RealClimate: Happy 35th birthday, global warming!

Happy 35th birthday, global warming!

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— stefan @ 28 July 2010 - (

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Una traducción en español está disponible aquí.

Comments (pop-up) (183)

183 Responses to “Happy 35th birthday, global warming!”

51

Kevin McKinney says:

28 Jul 2010 at 3:37 PM

Re #20–Callendar’s initial publication on CO2/climate theory was the paper Lou Grinzo cites, “On The Artificial Production Of Carbon Dioxide. . .” The year was 1938.

You can access the paper via Lou’s link, or if that doesn’t work, Google “pale wiki climate,” which should get you to the collection of “classic global warming science.” There are about 20 papers available there, nicely indexed, so you can pick papers from Fourier 1824 right up to Hanson (IIRC.) I’ve done articles on the first 6, and have one on Plass in process–at least, it’s “in process” whenever I can free up some time to actually work on it.

There is also a discussion of Callendar 1938 in my article, linked at #22 above.
52

SecularAnimist says:

28 Jul 2010 at 3:51 PM

Regarding Soylent Green — spoiler alert to anyone who hasn’t seen it! — what most people remember is the final moments of the film when Charlton Heston’s character discovers that “Soylent Green is people!”, specifically, the ground-up corpses of people who have voluntarily ended their lives by going to one of the public suicide centers.

But the really shocking point in the film is what causes Edward G. Robinson’s character to go to a suicide center: he and a small group of other scientists get their hands on an ocean survey conducted by the Soylent Corporation, which has been harvesting phytoplankton — the last remaining lifeform on Earth other than humans, all other species having been driven to extinction — to make the “food product” Soylent Red.

As they study the Soylent Corporation’s survey, they realize what it shows: that the phytoplankton too is at last dying off, and will shortly become extinct, leaving human beings as the only thing living on Earth — and the only thing left to eat.

Which is what sends Robinson’s character off to the suicide center, to enjoy a chemically-induced euphoria, watch a ten-minute 3D IMAX movie of the long-vanished natural beauties of the Earth, and be “put to sleep”.
53

Jim says:

28 Jul 2010 at 4:07 PM

The article referenced by Ben in #5 also states: “All this reinforces a theory advanced in 1861 that decreases in carbon dioxide explain the growth and advance of glaciers at various intervals in the earth’s history. Dr. Plass finds the theory plausible“. This refers to the work of Tyndall, who at that time was making the first connections/speculations between atmospheric composition and large scale climate variations. Note also that this NYT writer was on top of this–Plass’ full article on the topic didn’t come out until 1956, where he describes a climate sensitivity of 3.6 to 3.8 deg C. The NYT article was based on a conference presentation which apparently was the basis of Plass’ 1956 paper.
54

Paul says:

28 Jul 2010 at 4:11 PM

Re # 50 Every time I read ANY thread on Yahoo, no matter what topic, my faith in humanity suffers. To go there is like visiting a circle of Hell.
55

Brian B says:

28 Jul 2010 at 4:15 PM

I studied “Environmental Change” – a course on human-induced global warming, basically – under the late Prof. Kenneth Hare at University of Toronto in about 1980. (Talk about a revelation!) I’m pretty sure we were reading scientific papers that pre-dated 1975. I might even still have them in a box someplace.
56

don says:

28 Jul 2010 at 5:04 PM

“The present natural cooling will, however, bottom out during the next decade or so. Once this happens, the CO2 effect will tend to become a significant factor and by the first decade of the next century we may experience global temperatures warmer than any in the last 1000 years.”
“The latter turned out to be correct.”

I’m sorry, but I thought the temperatures of the last decade of the 20th century did not exceed the MWP? Yes?

[Response: No. But this is very definitely off topic. - gavin]
57

Septic Matthew says:

28 Jul 2010 at 5:08 PM

Credit where it’s due, he made a good prediction at a time when it did not seem obvious. This is why I am not a “denialist” (one of the reasons.) If I remember correctly, Steve Schneider at the time was still saying there was not enough evidence to substantiate a prediction (was he transitioning from a “cooler” to a “warmer”?)

In the table, the predicted increase for 2010 1.1C since 1900 (did I read the table correctly?) The observed increase is 0.8C. If you adjust his model to get the correct amount, what does it predict for the next 30 years? Just curious, as there are lots of predictions already out there for the next 30 years, but his has a track record worth building on.
58

James Staples says:

28 Jul 2010 at 5:25 PM

Yes, I remember being taught about the oncoming Ice Age – and trying to imagine New York City being encroached upon by Glaciers, as I learned about Geophysics and Oceanography, in the late 1970′s early 1980′s; so, at least at first, Global Warming was a surpirse – but not at all a hard sell.
I lived in or around Omaha, NE., USA, in the mid 70′s and again in the late 80′s early 90′s; and it was impossible NOT to notice the changing climate. Though it was common to climb out a high window, to unblock the drifted shut door to our house, in 1978; in the later [eriod, the usual precipitation had changed over to mostly freezing rain – with drifted snow becomming very, very rare.
59

S. Morrigan says:

28 Jul 2010 at 5:48 PM

The OED lists a 1952 _San Antonio Express_ usage of the term global warming: “Scientists who are studying global warming trends point out that not a single iceberg was sighted last year south of Parallel 46″ (April 28, 1952: 2, 5).

[Response: Love that dictionary. The OED are actually very keen to have updates to their 'earliest use' cites, so if people can find earlier examples, they should send them along. - gavin]
60

MapleLeaf says:

28 Jul 2010 at 6:18 PM

I would like to add my voice to those commending Stefan on an excellent post. Fascinating.

Stefan and Gavin, I was wondering whether or not you were considering speaking to the findings presented in this new paper by Lin et al. (2010)?

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/10/1923/2010/acp-10-1923-2010.html

They conclude that:

“The climate feedbacks are obtained based on the constraints of the TOA radiation imbalance and surface temperature measurements of the present climate. In this study, the TOA imbalance value of 0.85 W/m2 is used. Note that this imbalance value has large uncertainties. Based on this value, a positive climate feedback with a feedback coefficient ranging from −1.3 to −1.0 W/m2/K is found. The range of feedback coefficient is determined by climate system memory. The longer the memory, the stronger the positive feedback. The estimated time constant of the climate is large (70~120 years) mainly owing to the deep ocean heat transport, implying that the system may be not in an equilibrium state under the external forcing during the industrial era. For the doubled-CO2 climate (or 3.7 W/m2 forcing), the estimated global warming would be 3.1 K if the current estimate of 0.85 W/m2 TOA net radiative heating could be confirmed. With accurate long-term measurements of TOA radiation, the analysis method suggested by this study provides a great potential in the estimations of middle-range climate sensitivity.”

Hat Tip to poster “Ned” at SkepticalScience.
61

David B. Benson says:

28 Jul 2010 at 6:42 PM

Thank you, Stephan. And also the comments related to eveen earleir papers. Before this the earliest I was aware of was the Charney et al. 1979 NRC/NAS report:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12181&page=R1

The question of the causes of the mid 20th century (brief and mild) cooling is interesting. First, here is a graphic demonstrating it:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/decadal-global-temps-1880s-2000s.gif

Now most of the variation of the last 13 decades happens to be nicely explained just by CO2 alone, the other forcings (approximately) canceling each other out. So with quite a simple climate model:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/unforced-variations-3/comment-page-12/#comment-168530
in which the first formula is missing a rgith parenthesis and should read
AE(d) = k(lnCO2(d-1) – lnCO2(1870s)) – GTA(1880s)
just that does quite well but there are clearly unexplained wobbles above and below; the mid 20th century century cooling is one of those wobbles.

So in the second table there is a contribution from the Atlantic Multidecadal Ossicllation (AMO) has a index of internal variability. This helps to explain most of the wobbling, but not all of course. However, the AMO is based on North Atlantic SSTs and so is affected by nonlinear aspects of forcings which changes those SSTs. In particular, some contribution from CO2 leaks in as the forcings due to CO2 is not linearly increasing over the 13 decades. But also whatever changes in aerosol contributions will leak in as well. So the wobbles in the AMO are partly due to those other contributions.

The net of all this is that the AMO, for the linked simple model, explains almost all of the variance not explained by CO2 alone; it is not just an index of internal variability, although I opine, without actually knowing, it is mostly that with some additions or subtractions due to other causes.

An explanation different than just CO2+AMO for the warming from about the 1910s to through the 1940s is given in
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cTkJPW3J9UoJ:https://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/volcanic-lull/
when at the same time the AMO was increasing. I opine that this increase was partly due to that same lull in volcano aerosols.
62

Richard Reiss says:

28 Jul 2010 at 6:57 PM

re # 52 — yes, the phytoplankton die off in Soylent Green. By an odd coincidence, there’s a story in today’s LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-phytoplankton-20100729,0,6579046.story

“…Since 1950, phytoplankton biomass has shrunk about 40%. Scientists had known the population was shrinking, but the long-term nature of that reduction came as a surprise.”

On the bright side, NYC is nowhere near as crowded as they show it in Soylent Green (where the city has a population of 40 million and looks like Kolkata).
63

CG says:

28 Jul 2010 at 7:04 PM

Re: response to #10 by Eric
What location in the interior of BC shows a rise of 3C in the last 50 years ?

[Response: This is from Environment Canada. - gavin]
64

Mac Crawford says:

28 Jul 2010 at 7:12 PM

Hi All,

Yes, nice post and many insightful comments.

A bit OT, but SecularAnimist (52) mentions phytoplankton – I just read today (an AP article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38451744/ns/us_news-environment/) that phytoplankton numbers have declined by 40% since 1950. The methods included measurements of ocean turbidity, so it’s a proxy measure for a very difficult-to-conduct population survey of phytoplankton species. The method seems to be valid however. May be premature, but the decline is attributed to AGW. Talk about canaries…
65

The Wonderer says:

28 Jul 2010 at 8:25 PM

How I love to reminisce. As recently as 1982, I was still distracted, listening to my generators instructor talk about how PCBs were no more dangerous than a peanut butter sandwich, and preparing a report on acid rain, soon to be astonished on how the local Edison could lie through their teeth about a study they funded.

Jim Hansen’s congressional testimony was a seminal event that I remember clearly, and when my professional organization, IEEE, printed a cover story in 1999 on global warming in their Spectrum Magazine, I was sure we were on the right path. The last 11 years or so have taken a decidedly unexpected turn.
66

catman306 says:

28 Jul 2010 at 9:36 PM

Climate change was a subject like x population control, racism, or y, one that polite people just didn’t want to talk about.

Propaganda can defy reality, change the world, for a while. But reality always wins by shaking and destroying the foundation that the propaganda was built on. Although we might win a battle or two, we can’t win a war against nature,
67

S. Molnar says:

28 Jul 2010 at 9:40 PM

A minor point: If US readers follow the link for “Our Threatened Oceans”, they will find a further link for purchasing the book from Amazon UK. You can also get it, at lower cost, from Amazon US and other sources (although Amazon UK has the advantage of availability of Goon Show reissues with your order, providing a bit of much-needed sanity in these difficult times, which may make the trans-oceanic postage worthwhile).
68

Thomas says:

28 Jul 2010 at 10:01 PM

Dan King:
Of course thermo is involved in how the atmosphere interacts with radiation etc, but those are low level details. What we get are the IR forcing (one way to think of it is the average back IR radiation from the sky to the ground -or at fixed global temperature the decrease in IR radiation to space as a function of CO2. Using Gavins formula you get about 4watt/M**2 per doubling. The (near) logarithmic dependence comes from the fact that the absorption line shapes fall off exponentially as the frequency varies from the line centers -so the effective width of the line varies are the LOG of concentration. The change in either the backradiation -or the shielding effect of IR to space as a function of CO2 concentration, is actually a weak effect -roughly a 1% change per doubling. If it weren’t for the fact that our planets biosphere/cryosphere is quite sensitive to small changes in temperature (a 1% change in absolute tempeature is almost 3C) GW wouldn’t be a big deal. But a 1% change in the planets temperature can have a major impact.

I’ve known about GW since the 60′s. I was a voracious reader of astronomy and weather books as a teenager. The basic idea has been known to those with an interest in how the planet functions for quite a long while.
69

Donald Oats says:

28 Jul 2010 at 11:46 PM

I knew of the possibility of anthropogenic global warming when I was still in high school, around year 9 to year 11 (year 12 aka matriculation for most students, is the last year of school before university, if that’s a help for non-Australian readers). That puts it around 1979 to 1981 for me.

Obviously I couldn’t “know” it was true at the time, for AGW had no track-record with a statistically significant signal, and I was a high-school student, not a seasoned scientist! However, in 1988 there was a greenhouse Conference and workshops for scientists, as well as seminars for the public. By then I knew that CSIRO and many other more famous organisations/universities had their climate scientists stating that global warming was baked in, even if some doubts remained about the magnitude of change in all major climate indicators. The natural conservatism of scientists suggested to me that the bottom line may well be much worse than officially reported.

I suppose I knew about the natural Greenhouse effect (eg Venus) and how it worked in the 70′s, via magazines such as New Scientist, Scientific American (thank G-D it existed), and from Astronomy books, as someone else has mentioned. But 1988 would be not the “Ah hah!” moment, more like the “Oh Nooo!!” moment in disaster movies etc.

These days I feel it is so likely as not worth debating with anyone over the odds. A bet on anthropogenic global cooling, or even just global cooling, for the next 20 years or so would be a suckers bet. I just couldn’t take the money from someone so disabled as that.
70

Dhananjay Jog says:

29 Jul 2010 at 12:15 AM

Thanks a lot RealClimate for this worthy information.One must admire Wally Broecker’s predictions, of atmospheric CO2, made 35 years back.
71

richard pauli says:

29 Jul 2010 at 12:25 AM

Check the news timeline from Google Labs
http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/

I found an interesting 1968 news story:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3MkLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UVYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7247,2505197&dq=global+warming

This only searches Time Magazine and a few other publications, but results surprise.

Kudos to RealClimate and all of climate science for the persistence of effort. But shouldn’t we also note the passing decades while society has ignored this science? I suspect this is more of a testament to the power of public relations.

Google Search is a tremendously powerful tool for online research. Google engineers devised a way to display search results in a timeline layout. This is a great way of visualizing a search term across time. You will see a list of news stories for the time section you choose. Then you can see your report displayed over days, months or years.

“An easy first search is to enter “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” over a year range and see just how far back the story of global warming goes. I found global warming news stories in 1967, 1968 and 69 and beyond. The timeline display shows a handful of news stories for each year. Each with the top news headlines as a hotspot to click for further information. It was startling to see global warming news stories published so long ago. And alarming to see a 1988 news story with much the same phrasing as global warming news story today. ”

One can see a attitudinal change in media coverage with Time Magazine and others – with the sudden rise of the phrases of other scientists, doubt and skepticism.

Google Timeline reveals triumph of denialism – at http://www.theboywhodeniedwolf.com/2009/04/google-timeline-reveals-triumph-of-denialism.html
72

Chris Colose says:

29 Jul 2010 at 1:16 AM

It’s interesting to search out the earliest usage of ‘global warming’ but we shouldn’t get too sidetracked by where the precise phrase first appeared. The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming was first articulated clearly in 1938 in this paper (abstract if PDF doesn’t work) by Callendar. In this paper Callendar,

1) Proposes that CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere and will not only lead to coming global warming, but is already.
2) Discusses measurements of increases in CO2 in the free air. He notes that CO2 is increasing and will continue to do so in the coming century and beyond
3) He discusses the infrared absoprtion by CO2 and water vapor, and is fully aware of the Planck distribution of Earth-like radiation which peaks near 10 um, and is negligible at shorter wavelengths than ~4 um. He is also aware of where CO2 strongly absorbs. He notes on pp. 225, “To return to the absorption by carbon dioxide, the three primary bands given by this gas are at 2.4 to 3.0 um, 4 to 4.6 um, and 13 to 16 um, the latter being much the most important for atmospheric conditions because very little low temperature radiation is carried on the small bands.” He also notes previous measurements noting strong CO2 absorption near 15 um, and further notes that CO2 could absorb away from the primary bands
4) He discusses in length the relationship between CO2 and “sky radiation” (the downwards radiation to the surface). While he seems to not quite understand the primary importance of the top of the atmosphere energy budget, he is well familiar that a quantiative treatment of the effects of CO2 requires consideration of the the vertical thermal structure of the atmosphere, and treats the atmosphere as a number of layers that extend vertically. Callendar notes, “…increase of carbon dioxide causes the radiation to be concentrated from the lowest air layers, whilst the amount from the cold upper layers is still further screened off, the net effect being a small increase in the total sky radiation” which accurately characterizes the fact that the atmsophere becomes brighter in the IR when viewed from the perspective of the surface. Callendar thus understands that one aspect of increasing CO2 is to reduce the height of the “effective radiating level” (from the view of the surface).
5) Callendar notes that the radiative effect of CO2 is stronger in the Arctic due to the absence of water vapor, but incorrectly points out that the actual temperature change realized will be roughly uniform over the globe (he is apparently unaware of the ice-albedo feedback).
6) He doesn’t stop here. Callendar then goes into a detailed account of observed trends in surface temperatures over many locations over the globe, primarily relying on the Smithsonian publication “World Weather records,” and examining about 200 records. He even classifies records by their level of exposure to the urban heat island effect (he doesn’t use this term, but categorizes by small island/ocean/rural, small towns, and large towns). Callendar notes positive temperature anomalies in most records.
7) In this publication Callendar noted that the warming that is observed and that would continue from CO2 could be benefitial, and also that “In any case the return of
the deadly glaciers should be delayed indefinitely.”

This is the earliest most comprehensive, single paper articulating the relationship between CO2, radiative transfer, measurements of CO2, and measurements of temperature and connecting the dots to form the skeleton of what we are worried about over 70 years later. There was certainly earlier efforts which discussed the importance of atmospheric absorption by gases to climate, but such work (like that of Arrhenius) were not concerned with anthropogenic global warming or only speculated that it might be of importance in the deep future, and for that matter did not engage in the observational aspect of CO2-temperature relationships that Callendar attempted. Arrhenius’ 1896 publication has several pages devoted to a translation of previous work by Hogbom noting that CO2 variations were likely quite large in the past, but to Hogbom crustal processes were of much more importance than fossil fuel combustion could be. For the most part, this research, among others before Callendar, was focused on the causes of the glacial-interglacial cycles.

Speculation of anthropogenic warming and geo-enginnering the climate via combustion of fossil fuels is traceable bacj before Callendar, to at least 1899 in this paper by Nils Eckholm. Eckholm recognizes the influence of ‘carbonic acid’ for the climate, and remarks that it is essential for life. He doesn’t quite understand that the rise in CO2 will influence climate over the next few decades to centuries, but the focus has at least shifted to anthropogenic warming and the future– though it is still not until Callendar (1938) to examine this connection in detail. He notes here, “But here we find a remarkable circumstance that has hitherto been unexampled in the history of the earth. This is the influence of Man on climate.”

His conclusing paragraph is,

“In fact, we have seen that the present burning of pit-coal is so
great that in one year it gives back to the atmosphere about 1/1000 of its
present store of carbonic acid. If this continues for some thousand
years it- will undoubtedly cause a very obvious rise of the mean
temperature of the earth. Also Man will no doubt be able to increase
the supply of carbonic acid also by digging of deep fountains pouring
out carbonic acid. Further, it might perhaps be possible for Man to
diminish or regulate the consumption of carbonic acid by protecting the
weathering layers of silicates from the influence of the air and by ruling
the growth of plants according to his wants and purposes. Thus it
seems possible that Man will be able efficaciously to regulate the future
climate of the earth and consequently prevent the arrival of a new Ice
Age. By such means also the deterioration of the climate of the
northern and Arctic regions, depending on the decrease of the obliquity
of the ecliptic, may be counteracted. It is too early to judge of how far
Man might be capable of thus regulating the futnre climate. But
already the view of such a possibility seems to me so grand that I
cannot help thinking that it will afford to Mankind hitherto unforeseen
means of evolution.”
73

Edward Greisch says:

29 Jul 2010 at 4:01 AM

I could use some help with http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/
Please go there and make comments, RC.
74

Girma says:

29 Jul 2010 at 4:44 AM

Why did not the scientists looked at the data and declared global warming 70 years ago?

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/compress:12/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/trend

35 years is too short. It should be 100 (it started in 1910)
75

J says:

29 Jul 2010 at 7:34 AM

I wrote: “… this foundational paper that first introduced the term ‘global warming’ also exemplifies the tension between the use of that term versus the use of ‘climate change’ … in its very title.”

Secular animist replied:

What “tension”?

Global warming causes the climate to change. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you look at the discussion of this subject both in the popular press and the scientific literature, people go back and forth between using the terms “global warming” and “climate change.” I don’t think that’s some nefarious plot; I think it’s genuine uncertainty about the tradeoff between simplicity/clarity versus comprehensiveness. Overall, the effect of increased CO2 is to warm the globe but the ultimate impacts of that go beyond just palpable “warmth” to include things like changes in precipitation, ocean circulation, etc.

I just thought it was kind of neat that the (or a) pioneering paper in 1975 that was the first to introduce the term “global warming” apparently also reflects (in its very title) the terminological ambiguity that we continue to experience today. This isn’t a big issue; it’s trivial compared to the substance of the paper. But apparently right from the start even Wally Broecker couldn’t make up his mind whether it’s better to call this phenomenon “climatic change” or “global warming” … so he went with both!
76

Kevin McKinney says:

29 Jul 2010 at 8:44 AM

#72–great summary of some of the early “classics” in the field–and a great “pre-response” to Girma’s #74!

One slight clarification–the last block quote is from Ekholm 1901. (The attribution of the pronouns “he” and “his” may be a little unclear to some readers, but Chris means Ekholm.)

For those who like a good slug of biography with their science, I’ve done a web article on Ekholm too, in addition to the one on Callendar linked upthread. If the moderators will indulge me, I’ll link all 6 articles currently up:

Callendar
Ekholm
Arrhenius
Tyndall
Pouillet
Fourier

(This would also be a good time to acknowledge again my appreciation of past interest and assistance in this project on the part of RC readers! And BTW, corrections and emendations are welcome.)

However, I didn’t actually come by to plug myself, but rather to note that the 2009 “State of the Climate” report is now out:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate/2009.php

The CBC story on this headlined the quote that global warming is “undeniable”–evidently not true in the most literal sense, though I’d contend it is “undeniable for the fair-minded.” :-(
77

Lou Grinzo says:

29 Jul 2010 at 10:39 AM

J(75): Good summary of the “CC vs. GW” terminology situation.

I find it fascinating and frustrating that the self-professed skeptics seem to get so much mileage out of claiming that “now they’re calling it climate change!” (One somewhat prominent “skeptic” is a local TV weatherman who writes letters to the local paper taking cheap shots at scientists and their work. I’ve seen him use this tired old attack.) If anything, I think CC is far more unsettling than GW, and on my site I was even calling it “climate chaos” for a while, as a way to emphasize the uncertainty involved as well as all the “it’s worse than we thought” discoveries that were popping up in the news. That usage didn’t catch on, despite my efforts and some other people using it; perhaps it’s “too alarmist”.
78

Richard Reiss says:

29 Jul 2010 at 11:06 AM

for those interested, we have a brief audio interview from 2006 with Dr. Broecker on our site here:

http://www.artistascitizen.org/projects/1/
79

KSW says:

29 Jul 2010 at 12:49 PM

eric, thanks for your earlier response; I wasn’t aware that central BC had warmed that much recently. Here in Calgary AB (and all of central and southern Alberta) we haven’t warmed much at all in the last 100 years:
http://www.abll.ca/charts/Meteorology/Temperature
Ft McMurray (tars sands area) can also be shown on the chart and the warming in more Northern regions is evident.

I am still curious about why I can’t grow a decent vegetable garden even though we are losing our glaciers and ice caps.

Any recommendations on reading about sources of variation at a regional scale?
80

Chris G says:

29 Jul 2010 at 1:02 PM

#5
Ben says:
28 July 2010 at 9:23 AM

“… 4 per cent…”

A large percentage of the populace doesn’t understand the difference between a relative scale, like Celsius or Fahrenheit, and an absolute scale, like Kelvin. In fact, most don’t know what Kelvin (or Rankine, heaven forbid) is. So, I think there might be some merit in framing the amount of change per doubling of CO2 as about 1 percent. It isn’t entirely accurate or precise for a number of reasons, but it sounds plausible to a layman, puts it in the right ballpark, and gives a point from which to build. This side-steps a common sticking point that occurs when people hear that doubling a gas that used to make up 0.0287 percent of our atmosphere, which is imperceptible as far as they are concerned, will have a ~3 degree C (~5.4 degree F) effect, which is quite perceptible within their frame of reference. Using one percent keeps the perceived level of the gas and its effects in the same category of that’s-not-much. It’s a starting point to get someone on to the bunny slope.

Sorry, but there are things which can not be explained very accurately in three easy steps, the average person won’t go beyond three steps, and most of us live in democracies where the average people get to decide what the group does.
81

Hank Roberts says:

29 Jul 2010 at 1:29 PM

In perhaps related news:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7306/edsumm/e100729-03.html

Utterly astonishing.
82

SecularAnimist says:

29 Jul 2010 at 2:08 PM

Hank Roberts wrote: “In perhaps related news … Utterly astonishing.”

I guess it’s getting near time to start making that yummy Soylent Green.
83

Edward Greisch says:

29 Jul 2010 at 2:28 PM

phytoplankton declining. Yipes! Oxygen declining!
84

Chris G says:

29 Jul 2010 at 2:41 PM

Hank Roberts,

Fascinating.

For those without access to the Nature article, here is synopsis

http://dalnews.dal.ca/2010/07/28/photoplank.html

I puzzled over why phytoplankton would be in decline because of temperature; they are found in waters warm and cold. Seems an answer could be that there is less overturn in the oceans, and so less nutrients are brought up from the bottom.

So, just thinking, but if the overturn of the oceans is in a general decline, that would have a large effect on the rate of changes at the surface, for temperature, acidity, and others. There would be less buffering in general.
85

David B. Benson says:

29 Jul 2010 at 5:11 PM

In light of recent comments, I encourage reading Wally Broecker’s new book “The Great Ocean Conveyor”.
86

Ryan says:

29 Jul 2010 at 5:32 PM

In another anniversary, I was just RealClimates’ 12000000th visitor

[Response: Cool! - gavin]
87

Philip Machanick says:

29 Jul 2010 at 5:45 PM

Jim’s Response at #7:

I like to ponder what must have been going through the minds of some of these guys as they were looking at the results of their calculations and model outputs and getting a first glimpse of what was going on.

What about what’s happening in the heads of scientists who go fruit-loop to garner attention? Correction at RC wiki in case someone who can edit is watching: the link to the rebuttal to Rancourt’s ravings, “Ode to a theory unsung and conspiratorial”, should be
http://iji2.wordpress.com/2008/07/13/ode-to-a-theory-unsung-and-conspiratorial/

Someone who wants me to believe me the denial side has a case sent me a link to Rancourt’s latest video. My response: Just because he’s on the left of politics doesn’t exclude the possibility he’s a fruit loop (but leftist anarchists will I’m sure appreciate the assumption that their every pronouncement is authoritative).

Meanwhile AMSU-A keeps maintaining 2010 as a record year for near-surface temperature.
88

glen says:

29 Jul 2010 at 6:34 PM

Not all of Nature Journal 466 mentioned above is bad news;
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/news.2010.366.html?s=news_rss
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7305/full/nature09210.html

The authors are the same for last year’s Science magazine; The Dynamics of Phenotypic Change and the Shrinking Sheep of St. Kilda, Science 24 July 2009, which prompted Gavin to write a follow-on post to “The Sheep Albedo Feedback”, titled “Science at the bleating edge”.

Another “pioneering discussion” maybe necessary to include rodents into the ruminant radiation budget. After all — increasing numbers and size matters… don’t forget the yellow belly which is exposed when sunning.
89

Suhasini says:

29 Jul 2010 at 7:07 PM

35 years huh.

Wonder how long it will take them to accept it.

I just finished writing a post on possible ways to avoid Climate Change”.

Click on

http://www.suhasinisakhare.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=130:can-we-aviod-climate-change&catid=15:politics&Itemid=23

Would be great to get feedback.

Thanks,
Suhasini
90

Steve Bloom says:

29 Jul 2010 at 10:20 PM

Here’s a public-access copy of the Broecker paper:

http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/climate/files/2009/10/broeckerglobalwarming75.pdf
91

Edward Greisch says:

29 Jul 2010 at 11:22 PM

Wallace Broecker needs defending at
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/lessons-from-two-important-climate-forecasts/
where a super-denialist has Comment #1. Still waiting for Comment 2 to appear.
Andy Revkin is also celebrating the 35th anniversary/birthday. 1. Brad Smith repeats all of the old long since debunked nonsense stuff that it gets boring to debunk again. I put in a comment that isn’t up yet debunking part of it and then I got bored and pasted. Pastes don’t work there, so I expect to see only part of what I intended to say. Does anybody have a software to get around anti-pasters for Mac OS 10.6?
92

Alexander Although says:

30 Jul 2010 at 1:42 AM

Dear Gentlemen, congratulations to your 35th birthday! The deniers have a new iPhone application that is 5 times more extensive than John Cook’s excellent app.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/our-climate/id371849150

Will you debunk the application and show that the deniers are just deniers and that they keep on denying?
93

Geoff Beacon says:

30 Jul 2010 at 3:24 AM

How accurate is the headline, “Controlling Soot Might Quickly Reverse a Century of Global Warming” on wired.com?
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/soot-control/

[Response: Exaggerated. BC controls make sense from a health and climate point of view, so there is nothing wrong in principle. But depending on exactly what you did (how are organic carbon aerosols changed at the same time, the impact of biomass burning) you could get different size net effects. In terms of attribution, BC is something like 20% of the net positive forcing, and so, you'd expect something like that in terms of reducing the global warming signal. (there are issues related to indirect effects, efficacy and time scales that make that a little uncertain though). -gavin]
94

catman306 says:

30 Jul 2010 at 6:27 AM

Pardon my ignorance. Does anyone know whether the kinetic energy of a falling or disintegrating glacier or ice sheet is included in the equations for modeling melting ice? Many millions of tons of ice, elevated a mile or more. Or the energy of the falling water draining through the ice? Do the melting equations include this enormous energy, which will ultimately be heat and contribute to the melting?
A link will be appreciated.
95

Chris Ho-Stuart says:

30 Jul 2010 at 9:07 AM

catman306 asks above in comment now #94 about kinetic energy of falling ice.

Here’s a comparison. The latent heat of fusion for ice to water transition is 334 kJ/kg. That is, melting 1 kg of ice with no temperature change takes 334 kJ.

The gravitational potential energy of a kilogram of ice is about 10 J per meter. So melting the kilogram of ice involves the energy obtain by having it fall about 34 kilometers.

The kinetic energy of falling ice is, I suggest, negligible by comparison with the other forces at work here.

Someone tell me if I have these figures wrong…
96

Jim Ryan says:

30 Jul 2010 at 9:42 AM

Scopus has an interesting breakdown of global warming (article, title, abstract or keyword) vis-a-vis the top 50 source journals, authors, year, affiliation and subject.

16,049 articles since 1975.

How many more papers will it take to convince the ‘sceptics’ of the reality of AGW?

As ever keep up the great work. There are many who are listening.
97

Doug Bostrom says:

30 Jul 2010 at 10:14 AM

Geoff Beacon says: 30 July 2010 at 3:24 AM

How accurate is the headline, “Controlling Soot Might Quickly Reverse a Century of Global Warming” on wired.com?

A one-shot deal, the devil is in the fine print, like kids’ juice boxes touting “Real Juice!” Once you’ve undone one century of warming you’re fresh out of soot, permanently, so that leaves the remaining upcoming centuries to deal with.

No “Get out of jail free” card on this game board, sadly.
98

msc says:

30 Jul 2010 at 10:20 AM

“Wonder how long it will take them to accept it.”

Let’s hope it’s not like the Catholic church and Copernicus. That only took, what, nearly 300 years?
99

Jim Ryan says:

30 Jul 2010 at 10:36 AM

#96
For some reason the full link didn’t post.

http://www.scopus.com/results/results.url?sort=plf-f&src=s&st1=global+warming&nlo=&nlr=&nls=&sid=jZnfJbC2lsvGoAJcBXJA9XX%3a210&sot=b&sdt=b&sl=66&s=TITLE-ABS-KEY%28global+warming%29+AND+DOCTYPE%28ar%29+AND+PUBYEAR+AFT+1974&cl=t&offset=1&origin=resultslist&ss=plf-f&ws=r-f&ps=r-f&cs=r-f&cc=100&txGid=jZnfJbC2lsvGoAJcBXJA9XX%3a23
100

SecularAnimist says:

30 Jul 2010 at 11:04 AM

Jim Ryan wrote: “How many more papers will it take to convince the ’sceptics’ of the reality of AGW?”

There will never be enough to counter the many, many “papers” that have convinced them that global warming is a hoax.

You know — the little green & gray “papers” with pictures of dead presidents on them.

Happy 35th birthday, global warming!

183 Responses to “Happy 35th birthday, global warming!”

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