged clusters play an important role, or results by Harrison and Aplin who showed that ions formed by cosmic rays can make small particles, condensation nuclei. The only thing left is to show that the small condensation nuclei indeed grow to become larger cloud condensation nuclei (as opposed for example, to being scavanged by large particles).
[Response: See my comments a few paragraphs further up. -rasmus]
- Theoretical calculations by Yu, have demonstrated why this link would be primarily with low altitude clouds.
The bottom line is that the is a growing body of evidence which links cosmic rays with cloud cover and climate, I wouldn’t dismiss it that easily.
[Response: It’s funny that I seeing the growing body of evidence going the other way. There is a link to the paper by Usoskin et al. here. Personally, I did not find the paper very convincing. Take a few examples: Look at the correlations in their Fig. 3 - how do you think that such low correlations can produce as high zonal mean values as in Fig. 2? And, what signifcance level is ’significance level >68%’? Not very high, I think! These are only a couple of examples (more about this paper in Solar Activity and Earth’s Climate in a science library near you…). -rasmus]
19 May 2006 at 3:49 PM
Cellulosic ethanol will allow ethanol production from lands not suitable for crops. We could start with Bush’s ranch, devoted it to switch grass.
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/05/bioenergy_promi.html
19 May 2006 at 4:06 PM
Reading through these comments is enouth to give you some interesting - and perhaps sad - thoughts. What initially strikes me is that such Ads and Science do not go together! The objective of these TV-Ads, as I see them, is to indoctinate, and furthermore putting such a spin on it inhibits critical thinking. Such phenomena used to be described in a visionary book called ‘1984′.
I can also recommend a post called ‘Communicating climate change’ by Simon Retallack, on a website called openDemocray.org (http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-climate_change_debate/ankelohe_3550.jsp). I think it’s appropriate to bring this up here, despite openDemocracy.org’s general focus on politics. This piece offers some food for thought and offers a gloomy message, although subtle (because there may be some truth in it?). I wonder if the only way to get the message through is through public demonstration (Schools, museums, academic societies, home kits, etc) - show that CO2 physically absorbs infra red light, show how this may lead to a warming when heat doesn’t escape as it would without, and that this effect may explain why Venus has higher surface temperature (an observation does not appear to be consistent with the arguement that CO2 only has a weak effect once the CO” makes the atmosphere opaque to infra red light).
19 May 2006 at 4:44 PM
Dano,
Actually it’s land for food and fuel not either/or. My point is not so much whether corn-based ethanol “a good idea” or not as such, but rather that the debate over it much like AGW is opportunistically misframed by both sides. Proponents in the U.S. like to use the fuel-of-the-future-GHG-friendly while detractors use the fuel-instead-food-will-starve-the-world frame. Either frame is pretty dishonest IMHO.
As I said earlier, I prefer the other types of ethanol from a GHG perspective (especially cellulosic) but there are a host of other reasons to promote ethanol-use in any form including energy security, agricultural support, sticking it to the oil companies :), etc.
Also, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to start talking about all the land we would need to replace ALL the gasoline we consume. Its a tactic that’s supposed to demonstrate how impractical biofules are. But last time I checked most vehicles run on ethanol up to 10% and need to be modified to run on E85, so it’s unlikely that total replacement will or even should happen anytime soon. Biodiesel is similarly limited to blends of 2-10% because of cold weather issues (put your olive oil in the fridge and you’ll see what I mean).
The point is that its not really useful to talk about biofuels as an all-or-nothing replacement — they’re simply one of many solutions out there.
cheers,
19 May 2006 at 4:57 PM
Re: #5
With John Stossel and Micheal Chrichton as the “special guests” I don’t hold out a lot of hope for reason (or at least truth) prevailing at this event.
19 May 2006 at 5:03 PM
Dear Rasmus,
In your reply, you raise an interesting point, which has a perfectly good explanation.
In your GRL, you have shown that the warming over the past 30 years does not correlate with the solar proxies (sunspots, 10.7cm, solar cycle length) or galactic cosmic ray flux (CLIMAX neutron monitor data). Basically, the increased solar activity could explain the warming up to the 1940’s but it cannot do a good job in explaining the warming from the 1970’s.
There are two crucial points, however:
a) I never said that increased solar activity - reduced cosmic rays flux - reduced low altitude cloud cover is the only climate driver. As best as I can estimate, cosmic rays explain almost all the warming until the 1940’s, and a large fraction of the warming from the 1970’s, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some anthropogenic contribution over the past century. There could very well be if the anthropogenic aerosols effects are smaller than the GHGs. In fact, in such a case there should be unless the sensitivity is ridiculously small, which it isn’t (I am not one of those people who see things in black or white only).
b) None of the proxies you use in your paper captures the behavior of the high energy cosmic rays which are those responsible for low altitude ionization (typically 10-20 GeV, these would be the energies which could affect cloud condensation nuclei formation). In your low energy proxies, there is no significant increase from the 1970’s (which is why you claim that CRs cannot explain much of the warming in the 20th century). If however, you look at ion chamber data (which is sensitive to notably higher energies) you can clearly see a rise up to the 1950’s (from the start of the ion chamber data in the 1930’s), a decrease to the 70’s and then a significant increase afterwards. That is, cosmic rays can adequately explain the temperature increase, counter to your claims. (To see these trends, take a look at fig. 6 in here). Apparently, the solar modulation of the cosmic ray flux is not exactly the same at different energies, and the rise from the 1970’s is one example.
So, the bottom line is that cosmic rays can do a good job in explaining the temperature increase if you look at the right energies. Unfortunately, we don’t have ion chamber data going back before the 1930’s, so any choice would have less correlation with the actual atmospheric ionization, though some correlations should obviously exist. The best proxy going back would be 7Be and 14C which are sensitive to of order 1GeV cosmic rays, but as you see from comparison with ion chamber data, it is not the best proxy. As for the solar cycle length, I would be very careful in using it, since no one has any idea why it should be correlated with high energy cosmic ray flux variations in the first place.
[Response:Could you please explain why some (eg Svensmark) claim that a decrease in the cosmic rays flux produces a warming, while you say its an increase (since 1970)? If there is a positive trend in the low altitude ionisation, that would according to Svensmark lead to more low clouds (higher albedo -> cooling) while a decrease in low altitude ionisation would lead to less clouds (lower albedo -> warming). Also, the level of solar activity is purported to be negatively correlated with the cosmic ray flux, so a the increase in the solar activity before 1940 would expect to reduce the cosmic rays since the heliosphere is thought to shield our solar system against galactic cosmic rays, and that the heliosphere is affected by the solar wind ‘dragging’ with it the solar magnetic fields. As far as I know the cosmic rays you have looked at also have their source outside our solar system (galactic spiral arms). Just out of curiosity, what is the theory behind how the high-energy particles different behaviour to those eg measured by Climax? -rasmus]
[Response:P.S. For the benefit of the reader, we should give some links on Cosmic rays and particle detectors such as ionization chambers, cloud chambers and bubble chambers. There is also a discussion about high-energy cosmic rays , particles which seem to violate physical theory (the ‘GZK paradox’). The high-energy cosmic rays represent a small fraction of the cosmic rays as the flux allegedly falls approximately as the inverse-cube of the energy.
The issue of decrase-increase resolves itself from figure 6 which was referred to: there seems to have been a decrease, even in the high energy-energy rays (y-axis is reversed). It’s interesting that high-energy particles, which would presumably(?) be less affected by the shielding of the Heliosphere (magnetic fields), would have a more marked decrease here. There are of course factors other than solar activity that could play a role, and furthermore, there are, according to Wikipedia, some important aspects of the high(er) energies not quite fully understood. In this case, one could look at other evidence, since it has been proposed that the cosmic rays affect the low clouds. The question whether there has been any trend in the amount of low clouds probably remains inconlusive due to uncertainties in the data, but there has been some papers suggesting an increase (contrary to what a reduction of cosmic rays would give, if the mechanism is true) in the global mean low clouds over the oceans (3.6% between 1952 and 1995). There are other complicating factors also, such as pollution from ship traffic and the so-called global dimming (see several posts here on RC), which would be expected to counter-act and hypothetical decrease in low-level cloudiness.]
19 May 2006 at 5:07 PM
Niv says he spent hours on the issue. Hours mind you.
19 May 2006 at 5:07 PM
With regards to:
[shaviv:] (1) If cosmic rays affect climate then you will have another possible explanation to the observed global warming, since overall, the cosmic ray flux (at high energies, those which are responsible for the tropospheric ionization) has increased over the 20th century (increased up to the 1940’s then again from the 1970’s).
[Response by rasmus:] Some say that the cosmic flux has to decrease in order to get a warming, the hypothesis being that they affect the nucleation of cloud condensation nuclei and thus the low cloud cover (personally, I’m still far from convinced!). So, how do you propose that the rays affect the climate (I must have missed something here - adittedly, I didn’t look up all your links…), and why do you think that theother explanation is wrong and yous is true (they clearly cannot both be true). -rasmus
Obviously, it was a typo on my behalf, it should have been:
Overall, the cosmic ray flux decreased over the 20th century (the solar activity increased).
[Response:Fair enough.. -rasmus]
19 May 2006 at 5:37 PM
Rasmus, with regards to your comments:
We can be fairly confident that the sensitivity on ~11-year time scales is very low - otherwise we would not have been having this discussion, as a strong link surely would have been as well-established as the link between the solar cycle and the Aurora. I think that it is a challenge to then explain why the sensitivity for time scales of 20–50 years would be so much higher…
You furthermore need to explain why there should be an abrupt change in the sensitivity between the time scales of ~11 years and 20-50 years.
As far as I understand, different climate models (or empirical determinations) give that the climate response to variations over 11-yrs is typically 0.33-0.68 of the centennial scale. (e.g., Cubasch et al. 1997, Rind et al., 1999, Waple et al. 2002), and the centennial scale is typically damped by a factor of 0.7-0.75 (IPCC report) relative to the equilibrium response. i.e., we expect the 11-yr solar cycle to be damped by something like 0.35 +/- 0.15 of the equilibrium response.
Over the solar cycle, there is a global temperature variation of 0.1 +/- 0.02 deg, which is driven by a flux variation of 0.35 W/m^2 and an additional 1.0+/-0.4 W/m2 from the cosmic ray/cloud cover variations if the link is real. If the cosmic ray flux climate link is not real, then climate sensitivity is high, and then we have to worry about global warming (but the link is real
of course…)
Combining the numbers give a sensitivity of Tx2 ~ 1 deg if the cosmic ray flux climate link is real, and 3.5 deg if driven only by luminosity variations.
So I don’t see any problem. If the cosmic ray flux / climate link is real, on different time scales we see the proper responses, damped as climatologists think those time scale should be damped.
Finally, if you think that the cosmic rays affect the climate though modulating the low cloud cover and hence the albedo (stronger solar activity -> weaker cosmic ray flux -> fewer low clouds -> decrease in sunlight reflected back to space), then you need to explain why the night temperatures appear to increase faster then day temperatures (for any amplification mechanism involving te albedo, you’d expect the opposite, as there is no sunlight to reflect on the dark side of the planet…). My understanding is that there is no evidence for cosmic rays playing a role in the recent global warming. Please explain if you can offer further insight…-rasmus]
As you mentioned above, the climate system behaves non-linearly, so detailed responses are clearly hard to predict. But it is not hard to think of possible solutions. e.g., the increased global temperature imply more water vapor in the atmosphere. As such, you will necessarily have a smaller diurnal variation, this would force the night temperature to appear to increase faster than the day temperature. Perhaps this effect is more important for the diurnal temperature variations than the fact that some oceanic regions have less cloud cover (which is where the cosmic ray flux climate link would be most effective). Since no one calculated this, it is cannot be used to prove or rule out anything. Though you do raise an interesting point.
[Response: Yes, we can agree that this aspect is interesting. What you in essence say, is that the negative trend in the diurnal temperature range can be explained by an increased greenhouse effect -be it water vapour or CO2 (probably both). It’s something you can see in climate model simulations with increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. You are right, that nobody probably hasn’t got their hands dirty and looked into the detailed response of what a ‘cosmic ray effect’ would be like, so we cannot yet rule out that the effect would (surprisingly) be similar. I propose that someone does the computations. But I’m still not convinced that a positive trend in the cosmic ray flux will lead to a warming, and I’m baffled by the different behaviour you describe of the high-energy particles and those with somewhat lower (still sufficiently high to penetrate earth’s magnetic field) energy. By the way, do those high-energy rays cause Aurora? -rasmus]
19 May 2006 at 5:54 PM
From http://healthvsmedicine.blogspot.com/
“… The good news, according to an ongoing series of surveys by the National Science Board, is that the proportion of U.S. adults who are considered scientifically literate has doubled since 1979. The bad news is that it is now 17%. This survey program, directed by Jon D. Miller of Northwestern University, is discussed by Liza Gross in PLoS Biology.”
Article: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040167
19 May 2006 at 6:25 PM
Dano wrote in comment #48: “Animals eat the corn, and we eat the animals, so it’s still land used for food.”
That in itself is a wasteful and destructive practice which exacerbates anthropogenic global warming.
Consider the following, from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network:
19 May 2006 at 6:29 PM
Rasmus, with regards to:
[Response:It’s funny that I seeing the growing body of evidence going the other way. There is a link to the paper by Usoskin et al. here. Personally, I did not find the paper very convincing…
Not all evidence is always at a 3 sigma level. The key point is that to within the level of the noise (and the climate system has a lot of noise), the system behaves as you expect it to. Often I hear people claim that you should see a huge effect at polar regions, and a very small one in tropical regions because of Earth’s magnetic field. This paper demonstrates that the polar-equatorial effect should not be large, but still detectable, and it is indeed detected (or “consistent with theory”, you choose the wording).
As for the particular graph, it is hard to actually asses the statistical significance. How significant is the overall result of many bins each one significant at 68%? much higher than 68% of course.
19 May 2006 at 6:51 PM
Mark York,
You write:
Niv says he spent hours on the issue. Hours mind you.
If you would have really taken a careful look, you would have seen that
a) My name is Nir and not Niv.
b) That I I have been working and publishing in various related topics for at least 5 years, i.e., hours is of course a figure of speech (perhaps 2000 hours or more if you like). It is easy to make snide remarks when there is nothing smart to say. If you want to have a scientific debate like rasmus or raypierre, go ahead, this is more than legitimate, but such remarks are totally pointless.
19 May 2006 at 8:31 PM
RE 52 (Johnson):
Ah. Yes, I understand where you are coming from. I agree.
RE 57 (Percival):
Your Rodale fossil fuel inputs is a key.
What sector will reduce fossil fuel use first? That is: transportation, materials, or agriculture? All three are heavily dependent upon fossil fuel inputs. The agriculture sector could make heavy wins in the reduction department (giving us more time in other sectors) if our economy and agriculture wasn’t set up to transport agricultural goods long distances.
Best,
D
19 May 2006 at 8:52 PM
Here’s the thing I don’t get: As I understand it (I’m not a lawyer) most of the famous product liability cases that come to mind - tobacco, asbestos, Vioxx - involved huge awards that were made not because the product was dangerous, but because the manufacturers had evidence that the product was dangerous, and suppressed the evidence and lied about it (the breast implant case is an exception, but usually science wins). If that’s true, it makes no sense for the oil company executives to do this; if they tell the truth, encourage people to use less oil, and use some of their profits to invest in carbon-neutral energy production, they will almost certainly come out ahead in the long run, and probably even in the short run (After all, most of us can’t stop using oil even if we want to). Are these people just plain stupid, or am I missing something?
19 May 2006 at 8:58 PM
In reponse to 58’s castigation of Mark York, on Nir’s website (http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar) he tars the IPCC’s work as that of scientsts “who support Kyoto,” as if they started with a political agenda (the IPCC predates Kyoto, FYI) and then pointed their fingers at CO2 and came up with scientific reasons to justify it. If that’s not an unscientific line of reasoning, I don’t know what is. What if we flipped this logic to instead of everyone involved with the IPCC, some individual named Nir decided he didn’t like Kyoto and wanted to justify his opposition by blaming global warming on something other than greenhouse gases? Which scenario seems more likely?
19 May 2006 at 9:39 PM
I took the quote at face value and don’t need to requote all of the references here by bonafide experts that you are trying to “correct” to support my position. Appeal to authority tells me it is you that needs to prove your case not I. I did miss your name though, and realized it after it was too late. Same thing happened with my Wall Street Journal comment on education today, so copyediting is lagging today. I bet they won’t correct it either.
19 May 2006 at 9:58 PM
I don’t see the quote now and revisited your argument, but the declarative statement leaves me cold. i.e. “mostly solar and NOT anthropogenic and a lot of people won’t like it.”
19 May 2006 at 10:23 PM
re: 47
Annual mean temperature at 19 Alaska climate stations (50-75 yr plots) can be viewed at:
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/patneuman2000/my_photos
20 May 2006 at 1:03 AM
These people have a right to put a plastic bag on their head and breath all the CO2 they like, I for one would not want to stop them or their followers.
20 May 2006 at 1:21 AM
Nir, there is nothing wrong with thinking about possible impacts of cosmic rays on climate. Who knows, someday, something might come of it. We sure could use some new ideas about the Little Ice Age, since it’s hard to do that with straight solar effects, even allowing for ozone feedbacks and spectral variations.
Where your whole line of thinking is completely off the wall is that you fail to grasp that the CO2 effects on climate have a lot more documented physics behind them than your cosmic ray idea. We can compute the radiative forcing from CO2 to high accuracy, we can compute the radiative effects of water vapor to high accuracy, we know a great deal about how water vapor changes in conjunction with climate, and we even know a fair amount about clouds. Clouds are the weak link in our predictions, but clouds are only a modifying influence on CO2 induced climate change. For you they are the whole story, since there’s no prayer of a chance of a significant cosmic ray effect except through modulation of clouds.
You write as if you think that the CO2 theory had behind it only the vague correlations between ill-constrained proxies and temperature that your cosmic ray idea rests on. That’s simply not the case. In order to make a case that cosmic rays are a big part of the story in the 20th century you not only need to quantify the effect of cosmic rays far more than anybody has been able to, but you also need to show why the known physical mechanisms linking CO2 to warming fail. All you really have right now are some unquantified speculations about how cosmic rays might affect clouds, plus a correlation between one low frequency signal (cosmic rays) and another (temperature). Naturally, if you throw another low frequency signal into the mix, you can improve correlations. That proves little or nothing.
If you really think you can model clouds well enough to say what the cosmic ray influence translates into in terms of W/m**2, then that’s great news. If you can model clouds that well, you should put your cloud model into one of the IPCC GCMs. That will eliminate most of the uncertainty in the warming forecast and you’ll become famous! Meanwhile, you ought to take your toys away and not mutter nonsense about how you can call 20th century warming from the vasty deep through the miraculous medium of cosmic rays — not until you can model the effects on clouds well enough to tell us what the radiative forcing is. Right now, so far as I can tell, you can’t even tell us what the sign of the effect is from first principles. (For starters, lets think about the question of why cosmic rays should affect low clouds when there are already plenty of nuclei around at low levels. I know all about the possibilities lurking in the small-cluster barrier, but that’s a long,long ways away from an answer).
20 May 2006 at 2:52 AM
re: #63 (Mark York)
I don’t see the quote now and revisited your argument,
Yes I did. Apparently I have no leeway - instead of using a figure of speech I changed the wording to be more precise.
20 May 2006 at 8:34 AM
Very sad. Unfortunately they’ll be consumed by most people without further question and eagerly repeated as “compelling” argument around water coolers across the US.
20 May 2006 at 10:39 AM
Re: Raypierre’s response in #36.
The problem is that current biofuel paper models do not take into account the differing carbon downpayment for individual crops when land is found for them.
In the case of soya and oil palm, these flourish in hot, wet conditions, which is why large areas of rainforest are being turned over to them. This involves a huge carbon discharge as all this vegetation is cleared. The progress of oil palm plantations in Indonesia is also linked to the drainage of swamp forests, leading to the peat fires that have caused up to 40% as much CO2 discharge as all fossil fuel burning in some years (see here).
WWF Brazil (see here) recently wrote to an English newspaper to warn of the carbon cost of deforestation partly driven by demand for soya.
It seems likely that the effect of such carbon downpayments is to narrow, not widen, the window of opportunity to avert dangerous climate change (see here), overriding the effect of savings in mineral diesel.
The oil plant Jatropha can be grown in more arid tropical conditions, and so offers brighter opportunities. However, a danger with all tropical agriculture is that nitrogen fertilizers are prone to emitting more N2O (an extremely potent GHG) in these conditions, but who will monitor against more damaging use of nitrates?
Reportedly, African agriculture is currently suffering from depleted soils (see here).
Finally may I say how much I value this site and you guys’ work, we are all on the same side!
20 May 2006 at 10:56 AM
Like their disinformative creationist brethern, AGW deniers have been very fond (and adept) at throwing individual comments of previous uncertainty back in the faces of climate scientists and implying that it’s still all uncertainty. I hope people have been keeping track. Now that they are acknowledging that yes, there is ’some GW caused by people’, someone ought to point out all their previous definitive statements that it’s all a bunch of hooey.
20 May 2006 at 11:47 AM
Yeah, and be a big hit with Sen. James Inhofe.
20 May 2006 at 12:28 PM
The German news magazine Der Spiegel rightly notes that the CEI ads “can hardly be topped in absurdity”. I find the scare-tactics about the lights going out when we stop the rise in CO2 concentration particularly distasteful. If the US cuts their per capita emissions by half, they will be at the level of European countries. I can reassure the CEI people that here in Europe we do have electric light, and our children do go to school. And can someone perhaps inform the Competitive Enterprise Institute that a competitive enterprise is an efficient enterprise, not a wasteful one?
20 May 2006 at 12:30 PM
Off topic
Katherine Ellison’s NY Times op-ed piece today says, “only someone who has been hiding under a rock would need to see the new Al Gore movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” to learn that global warming is real.”
I’ve heard this from others but not witnessed it all that dramatically myself. Is this the experience of list readers, that Chricton and Inhofe and Will and a few others excepted, Americans pretty much know that climate change is happening, is serious, and that we have to act?
20 May 2006 at 1:17 PM
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/4418_MythsvFacts_05.pdf
Cosmic Rays p.9
Crichton thinks it has become common knowledge and his position is we don’t know enough to know anything, but he deliberately manipulated the facts the way they all do to come to that false conclusion.
20 May 2006 at 1:37 PM
May I just register my admiration for the comment #69 (rp)? My.
Best,
D
20 May 2006 at 1:47 PM
#69, Raypierre, I heard about cosmic ray effects for quite some time, and they fail at the cosmic scale, if there is such a thing on clouds, it would be universal, NH SH alike, yet there isn’t very much similarities between NH and SH temperature and cloud anomalies, often one is greater than the other. Cosmic scale events require world wide similarities which I have not noticed…
20 May 2006 at 2:17 PM
re 75.
Disputing what’s known to be happening is dishonest. However, when government employees are being told by their supervisors … DO NOT acknowledge that climate change and global warming are happening … they follow instructions and do as they’re told, even if climate change obviously affects their duties (hydrologic modeling and flood prediction). Is doing what they’re told being dishonest? Can anyone blame them?
20 May 2006 at 2:36 PM
Re #76: Karen, that doesn’t seem off-topic to me…
Locally, I’ll opine that people know that climate change is happening, but that the high cost of petro-fuels seems much more serious that climate change. Some action is occuring, but mostly to avoid paying for fuel.
20 May 2006 at 11:10 PM
With regard to comment 76 from Karen Street and 75 from Stefan. There is a curious nexus here. On the one hand, those of us who are convinced that greenhouse gas emissions are a problem, know that many in the US, Canada, Australia and elsewhere (including a few in Europe) do not accept this and there is a powerful economic and political lobby who actively support denial. There is an organized push back to Al Gore’s presentation on climate change which seeks to use his comments to show that concern with climate change is alarmism:
Q: “There’s a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What’s the right mix?
A. [Gore]: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience’s head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don’t think there’s a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.”
Discussions about this have broken out on Deltoid http://tinyurl.com/jzr8u and Prometheus http://tinyurl.com/n9xas. Roger Pielke’s POV is the same as Katherine Ellison’s, which is curious, since he is a policy studies person who repeatedly states that he accepts the reality of anthropic climate change:
“This is a wasted effort for a number of reasons. First, as we’ve documented here many times (e.g., here and here) while he public does not have a deep grasp of the technical details of global warming, it does have an overwhelming awareness of the issue. Not only is there awareness, but an overwhelming majority already favor action. Public education to achieve awareness and support for action that already exist will be efforts wasted on the convinced”
Since we all know that there is a huge lobbying and public affairs effort funded by industry and right wing groups that are actively engaged in trying to convince people that there is no problem associated with global climate change, the only sane conclusion one can reach is that those claiming the everyone already knows that there is a problem so there is no need to press the point, are themselves willing, although subtle, participants in the effort to prevent universal acknowledgement and action.
My take on the situation http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/05/banned-in-boulder.html
21 May 2006 at 7:37 AM
Raypierre,
With regards to you comment (in post #65), here is my input:
We can compute the radiative forcing from CO2 to high accuracy,
I totally agree.
we can compute the radiative effects of water vapor to high accuracy, we know a great deal about how water vapor changes in conjunction with climate,
I totally agree.
and we even know a fair amount about clouds. Clouds are the weak link in our predictions, but clouds are only a modifying influence on CO2 induced climate change.
Allow me to disagree. We may know a fair amount about clouds but we know very little about how to quantify their climatic effect. There is an interesting paper by Cess et al. in Nature (I think 1990 +/- 1 yr) which showed that the biggest uncertainty in the determination of climate sensitivity in GCMs is the recipe used for cloud cover. In models where the cloud cover feedback is more pronounced, you get a small sensitivity (e.g., CO2 doubling temperature of 1.5) or a high sensitivity (e.g., 4.5 deg) if the cloud cover feedback is small. So, the “modifying influence of clouds” is in fact paramount for the prediction of the temperature effect of CO2 or any climate driver, if the prediction is made using numerical modeling.
For you they are the whole story, since there’s no prayer of a chance of a significant cosmic ray effect except through modulation of clouds.
Yes, but that is not a problem. All the evidence points towards cloud cover variations.
You write as if you think that the CO2 theory had behind it only the vague correlations between ill-constrained proxies and temperature that your cosmic ray idea rests on. That’s simply not the case.
The evidence is supposedly summarized in chapter 12 of the TAR. I read it carefully, and wasn’t convinced. Yes, there is clear evidence that the global temperature increased. But the evidence that it is anthropogenic is shaky. It basically rests on modeling which shows that if you include anthropogenic GHGs, you get consistent signatures (e.g., relative temperature changes between the troposphere/stratosphere and northern/southern hemispheres), on the fact that “internal variability” cannot explain the temperature rise, and on the assumption that there are no other plausible mechanisms to explain the warming (which there isn’t if you disregard the solar/cosmic-ray/climate link). However, there is no smoking gun to which you can say, “Aha! it is necessarily CO2″. If you think otherwise, give me one good example of a CO2 signature in global warming.
With cosmic rays, the story is different. The body of evidence may not be as broad as the evidence for global warming, or as elaborate as the numerical modeling carried out for GHGs. No GCM was run to see if changing cloud cover due to cosmic ray flux variations can explain the apparent observational signatures. For one, no one knows exactly how the cloud cover changes (i.e., how to parameterize the cosmic ray flux effect on clouds). However, unlike CO2, cosmic rays have unique signatures. For example, the low altitude cloud cover varies in sync with the cosmic ray flux. Since it is not a monotonic function like the increase of CO2, it is a rather unique signature. And of course, there are variations in the cosmic ray flux over the past billion years which correlate well with spiral arm passages. Of course, you like to wave Rahmstorf et al’s critique about statistical significance (to which you can read the rebuttal and all that). But the key point for me, which you don’t know, is that once I hit upon the idea and started checking it out, every single test I devised for it worked. I cannot quantify this success, but the way I see it, it is nothing less than remarkable.
For example, when I first sent the idea for publication, it was before I had a reconstruction of the cosmic ray flux (just astronomical vs. geological data), everything looked nice and consistent (I also had no idea about any implications to climate sensitivity and all that). Then, I realized that the cosmic ray flux could perhaps be reconstructed using the meteoritic data. At first I thought I would have to play with it (smooth, filter etc), but lo and behold, I could see with the unaided eye that the cosmic ray flux is periodic with a 145 Million year period and the right phase. When I saw that, my jaw simply fell. Never in my wildest dream did something agree so well like that. Everything else I checked afterwards agreed as well. So as you see, I have my own very good reasons to believe cosmic rays affect climate.
As for CO2, If you would have asked me 10 years ago, I would have said that global warming is anthropogenic, and as an environmentalist (yes I am very much one), I would have said that something like Kyoto is a must, as is other things like researching fusion. But from my point of view, after reading the literature over and over, I just saw that things don’t add up. I fail to see the smoking gun proving it is CO2, while everything I stumble upon from my point of view, keeps pointing towards cosmic rays and towards the fact that the sensitivity is low (close to a black body Earth).
In order to make a case that cosmic rays are a big part of the story in the 20th century you not only need to quantify the effect of cosmic rays far more than anybody has been able to,
Incorrect. Simply look at ion chamber data, which is of high energy cosmic rays, and you will see the 20th century temperature trend in the data. The problem of quantifying the effect over the 20th century is actually easy if you know what you are looking for (i.e., the energies which cause the atmospheric ionization).
but you also need to show why the known physical mechanisms linking CO2 to warming fail.
Who said they fail? CO2 causes warming. The problem is that given climate models cannot predict the sensitivity to within a factor of 3 or so, it is impossible to quantify the role played by GHGs. All I have to show then is that climate sensitivity is on the low side, and empirical evidence demonstrate just that (see my JGR paper mentioned above), in fact, the empirical evidence becomes self consistent if you add the cosmic ray flux forcing, leading to a 1-1.5 deg temperature sensitivity.
All you really have right now are some unquantified speculations about how cosmic rays might affect clouds,
Nope, they are quantified. e.g., read the JGR paper above. The effect of tropospheric ionization is dT_global / dI = 7.5 +/- 2 deg C (i.e., 0.75 deg change per 10% change in the tropospheric ionization [or 20% in the relevant cosmic ray flux]).
plus a correlation between one low frequency signal (cosmic rays) and another (temperature). Naturally, if you throw another low frequency signal into the mix, you can improve correlations. That proves little or nothing.
Disagree. Cosmic ray flux / climate correlations exist on the widest possible range of time scales. You see correlation from the 11 yr solar cycle to a billion years, and on each intermediate time scale where you know there should be large cosmic ray flux variation. Thus, it is not only improving the correlations over the 20th century (which would have indeed proven nothing if it were the case).
If you really think you can model clouds well enough to say what the cosmic ray influence translates into in terms of W/m**2, then that’s great news.
No I cannot model them. However, you can see empirically the change in the low altitude cloud cover and the radiative effect of those were quantified by the ERBE experiment. (again, see the JGR paper I liked above. The change in the low altitude cloud cover over the solar cycle corresponds to a radiative forcing of 1+/-0.4 W/m^2).
Right now, so far as I can tell, you can’t even tell us what the sign of the effect is from first principles. (For starters, lets think about the question of why cosmic rays should affect low clouds when there are already plenty of nuclei around at low levels.
Look for ship tracks in “visible earth”. You’ll find the answer. There are plenty of oceanic regions which are devoid of condensation nuclei. In these regions, if a ship passes by, its exhaust particles serve as cloud condensation nuclei. The clouds formed in the ship’s wake are then whiter. So obviously, if you could form CCNs more effectively, you would cause cooling. It is also easy to explain it from first principles given that you have more, smaller drops if the number of CCNs is higher, such that the surface to volume ratio of the drops is larger (again, this is explained and estimated in the above JGR). So as you see, once the CN->CCN link will be experimentally established, even the physical link will be proved, and this will take place sooner than your think. Of course, given the empirical evidence, the link should be taken seriously already now, and not brushed off as “off the wall line of thinking”. If you are interested in knowing more about why low altitude should be more affected, read Yu, F. (2002), Altitude variations of cosmic ray induced production of aerosols: Implications for global cloudiness and climate, J. Geophys. Res., 107(A7), 1118, doi:10.1029/2001JA000248.
[Response: A few comments. i) a correlation of CRF to cloud cover doesn’t imply a direct CRF-cloud mechanism - it could simply be a feedback response to the irradiance forcing - but looking at the spatial pattern it’s so indistinct and incoherent that it could simply be noise. ii) The nature of the ISSCP data do not allow you to distinguish between a true low cloud response and/or a response above that just masks out low clouds. iii) simplisitic arguments about low clouds vs high clouds and their impact on surface temperatures do not take into account the true complexities of cloud effects (see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/02/cloudy-outlook-for-albedo/ for instance). iv) Even the ship track data are pretty ambiguous about what the net effects of extra condensation nuclei are (see Ackerman et al, 2000 for instance), v) the estimates for the CRF forcing you assume at the LGM (to pick one of your examples) appear to be based on raw 10Be concentrations without any correction for accumulation, geomag changes or the possibility of climate impacts on the 10Be transports - (see Field et al (2006) for instance). None of this adds up to a coherent set of evidence and while I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of direct CRF effects, the lack of any climate changes at the magnetic reversals (which should be accompanied by huge increases in CR fluxes), or at the Laschamp event imply that they are likely to be very small. - gavin]
21 May 2006 at 10:30 AM
I trust ya all have seen this?
https://cf.iats.missouri.edu/news/NewsBureauSingleNews.cfm?newsid=9842
So why not counter with ads with the scientists whose work has been distorted responding?
Then you can add info on the oil industry source of CEI funding http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/17/attack-on-gore/ . On another ad you can juxtapose their previous statements that global warming is baloney with some current statements that there is some GW caused by people after all - though disputing its effects (’course get ready for them to do the same with the global cooling myth).
21 May 2006 at 10:41 AM
Here’s a funny idea for another counter ad: have a mock CEI or Exxon exec breathing in a paper bag. Run the words from their site about how great Co2 is, if some is good MORE is even better. The exec keeps breathing until he starts to get a little woozy. Finally he passes out. Then the words: How stupid do they think you are?
21 May 2006 at 12:02 PM
An update on a link previously posted:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/05/19/arctic-ice.html
21 May 2006 at 12:51 PM
I hope someone will be doing a survey to see how effective these ads are. I don’t think it would be too far-fetched to see that the American public would be convinced that “CO2 is our friend!” After all, something like 72% believed Saddam was behind 9/11; even higher for US troops recently, 85% think they are in Iraq .. to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks.”
http://zogby.com/search/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm
So I’m afraid the sad (perhaps obvious) lesson is that money & power trump science everytime, whether you’re Galileo or Hansen or Mann!
21 May 2006 at 1:41 PM
Or this time have the bag placed completely over his head. After he passes out and the line scrolls across saying “How stupid do they think we are?” someone says in the background “Getting hot in there?”
21 May 2006 at 1:52 PM
Re #79 by Wayne Davidson
Regarding: I heard about cosmic ray effects for quite some time, and they fail at the cosmic scale, if there is such a thing on clouds, it would be universal, NH SH alike, yet there isn’t very much similarities between NH and SH temperature and cloud anomalies, often one is greater than the other. Cosmic scale events require world wide similarities which I have not noticed…
On the same token, one can say that because CO2 forcing is the same in both hemispheres, the global warming in the SH and NH should be the same. This is not the case for CO2 nor is it for cosmic rays. The reason is the large asymmetry between the two hemisphere. One has a lot of land mass and the other a lot of oceans. So, the point is not relevant.
21 May 2006 at 2:11 PM
Rasmus,
Regarding your response to my response to your response to my post…
Anyway, on a more serious note, you comment:
Response: Yes, we can agree that this aspect is interesting. What you in essence say, is that the negative trend in the diurnal temperature range can be explained by an increased greenhouse effect -be it water vapour or CO2 (probably both).
Could be. I think all climate models give more water vapor in the atmosphere with increased temperature, irrespective of the source of warming. With CO2, the effect will be larger of course.
It’s something you can see in climate model simulations with increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. You are right, that nobody probably hasn’t got their hands dirty and looked into the detailed response of what a ‘cosmic ray effect’ would be like, so we cannot yet rule out that the effect would (surprisingly) be similar. I propose that someone does the computations.
Agree. The problem though is that as long as the possibility for a cosmic ray climate link is dismissed immediately, no body with the heavy tools will invest any effort to study and quantify the effect, whether it is large or small…
But I’m still not convinced that a positive trend in the cosmic ray flux will lead to a warming, and I’m baffled by the different behaviour you describe of the high-energy particles and those with somewhat lower (still sufficiently high to penetrate earth’s magnetic field) energy. By the way, do those high-energy rays cause Aurora? -rasmus]
eh… perhaps my typo before managed to confuse. Over the past century, solar activity increased. This decreased the cosmic ray flux reaching Earth. (they lose more energy as they swim up the solar wind), this implies less atmospheric ionization, and (presumably) less low altitude cloud cover and hence warming. The auroras are caused by electrons from the solar wind (with typical energies of 10 kev). Thus, when the sun is more active, there are more low energy particles from the sun (and hence more auroras) but less (galactic) cosmic rays from outside the solar system.
[Response: If respectable scientists are in the habit of dismissing the hypothetical cosmic-ray influence out of hand, you have only yourself to blame, with not a little help from the school of Friis-Christenson and Svensmark. The record of exaggeration, sloppy inference, bad statistics and (in some cases) outright misleading presentation of data would be enough to put off any serious scientist, and give you a very uphill battle to get any attention if and when you ever have anything to say that stands up to scrutiny.
Your remarks on clouds in #83 only show that you didn’t pay any real attention to the argument I was making. There is no need to point out the Cess et al cloud paper (Herve LeTreut and I wrote the cloud feedback section of the IPCC Third Assessment Report). We are all in agreement that clouds are the main reason for the uncertainty in climate sensitivity. You failed to appreciate the content of my remark: that for CO2, the clouds amplify or damp the warming, but we don’t need the clouds to determine the basic driver of the mechanism. Though there is uncertainty in the magnitude of response, we always get substantial warming in all the cloud models that have been implemented so far. From present observations and verifications of cloud schemes, we do have some information about how well the cloud models are doing, even if we don’t yet have enough to say which of them are “best.” This situation is very different from your situation with cosmic rays. For cosmic rays, instead of clouds being a modifying effect on a known forcing, instead 100% of the effect is mediated by clouds — and by nucleation processes at that, which are the hardest part of the cloud behavior to quantify. Your declaration that the correlation between cosmic rays and low clouds is “overwhelming” doesn’t make it so, nor does this count as a calculation of radiative forcing from first principles. Without that, you can’t even tell me the sign of the expected climate response to cosmic rays. How far are you from being able to do that? Very far. You’d have to be able to go from the effect of cosmic ray collisions to small nucleii and from there to activated nuclei. You’d have to say how that affects the droplet size under various assumptions regarding non-GCR related nuclei. You’d have to say how that all depends on height. You’d have to say how that all depends on latitude, and interacts with the water supply that feeds clouds, which involves the rest of the circulation. You also need to keep in mind that if you are saying that cloud processes make the climate sensitivity to CO2 less (hence allowing more role for GCR forcing), then that same cloud stabilization is apt to apply to your GCR related forcing as well.
All that might be interesting to do, and would probably be worthwhile. If you want people to take you seriously, that’s what you’ve got to do. I’m not convinced enough of the plausibility of the mechanism that I would take time out from more promising lines of research to do it. If you’re so convinced, you need to go do it yourself, or team up with somebody who can. Meanwhile, what you are doing is trying to estimate climate sensitivity from GCR correlations, when you don’t even know the sign of the radiative forcing due to GCR with any great confidence. Not only that, you are arguing for turning all of climate and energy policy on its head based on these thin suppositions. That’s beyond sloppy science. That’s positively irresponsible.
I think somebody will eventually pick up on the subject and do the job in a careful way, but it’s likely to come out of some party that doesn’t have an agenda. That’s pretty much what has happened with the more responsible end of the solar forcing community, though a lot of them had to work hard to overcome the bad reputation cast on the whole subject by Svensmark and company. I’ll start paying serious attention to the GCR idea when somebody who really knows about nucleation (like Markku Kulmala) weighs in on the subject. I think the 2002 Science article by Carslaw, Harrison and Kirby laid out the microphysical issues rather well. The article is outdated with regard to a number of the observational issues, but there has not been much real progress on the really important questions — the microphysical mechanisms — since their publication. That’s where the effort ought to be going, not into some premature GCR-based crusade against Kyoto and the like.
This is the last response you’ll get out of me on the subject. I stick by my assertion that you can’t even say what the expected sign of the response is, and have no business attributing any of the 20th century climate change to GCR until you do. All the ever-expanding verbiage you respond with can’t conceal that simple fact, and I think we’re well past the point of diminishing returns in this dialog. –raypierre]
21 May 2006 at 3:59 PM
“the global warming in the SH and NH should be the same. This is not the case for CO2 nor is it for cosmic rays.”
This seems to me to be logically disconnected. You have to truly believe the two forcings are equal. Everything I’ve seen indicates they aren’t.
[Response: The main reason for the difference between NH and SH response to CO2 is that the SH has more ocean, which retards the warming (a big factor so far) and which, even in equilibrium, damps the hemispheric mean seasonal cycle (a more subtle factor, with regard to annual mean temperatures at least). It’s possible that similar considerations might apply to the response to GCR modulations of clouds (if that indeed exists). If the GCR crowd ever stop crowing about the policy implications of their work long enough to do the hard work of saying how GCR translates quantitatively into cloud radiative forcing, somebody will be able to put the effect in a GCM and answer the question fairly easily. –raypierre]