Last week the Research Council of Norway announced the results of a new assessment of the climate system’s “sensitivity” taking into account the leveling off of global temperatures during the decade from 2000 to 2010. The study projects that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations over pre-industrial levels will increase global temperatures by between 1.2°C and 2.9°C, with 1.9°C being the most likely outcome. That is considerably cooler than the UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) estimate of 2°C to 4.5°C, with 3°C as the most probable outcome.

Climate sensitivity is an estimate of how much warming results from a given increase in CO2 concentrations. Estimates typically project the amount of warming from a doubling of CO2 concentrations over the pre-industrial (year 1750) level of 280 parts per million (ppm). At the current rate of increase (about 2 ppm/yr), a doubling to 560 ppm is expected by mid-century.

Climate alarm depends on several gloomy assumptions — about how fast emissions will increase, how fast atmospheric concentrations will rise, how much global temperatures will rise, how warming will affect ice sheet dynamics and sea-level rise, how warming will affect weather patterns, how the latter will affect agriculture and other economic activities, and how all climate change impacts will affect public health and welfare. But the chief assumption is the range of projected warming from a doubling of CO2 concentrations — the sensitivity estimate.

When the reseachers at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo (CICERO) applied their computer “model and statistics to analyse temperature readings from the air and ocean for the period ending in 2000, they found that climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration will most likely be 3.7°C, which is somewhat higher than the IPCC prognosis.” However, ”when they entered temperatures and other data from the decade 2000-2010 into the model, climate sensitivity was greatly reduced to a ‘mere’ 1.9°C.”

Referring to the IPCC AR4 warming forecasts, project manager Terje Berntsen, a geoscience professor at the University of Oslo, commented: “The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.”

No single study can make a dent on the self-anointed “scientific consensus.” But the Norwegian study is one among several recent studies that call into question the IPCC sensitivity assumptions. Cato Institute climatologist Patrick Michaels recently summarized a partial list of such studies in Forbes magazine:

Richard Lindzen gives a range of 0.6 to 1.0 C (Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 2011); Andreas Schmittner, 1.4 to 2.8 C (Science, 2011); James Annan, using two techniques, 1.2 to 3.6 C and 1.3 to 4.2 C (Climatic Change, 2011); J.H. van Hateren, 1.5 to 2.5 C (Climate Dynamics, 2012); Michael Ring, 1.5 to 2.0 C (Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2012); and Julia Hargreaves, including cooling from dust, 0.2 to 4.0 C and 0.8 to 3.6 C (Geophysical Research Letters, 2012). Each of these has lower and higher limits below those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In Addendum: Climate Change Impacts in the United States (pp. 26-28), Michaels and his colleague Chip Knappenberger discuss those studies in greater detail and also illustrate with two graphs how the IPCC AR4 warming projections should be adjusted in light of more recent climate sensitivity research. Note that the ‘long, fat tail’ of high-end warming projections in AR4 is absent from projections based on more recent science.

TOP: A collection of probability estimates of the climate sensitivity as presented in the IPCC AR4.  The horizontal bars represent the 5 to 95 percent ranges, and the dots are the median estimate. BOTTOM: A collection of post-IPCC AR4 probability estimates of the climate sensitivity showing a lower mean and more constrained estimates of the uncertainty. The arrows below the graphic indicate the 5 to 95 percent confidence bounds for each estimate along with the mean (vertical line) where available.

Michaels comments: “People are beginning, cautiously, to dial back 21st century warming because there has been none. Because dreaded sea-level rise is also proportional, those estimates are going to have to come down, too.”

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Update (Jan. 29, 2013). I noticed yesterday (but neglected to mention) that there is no link to the Bernsten team’s sensitivity study in the Research Council of Norway’s press release. Now I know why. The ever-vigilant Anthony Watts reports that the study has not been peer reviewed. The press release should have mentioned this; it didn’t. Indeed, it is shoddy to issue press releases about studies that have not passed peer review and have not been accepted for publication by a reputable journal. Bloggers too should abstain from commenting on studies they have not read with their own eyes. I have always followed that rule — until yesterday. Apologies. Never again.

As discussed in an earlier post, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) took to the Senate floor in December last year to lash out at climate ‘deniers.’ Among other allegations, Whitehouse said “deniers tend to ignore facts they can’t explain away.” He cites “the increasing acidification of the oceans,” which ”is simple to measure and undeniably, chemically linked to carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. So we hear nothing about ocean acidification from the deniers,” he claims. Not so, I explained.

Prominent skeptics Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger of the Cato Institute discussed the subject on their old blog, World Climate Report. Another leading skeptical Web site, CO2Science.Org, maintains an ocean acidification database, and the researchers – Drs. Craig, Sherwood, and Keith Idso – review another scientific paper on acidification just about every week. My earlier post concluded: “They don’t share Sen. Whitehouse’s alarm about ocean acidification, but they do not ignore it. The Senator should check his facts before casting aspersions.”

It’s a familiar pattern. Al Gore would have us believe that if we acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic global warming, then we must also believe in his ”planetary emergency” and embrace his policy agenda as a moral imperative. Similarly, the Gorethodox would have us believe that if CO2 emissions make sea water slightly more acidic (actually, slightly less basic), then corals and other calcifying organisms are headed for disaster and, again, we have a moral imperative to stop mountaintop coal mining, block the Keystone XL pipeline, etc.

Here I’d like to reproduce in full the Idsos’ latest review of an ocean acidification study, because it clearly demonstrates the difference between facts and alarmist interpretations of facts.

Growth, Calcification and Mortality of Juvenile Mussels Exposed to Ocean Acidification
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Reference
Range, P., Pilo, D., Ben-Hamadou, R., Chicharo,M.A., Matias, D., Joaquim, S., Oliveira, A.P. and Chicharo, L. 2012. Seawater acidification by CO2 in a coastal lagoon environment: Effects on life history traits of juvenile mussels Mytilus galloprovincialis. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 424-425: 89-98.

Background
Ocean acidification is considered by climate alarmists to be detrimental to nearly all sea creatures; and the early life-stages of these organisms are generally thought to be the most sensitive stages to this environmental change.

What was done
In a study designed to explore these assumptions, the authors tested the effects of seawater acidification by CO2 addition, leading to reductions of 0.3 and 0.6 pH units, on six-month-old juvenile mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis), which they obtained from a mussel raft on the Ria de Ares-Betanzos of Northwest Spain, focusing their attention on growth, calcification and mortality.

What was learned
The eight researchers, all from Portugal, report that the growth of the mussels, measured as relative increases in shell size and body weight during the 84 days of the experiment, “did not differ among treatments.” In fact, they say that a tendency for faster shell growth under elevated CO2 was apparent, “at least during the first 60 days of exposure.” In the case of calcification, however, they indicate that this process was reduced, but by only up to 9%. Yet even here they state that “given that growth was unaffected, the mussels clearly maintained the ability to lay down CaCO3, which suggests post-deposition dissolution as the main cause for the observed loss of shell mass.” Last of all, with respect to mortality, Range et al. write that “mortality of the juvenile mussels during the 84 days was small (less than 10%) and was unaffected by the experimental treatments.”

What it means
In summing up the implications of their findings, the Portuguese scientists say that they further support the fact that “there is no evidence of CO2-related mortalities of juvenile or adult bivalves in natural habitats, even under conditions that far exceed the worst-case scenarios for future ocean acidification (Tunnicliffe et al., 2009).”

Reference
Tunnicliffe, V., Davies, K.T.A., Butterfield, D.A., Embley, R.W., Rose, J.M., and Chadwick Jr., W.W. 2009. Survival of mussels in extremely acidic waters on a submarine volcano. Nature Geoscience 2: 344-348.

Reviewed 23 January 2013

Cato Institute scholars Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger have produced a layman-friendly yet thoroughly referenced draft report summarizing “the important science that is missing from Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States,” a U.S. Government document underpinning the EPA’s December 2009 endangerment rule, the foundation of all of the agency’s greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations.

Pat and Chip’s draft report, titled Addendum: Climate Change Impacts in the United States, is a sober antidote to the climate fear-mongering patronized by the Obama administration, mainstream media, the U.N., corporate rent seekers, and the green movement. Among the best features are the numerous graphics, some of which I will post here.

Taking these in no particular order, let’s begin with the scariest part of Al Gore’s “planetary emergency”: sea-level rise. Is the rate of sea-level rise dangerously accelerating? No. Over the 20th century, there was considerable decadal variation in the rate of sea-level rise but no long-term trend.

Decadal rate of sea level rise from satellites (red curve) appended to the decadal rate of global sea level rise as determined from a nine-station tide gauge network for the period 1904–2003 (blue curve) and from a 177-station tide gauge network for the period 1948–2002 (magenta). Adapted from Holgate, S.J., 2007: On the decadal rate of sea level change during the 20th century. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, doi:10.1029/2006 GL028492

The UN IPCC Fouth Assessment Report (2007) famously concluded that “most of the observed increase in global average temperature since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” However, recent studies attribute components of the observed warming to other factors. Adding up those contributions, Pat and Chip calculate that greenhouse gas concentrations account for less than half of the observed warming since 1950.

“Observed” global average temperature anomalies from 1950–2010 (red) and “adjusted” global temperature anomalies after accounting for non-greenhouse gas influences from a cold bias in sea surface temperatures, a warm bias in land temperatures, increases in stratospheric water vapor, and revised estimates of the warming effect from black carbon aerosols (blue). The trend through the adjusted temperature anomalies is less than half the trend in the original “observed” data series. [Sources provided in footnotes 67-73 on p. 34.] 

Climate models typically overestimate actual warming, indicating that they overestimate climate sensitivity (the amount of warming resulting from a given increase in GHG concentrations).

During the 15 year period from 1997-2011, the observed rate of global warming as derived from the five major compilations of global average surface temperatures (GISS (red), NOAA (green), Hadley Center (dark blue), MSU satellite—University of Alabama version (yellow) and MSU satellite (Remote Sensing Systems version (light blue) falls out in the left-hand tail of the distribution of model projected trends of the same length (grey bars).

Is the recent Midwest drought evidence that our fuelish ways are destabilizing the climate system? No. There is no long-term trend in U.S. soil moisture such as might be correlated with the increase in atmospheric GHG concentrations.

The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) shows no trend in the area of the nation experiencing drought or excessive wetness over the period of record that begins in 1895.

In fact, throughout the U.S., soil moisture in the 20th century increased in more areas than it declined.

Source: Andreadis, K.M., and D.P. Lettenmaier, 2006: Trends in 20th century drought over the continental United States. Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L10403, doi:10.1029/2006GL025711

Okay, but as the world warms (and as urban heat islands expand), there are going to be more heat waves, and more people will die, right? Yes and no. “Mortality from heat waves declines as heat wave frequency increases, and deaths from extreme cold decline dramatically as cold air preferentially warms.” Cities with the most frequent hot weather, such as Phoenix, AZ and Tampa, FL, have virtually no heat-related mortality.

 Average heat-related mortality in U.S. urban areas has declined nationwide; subsequent research shows this trend continues into the 21st century. [Sources: Davis RE, et al., 2003. Changing Heat-Related Mortality in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives 111, 1712–18. Kalkstein, L.S., et al., 2011. An evaluation of the progress in reducing heat-related human mortality in major U.S. cities. Natural Hazards 56, 113-129.]

Is global warming spinning up ever more powerful tropical cyclones? In the Atlantic Basin, there has been no long-term trend in the accumulated cyclone energy (ACE) index (which combines the duration and intensity of each storm into a seasonal total).

Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE) index for the Atlantic Basin from 1851 through 2010. There is obviously no relationship to long-term temperature rise or GHG concentrations. Data available at http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/E11.html.

Nor has there been a long-term increase in ACE globally since 1970.

Global hurricane activity as measured by the ACE index has been in general decline since the early 1990s and as of 2011 was near its 40-year low. Source: Maue, R.N., 2011: Recent historically low global tropical cyclone activity. Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L14803, doi:10.1029/2011GL047711

Is global warming altering wind patterns such that more hurricanes are striking the U.S.? There has been no long-term trend in the number of hurricanes and major (category 3-5) hurricanes making landfall in the U.S.

U.S. landfalling decadal hurricane counts reached their maximum in the 1940s. Source: Blake, E.S., C.W. Landsea, and E.J. Gibney, 2011: The deadliest, costliest, and most intense United States tropical cyclones from 1851 to 2010 (and other frequently requested hurricane facts). NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC-6, National Weather Service, National Hurricane Center, Miami, FL, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/nws-nhc-6.pdf

Okay, but apart from hurricanes, has the area of the U.S. experiencing extreme weather expanded as GHG concentrations have increased? The National Climate Data Center’s Climate Extremes Index (CEI) plots the ”fraction of the area of the United States experiencing extremes in monthly mean surface temperature, daily precipitation, and drought.” The CEI has increased since 1970 but the current weather regime “clearly resembles that of the early 20th century, long before major greenhouse gas emissions.”

Climate extreme index, not counting tropical storms and hurricanes, 1920-2010. Source: Gleason, K.L., et al., 2008: A revised U.S. Climate Extremes Index. Journal of Climate, 21, 2124-2137.

But surely, tornadoes are more frequent now than ever, and what else can explain this except the increase in GHG concentrations? Actually, it’s the ability to detect small tornadoes that has increased. If we consider just the large tornadoes (F3-F5) that have been detectable for decades, there is no trend.

Number of strong U.S. tornadoes, 1950–2011. Source: NCDC, U.S. Tornado Climatology, 7 March 2012, at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html, visited 11 May 2012.

But tornadoes are killing more people, right? Nope.

U.S. tornado death rate, 1900–2011. Sources: Updated from Goklany (2009a), using USBC (2011); NWS, Hazard Statistics at http://www.weather.gov/os/hazstats.shtml, accessed May 11, 2012; NWS, Storm Prediction Center, Annual U.S. Killer Tornado Statistics, at http://www.spc.noaa.gov/climo/torn/fataltorn.html, accessed May 11, 2012.

The same holds for mortality rates and extreme weather generally:

For the U.S., the cumulative average annual deaths from extreme weather events declined by 6% from 1979–1992 to 1993–2006 (despite a 17% increase in population), while all-cause deaths increased by 14%. [Source: Goklany, I.M. 2009. Deaths and Death Rates from Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 14, 102-09]

Hurricane damages keep going up and up, but that’s due to the ongoing rise in population and development in coastal areas. When hurricane damage is adjusted for changes in population, wealth, and inflation, there is no long-term trend.

U.S. tropical cyclone damage adjusted for inflation, population growth and wealth, 1900-2012 [Note - I am using a more updated graph than the one appearing in Addendum. Source: Pielke et al. 2008. Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900-2005, Natural Hazards Review, DOI: 10.1061/1527-6988, 9:1(29), updated 12/31/2012].

Okay, but warmer temperatures mean more photo-chemical smog and worse air pollution, right? Only if air pollutant emissions stay the same, but emissions have declined on average by 67% since 1980. Further declines are projected as auto fleets and capital stock are replaced by newer, cleaner models.

Despite an increasing population, energy consumption, and economic productivity, U.S. pollution emissions declined by 67% since 1980. [Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Air Trends, http://epa.gov/airtrends/index.html]

Whatever risks climate change may pose to U.S. agriculture in the future, warming historically has not been associated with reductions in crop yield.

U.S. Cotton, corn and wheat yields, 1866–2010 [Source: National Agricultural Statistics Service, QuickStats 1.0 (2010), available at http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics by_Subject/index.php?sector=CROPS, downloaded December 26, 2010]

Remember the U.N. Environment Program’s (UNEP) November 2005 prediction that there would be as many as 50 million climate refugees by 2010? Not only did those displaced populations fail to materialize, some of the areas UNEP supposed would be hardest hit by climate change impacts experienced rapid population increases. Something similar is going on right here in the USA. Decade by decade, millions of Americans vote with their feet to live in warmer climates.

U.S census data show that the largest percent increases in population are in the relatively dry and hot Pacific Southwest, the moist and hot southeast Texas, and the Florida peninsula.

But ‘everybody knows’ that global warming is the worst threat facing humanity. Okay then explain this: Why do U.S. (and global) population, per capita income, and life expectancy keep rising along with carbon dioxide emissions?

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, population, GDP per capita (affluence) and life expectancy at birth, 1900-2009. [Source: Goklany, I.M. 2009. Have increases in population, affluence and technology worsened human and environmental well-being? The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development 1(3), updated using the Statistical Abstract of the United States 2011, and National Vital Statistics Report 59 (4): 1; CDIAC (2010); GGDC (2010)]

Well, that should be enough to whet your appetite to read Addendum. I’ll conclude this post by reproducing the draft report’s ”key findings.”

Key Findings:

1. Climate change is unequivocal, and human activity plays some part in it. There are two periods of warming in the 20th century that are statistically indistinguishable in magnitude. The first had little if any relation to changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, while the second has characteristics that are consistent in part with a changed greenhouse effect. (p. 17)
2. Climate change has occurred and will occur in the United States. U.S. temperature and precipitation have changed significantly over some states since the modern record began in 1895. Some changes, such as the amelioration of severe winter cold in the northern Great Plains, are highly consistent with a changed greenhouse effect. (pp. 38–56, 187–92)
3. Impacts of observed climate change have little national significance. There is no significant long-term change in U.S. economic output that can be attributed to climate change. The slow nature of climate progression results in de facto adaptation, as can be seen with sea level changes on the East Coast. (pp. 48–49, 79–81, 155–58, 173–74)
4. Climate change will affect water resources. Long-term paleoclimatic studies show that severe and extensive droughts have occurred repeatedly throughout the Great Plains and the West. These will occur in the future, with or without human-induced climate change. Infrastructure planners would be well-advised to take them into account. (pp. 57–71)
5. Crop and livestock production will adapt to climate change. There is a large body of evidence that demonstrates substantial untapped adaptability of U.S. agriculture to climate change, including crop-switching that can change the species used for livestock feed. In addition, carbon dioxide itself is likely increasing crop yields and will continue to do so in increasing increments in the future. (pp. 102–18)
6. Sea level rise caused by global warming is easily adapted to. Much of the densely populated East Coast has experienced sea level rises in the 20th century that are more than twice those caused by global warming, with obvious adaptation. The mean projections from the United Nations will likely be associated with similar adaptation. (pp. 173–74)
7. Life expectancy and wealth are likely to continue to increase. There is little relationship between climate and life expectancy and wealth. Even under the most dire climate scenarios, people will be much wealthier and healthier in the year 2100 than they are today. (pp. 139–45, 158–61)
8. Climate change is a minor overlay on U.S. society. People voluntarily expose themselves to climate changes throughout their lives that are much larger and more sudden than those expected from greenhouse gases. The migration of U.S. population from the cold North and East to the much warmer South and West is an example. Global markets exist to allocate resources that fluctuate with the weather and climate. (pp. 154–69)
9. Species and ecosystems will change with or without climate change. There is little doubt that some ecosystems, such as the desert West, have been changing with climate, while others, such as cold marine fisheries, move with little obvious relationship to climate. (pp. 119–38, 208)
10. Policies enacted by the developed world will have little effect on global temperature. Even if every nation that has obligations under the Kyoto Protocol agreed to reduce emissions over 80 percent, there would be little or no detectable effect on climate in the policy-relevant timeframe, because emissions from these countries will be dwarfed in coming decades by the total emissions from China, India, and the developing world. (pp. 28, 211)

The wind energy production tax credit (PTC) expires at the stroke of midnight, Dec. 31, unless Congress votes to renew the tax break. A one-year extension would add an estimated $12.1 billion to deficit spending over 10 years. A six-year extension, advocated by the wind industry, could add $50 billion.

The fiscal cliff looms and the national debt already exceeds GDP, but if Congress cared more about the general interest of taxpayers than about the special interests of campaign contributors, the nation would not be sliding towards insolvency.

Whether Congress should renew the PTC or let it expire is the topic of this week’s National Journal Energy Experts Blog. Twenty wonks weigh in, including your humble servant. I heartily recommend the contributions by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R.-Tenn.), Craig Rucker, Phil Kerpin, Benjamin Zycher, Thomas Pyle, James Valvo, and David Banks.

My contribution addresses the environmental side of the debate, in particular the claim that recent extreme weather events demonstrate “just how badly our nation needs to take advantage of our vast wind energy potential,” as one contributor put it.

Below is a lightly edited version of my comment.

* * *

Of all the lame arguments used to sell Americans on the proposition that wind power, an industry propped up by Soviet-style production quota in 29 states and numerous other policy privileges, deserves another renewal of the 20-year-old production tax credit (PTC), the lamest is the claim that the PTC helps protect us from extreme weather.

PTC advocates talk as if Hurricane Sandy and the Midwest drought were obvious consequences of anthropogenic global warming, and that subsidizing wind energy is a cost-effective way to mitigate climate change.

They are wrong on both counts.

Neither economic analyses nor meteorological investigations validate the asserted link between recent extreme weather events and global warming. When weather-related damages are adjusted (“normalized”) to account for changes in population, per capita income, and the consumer price index, there is no long-term trend such as might indicate an increase in the frequency or severity of extreme weather related to global climate change.

A 2012 study in the journal Climate Change  examined 370 years of tropical cyclone data from the Lesser Antilles, the eastern Caribbean island chain bisecting the main development region for landfalling U.S. hurricanes. The study found no long-term trend in either the power or frequency of tropical cyclones from 1638 to 2009. It did however find a 50- to 70-year wave pattern associated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a mode of natural climate variability.

A recent study in the Journal of Climate similarly found no long-term trend in the strength or frequency of landfalling hurricanes in the world’s five main hurricane basins. The data extend back to 1944 for the North Atlantic, to 1950 for the northeastern Pacific, and to 1970 for the western North Pacific, northern Indian Ocean, and Southern Hemisphere. Among other inconvenient findings: “The U.S. is currently in the midst of the longest streak ever recorded without an intense [category 3-5] hurricane landfall.”

Sandy was not even a category 1 hurricane by the time it made landfall. New York has been hit with more powerful storms at least as far back as the 17^th century. For example, the New England Hurricane of 1938 was a category 3 that killed 600 people. Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in 1938 were about 310 parts per million (ppm), well below the level (350 ppm) advocated by NASA scientist James Hansen, activist Bill McKibben, and Al Gore as the upper limit consistent with climate stability.

What made Sandy so destructive was the hurricane’s merging with a winter frontal storm to produce what MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel calls a “hybrid” storm. The usual suspects, of course, were quick to suggest that any such ‘freak of nature’ must be man-made. That is speculation, not science. In Emanuel’s words:  “We don’t have very good theoretical or modeling guidance on how hybrid storms might be expected to change with climate. So this is a fancy way of saying my profession doesn’t know how hybrid storms will respond to climate [change]. I feel strongly about that. I think that anyone who says we do know that is not giving you a straight answer. We don’t know.”

As for the Midwest drought, if it were a symptom of global climate change, then there should be a long-term positive trend in the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI). Instead, as Cato Institute scholars Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger point out, the PDSI from 1895 through 2011 is slightly negative, i.e., the trend is towards a somewhat wetter climate.

But here’s the kicker. Even if one assumes fossil fuel emissions revved up Sandy and the Midwest drought, extending the PTC for another year – or even another six, as advocated by the American Wind Energy Association – would provide no protection from climate-related risk.

Using IPCC climate sensitivity assumptions, Knappenberger calculates that even if the U.S. eliminated all CO2 emissions tomorrow, the impact on global temperatures would be a reduction ”of approximately 0.08°C by the year 2050 and 0.17°C by the year 2100 — amounts that are, for all intents and purposes, negligible.”

The U.S. will continue to emit billions of tons of CO2 annually for decades whether Congress extends the PTC or not. Hence even under IPCC climate sensitivity assumptions, the PTC is climatologically irrelevant and can provide no meaningful protection from extreme weather events.

Extending the PTC for one year could increase the national debt by $12.1 billion. A six-year extension could add more than $50 billion to the debt. As global warming policy, the PTC is all taxpayer pain for no climate gain.

In a fiery speech yesterday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) ”calls out” “climate deniers.” In the first half of the speech he goes ad hominem, attacking opponents as “front groups” who take payola from “polluters” to “confuse” the public by selling “doubt” as their product.

First a bit of free advice for the good Senator:

Your team has been playing nasty from day one. It didn’t get you cap-and-trade, it didn’t get you Senate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, and it’s not going to get you a carbon tax.  

Vilification doesn’t work because biomass, wind turbines, and solar panels are not up to the challenge of powering a modern economy, and most Americans are too practical to believe otherwise.

So by all means, keep talking trash about your opponents. The shriller your rhetoric, the more skeptical the public will become about your bona fides as an honest broker of “the science.”

Okay, let’s examine Sen. Whitehouse’s argument. He accuses skeptics of peddling “straw man arguments,” such as that “the earth’s climate always changes; it’s been warmer in the past.” Well, it does, and it has! Many studies indicate the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was warmer than the current warm period (CWP). A study published in July in Nature Climate Change concludes the Roman Warm Period (RWP) was warmer than both the MWP and CWP. The Northern Hemisphere was substantially warmer than the present for thousands of years during the Holocene Climate Optimum (~5,000-9,000 years ago). Arctic summer air temperatures were 4-5°C above present temperatures for millennia during the previous interglacial period.

None of this is evidence man-made global warming is not occurring, but Sen. Whitehouse sets up his own straw man by making that the main issue in dispute. What the paleoclimate information does indicate is that the warmth of the past 50 years is not outside the range of natural variability and is no cause for alarm. The greater-than-present warmth of the Holocene Optimum, RWP, and MWP contributed to improvements in human health and welfare. 

Sen. Whitehouse says skeptics also knock down a straw man when they deny extreme weather events prove the reality of climate change. “No credible source is arguing that extreme weather events are proof of climate change,” he states. Again, it’s Sen. Whitehouse who whacks a man of straw. The problem for skeptics is not that people like Al Gore or the editors of Bloomberg cite Hurricanes Katrina or Sandy as “proof” of global warming, it’s that they blame global warming (hence “polluters”) for Katrina and Sandy. They insinuate or even assert that were it not for climate change, such events would not occur or would be much less deadly. As the Senator does when he says climate change ”loads the dice” in favor of events like Sandy and is “associated with” such events.

I freely grant that heat waves will become more frequent and severe in a warmer world (just as cold spells will become less frequent and milder). However, there is no persuasive evidence global warming caused or contributed significantly to the European heat wave of 2003, the Russian heat wave of 2010, the Texas drought of 2011, or the U.S. midwest drought of 2012. A slew of scientific papers finds no long-term trend in Atlantic hurricane behavior, including a recent study based on 370 years of tropical cyclone data. Similarly, a U.S. Geological Survey study finds no correlation between flood magnitudes and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in any region of the continental U.S. over the past 85 years.

More importantly, despite long-term increases in both CO2 concentrations and global temperatures since the 1920s, global deaths and death rates related to extreme weather declined by 93% and 98% respectively. The 93% reduction in annual weather-related deaths is particularly noteworthy because global population increased more than 300% since the 1920s.

Although weather-related damages are much bigger today, that is because there’s tons more stuff and lots more people in harm’s way. For example, more people live in just two Florida counties, Dade and Broward, than lived in all 109 coastal counties stretching from Texas to Virginia in the 1930s. When weather-related damages are adjusted (“normalized”) to account for changes in population, wealth, and inflation, there is no long-term trend. So although a “greenhouse signal” may some day emerge from weather-related mortality and economic loss data, at this point global warming’s influence, if any, is undetectable.

Sen. Whitehouse dismisses as a “gimmick” skeptics’ observation that there has been “no warming trend in the last ten years” (actually, the last 16 years).  He contends that the 20 warmest years in the instrumental record have occurred since 1981 ”with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years.” That may be correct, but it is beside the point. A decade and a half of no net warming continues the plodding 0.14°C per decade warming trend of the past 33 years. These data call into question the climate sensitivity assumptions underpinning the big scary warming projections popularized by NASA scientist James Hansen, the UN IPCC, and the UK Government’s Stern Review report.

Sen. Whitehouse says ”deniers tend to ignore facts they can’t explain away.” He continues: “For example, the increasing acidification of the oceans is simple to measure and undeniably, chemically linked to carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. So we hear nothing about ocean acidification from the deniers.” Not so. CO2Science.Org, a leading skeptical Web site, has an extensive (and growing) ocean acidification database. Almost every week the CO2Science folks review another study on the subject. Cato Institute scholars Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger also addressed the issue on their old Web site, World Climate Report. They don’t share Sen. Whitehouse’s alarm about ocean acidification, but they do not ignore it. The Senator should check his facts before casting aspersions.

Sen. Whitehouse quotes NOAA stating that the rate of global sea level rise in the last decade “was nearly double” the 20th century rate. That is debatable. Colorado State University researchers find no warming-related acceleration in sea-level rise in recent decades.

Here’s the big picture. Scary projections of rapid sea-level rise assume rapid increases in ice loss from Greenland. In a study just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists used satellite gravity data to measure changes in Greenland’s ice mass balance from April 2002 to August 2011. The researchers estimate Greenland is losing almost 200 gigatons of ice per year. It takes 300 gigatons of water to raise sea levels by 1 millimeter, so Greenland is currently contributing about 0.66 mm of sea-level rise per year. At that rate, Greenland will contribute 6.6 centimeters of sea level rise over the 21st century, or less than 3 inches. Apocalypse not.

Sen. Whitehouse concludes by castigating Republicans for inveighing against unchecked entitlement spending and the fiscal burdens it imposes on “our children and grandchildren” while turning a blind eye to the perils climate change inflicts on future generations. But such behavior is not contradictory if the risk of fiscal chaos is both (a) more real and imminent than Al Gore’s “planetary emergency” and (b) more fixable within the policy-relevant future.

Here are two facts Sen. Whitehouse should contemplate. First, even if the U.S. were to stop emitting all CO2 tomorrow, the impact on global temperatures would be a reduction of “approximately 0.08°C by the year 2050 and 0.17°C by the year 2100 — amounts that are, for all intents and purposes, negligible,” notes Chip Knappenberger, whose calculations are based on IPCC climate sensitivity assumptions. Similarly, a study in Nature Climate Change concludes that aggressive climate change ”mitigation measures, even an abrupt switch to zero emissions, have practically no effect on sea level over the coming 50 years and only a moderate effect on sea level by 2100.”

Whether under a carbon tax, cap-and-trade, or EPA regulation, the U.S. would keep emitting billions of tons of CO2 annually for a long time. So whatever climate policies Sen. Whitehouse thinks Republicans should support would have no discernible impact on climate change risk. The costs of such policies would vastly exceed the benefits. Rejecting policies that are all pain for no gain is exactly what the custodians of America’s economic future are supposed to do.

The American Lung Association (ALA) is hawking the results of an opinion poll that supposedly shows “American voters support the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) setting stronger fine particle (soot) standards to protect public health.” ALA spokesperson Peter Iwanowicz says the poll ”affirms that the public is sick of soot and wants EPA to set more protective standards.” Missy Egelsky of pollster Greenberg Quinlan Rosner says the survey “clearly indicates that Americans strongly back the EPA taking action now to limit the amount of soot released by oil refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities” (Greenwire, Nov. 29, 2012). This is all spin.

Most Americans probably have opinions about President Obama’s overall record and many have opinions about the Stimulus, Obamacare, the Keystone XL Pipeline, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the auto industry bailout, and whether Congress should cut spending and/or raise taxes. But how many even know the EPA is revising the national ambient air quality standard (NAAQS) for fine particles (PM2.5)?

So the first thing I notice in the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll is the absence of an appropriate first question: Please name or describe any major air quality rules the U.S. EPA is expected to complete in the near future? Starting with that question would likely show most people are unaware of the pending NAAQS revision. From which it follows they don’t have an opinion about it (though of course anyone can have an off-the-cuff reaction to anything).

The survey asks a bunch of demographic questions about respondents’ party affiliation, age, gender, and the like, but only two substantive questions. The first is as follows:

As you may know, the EPA is proposing to update air pollution standards by placing stricter limits on the amount of fine particles, also called “soot,” that power plants, oil refineries and other industrial facilities can release. Do you favor or oppose the EPA setting stricter limits on fine particles, also called “soot?”

Of total respondents, 63% were in favor, 30% were opposed. So according to the ALA, the public supports tougher standards by 2 to 1. But since most respondents have probably never heard or thought about the issue until that moment, the results simply confirm what everybody already knows: Most people think air pollution is a bad thing and would prefer to have less of it.

Since what the question elicits from most respondents is their general attitude about air pollution, it is remarkable that 30% answered in the negative. Note too that most of what the public hears about air pollution comes from organizations like the EPA and the ALA, which relentlessly exaggerate  air pollution levels and the associated health risks.

The second substantive question in the poll asks respondents to state their opinion after hearing two statements “some people on both sides of the issue might make”:

(Some/other) people say: Studies indicate that soot is one of the most dangerous and deadly forms of pollution, especially for children, and can cause heart and lung damage and even lead to cancer or premature death. Independent scientists say that setting stronger soot standards will prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths and over 1 million asthma attacks every year, saving American families billions in lower health care costs. The EPA is taking a common sense approach, setting standards that will be easy for polluters to comply with at a minimal cost.

(Some/other) people say: Given the weak economy, now is the worst time for the EPA to enact costly regulations that kill jobs and increase energy costs. These new rules are unrealistic and unattainable. They will lead to higher energy costs for American families, would cost businesses tens of millions of dollars, and would essentially close areas of the country to new or expanded manufacturing businesses, resulting in American jobs being shipped overseas. President Obama shouldn’t be creating new barriers to job creation or increasing energy costs when our country is trying to recover from a recession.

Now that you’ve heard more about this issue let me ask you again, do you favor or oppose the EPA setting stricter limits on fine particles, also called “soot?”

Permit me to translate: Studies indicate that “soot” kills tens of thousands of people and harms children the most. Others say that preventing widespread death, heart attacks, cancer, and asthma will cost a lot of money. Which do you think is more important, saving lives or saving money?

Note also the first statement claims the revised NAAQS “will be easy for polluters to comply with at a minimal cost,” thereby rebutting the central thesis of the second statement in advance. In contrast, the second statement does not dispute the first statement’s main thesis that ”soot is one of the most deadly forms of pollution.” The poll thus give the impression that even the EPA’s critics accept the agency’s interpretation of the relevant science.

Given this loaded and asymmetric framing of the issue, the remarkable thing is that after hearing the pro and con statements, the percentage of respondents favoring the EPA’s proposal actually decreased, falling from 63% to 56%.

One can only wonder what the breakdown would have been had the con statement gone something like this:

(Some/other) people say: The EPA cherry picked among an extensive literature to support its health assessment, ignoring studies that find no correlation between lower soot levels and improved health. The health benefits of the EPA’s proposal are biologically implausible, because fine particles from coal power plants are mostly ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate, and neither is harmful to humans at levels even 10 times higher than the air Americans breathe. This economy-chilling rule will likely do more harm than good to public health, because poverty and unemployment increase the risk of illness and death.

A quibble perhaps, but Ms. Egelsky of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner claims “Americans strongly back” the EPA’s proposal. She should read her own poll! Only 39% of respondents said they “strongly favor” the EPA setting a more stringent soot standard in response to the first substantive question, and only 33% said they “strongly favor” the EPA doing so after hearing the pro and con statements.

What we have here is another attempt to influence public opinion in the guise of reporting it. More voters are likely to support the ALA agenda if they believe (however mistakenly) that most of their neighbors ”strongly back” it too.

The ALA’s press release on the poll urges the public to send President Obama an email asking that he direct the EPA to set a more stringent standard “to protect the public from this dangerous pollutant.” By law, however, it is the EPA administrator’s “judgment” alone that is to determine the stringency of the standard. Legally, the President has no say in the determination. So the ALA email campaign is a call for political interference in an allegedly scientific process.

In reality, of course, political calculation and ideological agenda permeate EPA rulemakings. Nonetheless, at this late date, President Obama likely plays no part in shaping the EPA’s final rule, which is due to be released Dec. 14. Clearly, the point of the email campaign — and the poll — is to provide talking points Obama can use later this month to defend regulatory decisions his administration has already made. The ALA’s email campaign exploits the naivety of simple folk by pretending they can influence the EPA’s decision. But hey, if you’re going to hype air pollution risks and rig opinion polls to favor your agenda, then why not also mislead people about how the sausage is made?

The ALA presents itself as an honest broker of public health information. In reality, the ALA’s advocacy on behalf of the EPA is tainted by a massive conflict of interest. In the words of Junk Science blogger Steve Milloy, ”the American Lung Association is bought-and-paid-for by the EPA.” In the past 10 years, the ALA received $24,750,250 from the EPA, according to the agency’s records. The EPA uses our tax dollars to fund groups like the ALA who then demand that the EPA wield more power and get more of our tax dollars.

Maybe one of these days the media will pay attention to such facts when covering polls sponsored by green advocacy groups.

It’s also high time journalists started wondering why NAAQS revisions seldom (or never) lead to decreased stringency. At the EPA, new science always seems to find that air pollution is harmful at lower concentrations than the agency previously believed. That’s an odd result if each review is genuinely free of bias – kind of like flipping a balanced coin 10 times and always getting “heads.”

There is a pervasive problem with the entire Administrative State, yet I’ve never seen a journalist address it: Agencies are judges in their own cause. The EPA, for example, both develops, adopts, and enforces emission controls and standards and conducts the analyses authorizing or mandating such regulation. That obvious (though seldom acknowledged) conflict of interest inevitably biases agency analyses in favor of ever-increasing regulatory stringency.

Both the blogosphere and the mainstream media have been abuzz with commentary blaming global warming for Hurricane Sandy and the associated deaths and devastation. Bloomberg BusinessWeek epitomizes this brand of journalism. Its magazine cover proclaims the culpability of global warming as an obvious fact:

Part of the thinking here is simply that certain aspects of the storm (lowest barometric pressure for a winter cyclone in the Northeast) and its consequences (worst flooding of the New York City subway system) are “unprecedented,” so what more proof do we need that our fuelish ways have dangerously loaded the climate dice to produce ever more terrible extremes?

After all, argues Climate Progress blogger Brad Johnston, quoting hockey stick inventor Michael Mann, “climate change is present in every single meteorological event.” Here’s Mann’s explanation:

The fact remains that there is 4 percent more water vapor – and associated additional moist energy – available both to power individual storms and to produce intense rainfall from them. Climate change is present in every single meteorological event, in that these events are occurring within a baseline atmospheric environment that has shifted in favor of more intense weather events.

Well sure, climate is average weather over a period of time, so as climate changes, so does the weather. But that tautology tells us nothing about how much — or even how — global warming influences any particular event. Moreover, if “climate change is present in every single meteorological event,” then it is also present in ”good” weather (however defined) as well as “bad.”

Anthony Watts makes this criticism on his indispensable blog, noting that as carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. has declined.

The US Has Had 285 Hurricane Strikes Since 1850: ‘The U.S. has always been vulnerable to hurricanes. 86% of U.S. hurricane strikes occurred with CO2 below [NASA scientist James] Hansen’s safe level of 350 PPM.’

If there’s anything in this data at all, it looks like CO2 is preventing more US landfalling hurricanes.

Data Source: NOAA; Figure Source: Steve Goddard

Cato Institute climatologists Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger put the point this way:

Global warming has to affect “the weather” in the United States, or anywhere else. Big deal. Changing the radiative properties of the atmosphere — which is what increasing carbon dioxide does — must alter the character of weather events as well as the climate. But how much? In reality, the amount of weather related to natural variability dramatically exceeds what is “added on” by global warming. This is obvious from a look at the “Climate Extremes Index” from the National Climatic Data Center …

Source: National Climate Data Center (Note: The graph above differs slightly from the one presented in Pat and Chip’s column because it incorporates NCDC’s tropical cyclone indicator.)

Michaels and Knappenberger go on to observe:

While it is true that this index has risen from a low point around 1970, it is also clear that it merely returned to values observed in the early 20th century. Did greenhouse gases raise the extremes index in the early 20th century? Obviously not.

Hurricanes are certainly less common in New York than in Florida or Louisiana, but if Sandy’s invasion of the Big Apple is evidence of global warming, then global warming has menaced the Empire State for centuries, because hurricanes have hit New York since before the industrial revolution.

Wikipedia has a List of New York Hurricanes going back to the 17th century. The strongest was the New England Hurricane of 1938, a category 3 storm that killed upwards of 600 people.

As I read the Wiki list, the following number of hurricanes have affected New York: 6 before 1800; 23 from 1800 to 1899; 11 from 1900 to 1949; 15 from 1950 to 1974; 21 from 1975 to 1999; and 19 from 2000 to the present (including Sandy). Each storm in the Wiki list is footnoted, usually with a link to the source referenced.

Lest anyone see a greenhouse “fingerprint” in the larger number of hurricanes since 1975, 16 were “remants” of tropical storms. In contrast, only one “remnant” is identified for 1950-1974 and none is identified for 1900-1949. No doubt New York experienced many hurricane remnants that were not identified as such before the advent of weather satellites and hurricane hunter aircraft.

Okay, but what about Sandy’s record-breaking storm surge — is that evidence global warming added extra oomph to the storm’s destructive power?

Anthony Watts posts an illuminating commentary by David Middleton, who compares Sandy’s estimated maximum storm surge with other hurricane surges in southern New England based on Donnelly et al., 2001. Middleton writes:

Hurricane Sandy’s unprecedented storm surge was likely surpassed in the New England hurricanes of 1635 and 1638. From 1635 through 1954, New England was hit by at least five hurricanes producing greater than 3 m storm surges in New England. Analysis of sediment cores led to the conclusion “that at least seven hurricanes of intensity sufficient to produce storm surge capable of overtopping the barrier beach (>3 m) at Succotash Marsh have made landfall in southern New England in the past 700 yr.” All seven of those storms occurred prior to 1960.

The early 1600s were the depth of the Little Ice Age, the coldest century of the past two millennia and possibly the coldest century since the cooling event of 8,200 years ago.

Anthony also posts a commentary by Caleb Shaw, who argues that the 11.2-foot storm surge from the 1821 Norfolk-Long Island Hurricane would likely have surpassed Sandy’s 13.8-foot surge had the same non-meteorological factors been present:

The people of the time reported a tide 13 feet above the ordinary high tide, but the best studies put the peak tide at 11.2 feet. Sandy reached 13.88 feet. . . .Simple arithmetic suggests the 1821 storm’s high water was 2.68 feet lower than Sandy’s. However the interesting thing about the 1821 storm is that it came barreling through at dead low tide. Tides in New York vary roughly 6 feet between low and high tides.

Therefore, to be fair, it seems you should add six feet to the 1821 storm, if you want to compare that storm with Sandy’s surge at high tide. This would increase the 1821 high water to 17.2 feet.

On top of that, you have to factor in the influence of the full moon during Sandy. That adds an extra foot to the high tide. Add an extra foot to the 1821 score and you have 18.2 feet.

Sandy was a category 1 hurricane before making landfall in the Northeast, which means many landfalling hurricanes, including some previous storms striking New York, had much higher wind speeds. What made Sandy a “superstorm” was the hurricane’s merging with a strong winter storm. MIT climatologist Kerry Emanuel calls Sandy a “hybrid” storm:

Hurricanes and winter storms are powered by completely different energy sources. The hurricane is powered by the evaporation of sea water. Winter storms are powered by horizontal temperature contrasts in the atmosphere. So hybrid storms are able to tap into both energy sources. That’s why they can be so powerful.

NASA scientist Roy Spencer provides a similar explanation:

It is basically the “perfect storm” scenario of the chance timing of a tropical cyclone merging with an extra-tropical winter-type storm. Without Hurricane Sandy off the coast, the strong trough over the eastern U.S. (caused by cold Canadian air plunging southward) would have still led to a nor’easter type storm forming somewhere along the east coast of the U.S. But since Hurricane Sandy just happens to be in the right place at the right time to merge with that cyclone, we are getting a “superstorm”.

This merger of systems makes the whole cyclone larger in geographical extent than it normally would be. And this is what will make the surface pressures so low at the center of the storm.

The immense area of the storm is also what enabled the winds to pile up huge masses of water into the big waves that pummeled the East Coast.

Is there a causal connection between global warming and the formation of hybrid storms? Not enough research has been done on this phenomenon to say one way or the other, Emanuel contends:

We don’t have very good theoretical or modeling guidance on how hybrid storms might be expected to change with climate. So this is a fancy way of saying my profession doesn’t know how hybrid storms will respond to climate [change]. I feel strongly about that. I think that anyone who says we do know that is not giving you a straight answer. We don’t know. Which is not to say that they are not going to be influenced by climate, it’s really to say honestly we don’t know. We haven’t studied them enough. It’s not because we can’t know, it is just that we don’t know.

But surely, the magnitude of the damage wrought by Sandy is evidence something is amiss with the global climate system, right? Actually, no, argues hurricane expert Roger Pielke, Jr. in a Wall Street Journal column.

In studying hurricanes, we can make rough comparisons over time by adjusting past losses to account for inflation and the growth of coastal communities. If Sandy causes $20 billion in damage (in 2012 dollars), it would rank as the 17th most damaging hurricane or tropical storm (out of 242) to hit the U.S. since 1900 — a significant event, but not close to the top 10. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 tops the list (according to estimates by the catastrophe-insurance provider ICAT), as it would cause $180 billion in damage if it were to strike today. Hurricane Katrina ranks fourth at $85 billion.

To put things into even starker perspective, consider that from August 1954 through August 1955, the East Coast saw three different storms make landfall — Carol, Hazel and Diane — that in 2012 each would have caused about twice as much damage as Sandy.

With respect to hurricane damages, the chief and as yet only discernible difference between recent and earlier decades is that ”There are more people and more wealth in harm’s way.” So there is an ‘anthropogenic’ component, but not the sort about which warmists complain. “Partly this [increase in damages] is due to local land-use policies, partly to incentives such as government-subsidized insurance, but mostly to the simple fact that people like being on the coast and near rivers,” Pielke, Jr. explains.

The upshot for policymakers? Since “even under the assumptions of the IPCC changes to energy policies wouldn’t have a discernible impact on future disasters for the better part of a century or more,” the “only strategies that will help us effectively prepare for future disasters are those that have succeeded in the past: strategic land use, structural protection, and effective forecasts, warnings and evacuations. That is the real lesson of Sandy.”

 New York Times environment blogger Andrew Revkin comes to a similar conclusion:

You can have this endless debate about, “Was this storm our fault?”  But the thing I’ve been trying to write on Dot Earth the last few days is that the impacts of this storm are 100 percent our fault. In other words, we make decisions every day as human beings about where to live, what kind of building codes, what kinds of subsidies for coastal insurance, and that’s where there’s no debate about the anthropogenic influence. The fact that the tunnels filled showed that we in New York City, New York State and this country didn’t make it a high priority to gird ourselves against a superstorm.

Yes, argues Daveed Gartenstein-Ross in The Atlantic (Sep. 17, 2012). Gartenstein-Ross is the author of Bin Laden’s Legacy: Why We’re Still Losing the War on Terror. I haven’t read the book, but judging from the favorable reviews, Gartenstein-Ross has the ear of defense hawks of both parties. Does he offer sound advice on global warming?

In his Atlantic article, Gartenstein-Ross chides Republicans for taking a “decidely unrealistic tack” on climate change. “The available evidence overwhelmingly suggests that climate change is real; that extreme weather events are increasing; and that this dynamic will have an impact on American national security, if it hasn’t already,” he avers. He goes on to blame this summer’s drought on global warming, citing NASA scientist James Hansen’s claim that the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave, and the 2011 Texas-Oklahoma drought have “virtually no explanation other than climate change.” (For an alternative assessment, see these posts.) 

Since 2010, notes Gartenstein-Ross, the Department of Defense has classified climate change as a conflict accelerant — a factor exacerbating tensions within and between nations. Well, sure, what else is Team Obama at DOD going to say in an era of tight budgets when no rival superpower endangers our survival? The concept of an ever-deepening, civilization-imperilling climate crisis is an ideal mission-creep accelerant. 

Gartenstein-Ross concludes by urging Republicans to face “reality” and take action on climate change. However, he offers no advice as to what policies they should adopt. Does he favor cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, the EPA’s greenhouse gas regulatory cascade, ’all of the above’? Gartenstein-Ross doesn’t say. He ducks the issue of what economic sacrifices he thinks Republicans should demand of the American people. 

Below is a lightly edited version of a comment I posted yesterday at The Atlantic on Gartenstein-Ross’s article: 

Dear Mr. Gartenstein-Ross,

Some Republicans have taken an “unrealistic tack” on climate change — for example, denying that global warming is real or doubting whether carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. This, however, is an unfortunate consequence of the climate alarm movement’s rhetorical trickery. Al Gore and his allies pretend that once you accept the reality of global warming, then everything else they claim (e.g. sea levels could rise by 20 feet this century) or advocate (cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, Soviet-style production quota for wind turbines) follows inexorably, as night the day. Consequently, some GOP politicians and activists now believe they must deny or question a tautology (“greenhouse gases have a greenhouse effect”) in order to oppose Gore’s narrative of doom and agenda of energy rationing.

As a thoughtful analyst, you should see through this rhetorical trap. Yes, other things being equal, CO2 emissions warm the planet. That, however, does not begin to settle the core scientific issue of climate sensitivity (the amount of warming projected to occur from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations). It tells us nothing about impacts, such as how much Greenland and Antarctica will contribute to sea level rise by 2100 (BTW, a realistic projection is inches rather than feet or meters). It does not tell us whether the costs of “inaction” are greater or less than the costs of “action.”

James Hansen’s attribution of the ongoing drought to global warming, which you cite, is a testable hypothesis. Patrick Michaels examines how the U.S. Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) matches up over time both with the U.S. temperature record and that portion of the record attributable to global temperature trends. Turns out, there is zero correlation between global temperature trends and the PDSI, but a significant correlation between plain old natural climate variability and the PDSI.

One massive fact conveniently swept under the rug by the climate alarm movement is that since the 1920s — a fairly long period of overall warming — global deaths and death rates attributable to extreme weather have declined by 93% and 98%, respectively. The 93% decline in aggregate deaths is remarkable, given that global population has increased about four-fold since 1920. The most deadly form of extreme weather is drought, and since 1920, worldwide deaths and death rates attributable to drought have fallen by an astonishing 99.98% and 99.99%, respectively. 

As Indur Goklany, author of the study just cited explains, the increasing safety of humanity with respect to extreme weather came about not in spite of mankind’s utilization of carbon-based fuels but in large measure because of it. Fertilizers, plastics for packaging, mechanized agriculture, trade between food surplus and food deficit regions, emergency response systems, and humanitarian assistance — advances that have dramatically increased global food security — all presuppose fossil fuels and the wealth of economies powered by fossil fuels.

A just-published study by Jeff Keuter of the George C. Marshall Institute finds that “environmental factors rarely incite conflict between states or within states.” For example, Israel and her Arab neighbors have gone to war several times — but never over access to water. Keuter finds that “efforts to link climate change to the deterioration of U.S. national security rely on improbable scenarios, imprecise and speculative methods, and scant empirical support.”

You mention the hunger crisis of 2008. Ironically, one of the contributing factors was a global warming policy – the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which artificially raises the demand for and price of corn. As you note, soaring corn prices also pull up the price of wheat.

Which brings me to a final point. It is one-sided and, well, risky to assess the security risks of climate change without also assessing the security risks of climate change policies. For example, economic strength is the foundation of military power. A great power cannot have a second-rate economy. Affordable energy is vital to economic growth. Carbon mitigation schemes have a vast potential to chill job creation and growth because they are designed to make energy more costly. That is the main reason Congress and the public rejected cap-n-tax.

The worse the economy, the more painful the trade-offs between guns and butter. How to cut the deficit without gutting core military capabilities is a key issue White House and congressional budget negotiators are grappling with right now. The revival of North America as an energy producing province is one of the few economic bright spots today, a source of new tax revenues as well as new jobs. From a national security perspective, now is the worst possible time to ramp up the already considerable regulatory risks facing the coal, oil, and natural gas industries.

In a recent study published in Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), NASA scientist James Hansen and two colleagues find that whereas “extremely hot” summer weather ”practically did not exist” during 1951-1980, such weather affected between 4% and 13% of the Northern Hemisphere land area during 2006-2011. The researchers infer that human-caused global warming is “loading” the “climate dice” towards extreme heat anomalies. They conclude with a “high degree of confidence” that the 2003 European heat wave, the 2010 Russian heat wave, and the 2011 Texas-Oklahoma drought were a “consequence of global warming” and have (as Hansen put it in a recent op-ed) ”virtually no explanation other than climate change.”

In a recent post, I reviewed studies finding that the aforementioned anomalies were chiefly due to natural variability. In another post, I summarized an analysis by Patrick Michaels and Chip Knappenberger, who conclude that “the 2012 drought conditions, and every other [U.S.] drought that has come before, is the result of natural processes, not human greenhouse gas emissions.”

But what about the very hot weather afflicting much of the U.S. this summer? Greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising, heat spells are bound to become more frequent and severe as the world warms, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that July 2012 was the hottest July ever in the U.S. instrumental record. Isn’t this summer what greenhouse warming “looks like“? What else could it be?

University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) climatologist John Christy addressed these questions last week in a two-part column. In Part 1, Christy argues that U.S. daily mean temperature (TMean) data, on which NOAA based its report, ”do not represent the deep atmosphere where the enhanced greenhouse effect should be detected, so making claims about causes is unwise.” A better measure of the greenhouse effect is daily maximum temperature (TMax), and TMax records set in the 1930s remain unbroken. In Part 2, Christy argues that Hansen’s 10% estimate of the portion of land affected by extreme heat during 2006-2011 shrinks down to 2.9% when anomalies are measured against a longer, more representative climate baseline. 

NOAA’s claim that July 2012 was the hottest July ever is based on daily mean temperature (TMean) data. TMean is the average of daytime maximum temperature and nighttime minimum temperature (TMax + TMin/2). Whereas TMax “represents the temperature of a well-mixed lower tropospheric layer, especially in summer,” TMin “can warm over time due to an increase in turbulent mixing” near the surface. Land use changes such as urbanization, agriculture, and forestry tend to disrupt the natural formation of a shallow layer of cool nighttime air. There has been a lot of population growth and development in the U.S. since 1980, the last year of Hansen’s baseline period. Not coincidentally, most of the surface warming in the U.S. during the past three decades has been in TMin rather than TMax (see second graph below).

The point? TMin warming is not primarily due to the accumulation of heat in the deep atmosphere (i.e. the greenhouse effect). Consequently, averaging TMin with TMax produces a composite (TMean) that inflates the appearance of the greenhouse effect.

Christy’s colleague Roy Spencer produced a chart of TMax using the same weather stations as NOAA. Spencer found that July 2012 was very hot, but not as hot as the summers of 1936 and 1934. More importantly, far more all-time TMax records were set in the 1930s than in any recent decade.

In contrast, about as many TMin records were set in recent years as in the 1930s.

Christy comments:

There has been a relatively steady rise in high TMin records (i.e. hot nights) which does not concur with TMax, and is further evidence that TMax and TMin are not measuring the same thing. They really are apples and oranges. As indicated above, TMin is a poor proxy for atmospheric heat content, and it inflicts this problem on the popular TMean temperature record which is then a poor proxy for greenhouse warming too.

Although TMax is a better proxy than TMin for the greenhouse effect, only satellites can provide “direct and robust” measurements of the heat content of the global atmosphere. UAH satellite data do show that the Earth has been in a long-term warming trend (+ 0.14°C per decade since November 1978). However, the data also show that July 2012 was not the hottest July in the 34-year satellite record either for the continental U.S., the Northern Hemisphere, or the world.

Christy finds two main weaknesses in Hansen’s study. First, it assumes that changes in TMean accurately represent the effect of extra greenhouse gases. Second, it assumes that the distribution (bell curve) of weather anomalies during single 30-year period (1951-1980) represents natural climate variability over the past 10,000 years or so.

As discussed above, TMean “misrepresents the response of the climate system to extra greenhouse gases.” So Christy uses TMax data to estimate trends in hot weather anomalies. In addition, he calculated the spatial extent of North Hemisphere extreme heat anomalies during 2006-2011 using both Hansen’s baseline (1951-1980) and a somewhat longer baseline that includes the 1930s and 1940s (1931-1980). Christy’s results are much less dramatic than Hansen’s.

In the figure above, the top line (black-filled circles) shows the percentage of the Northern Hemisphere land area that the Hansen team calculated to have experienced anomalously high heat during 2006-2011. The next line (gray-filled circles) assumes the same base period (1951-1980) for gauging anomalies, but uses TMax from the quality-controlled Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) station data. Although the “correlation between the two is high,” the spatial coverage drops by more than half, ”from Hansen’s 6-year average of 12 percent to this analysis at 5 percent.”

The third line (open circles) gauges TMax anomalies in 2oo6-2011 against a 1931-1980 baseline. The result is that 2.9% of the Northern Hemisphere land area experienced extreme heat anomalies — about a quarter of the Hansen team’s results. “In other words,” says Christy, ”the results change quite a bit simply by widening the window back into a period with even less greenhouse forcing for an acceptable base-climate.”

The lowest line (open boxes) uses an 80-year baseline (1931-2010) to identify extreme hot weather anomalies during 2006-2011. In this case, only 1.3% of the land surface in 2006-2011 experienced anomalously high heat.

One might object that the 80-year baseline includes the most recent 30 years of greenhouse warming and, thus, masks the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the ‘natural’ climate. However, excluding the most recent 30 years, as Hansen does, is question-begging – it assumes what Hansen sets out to prove, namely, that the current climate is outside the range of natural variability. That assumption conflicts with studies finding that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer than present for several decades during the Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm Period and for thousands of years during Holocene Optimum. Christy asks:

What is an accurate expression of the statistics of the interglacial, non-greenhouse-enhanced climate? Or, what is the extent of anomalies that Mother Nature can achieve on her own for the “natural” climate system from one 30-year period to the next? I’ll bet the variations are much greater than depicted by 1951-1980 alone, so this choice by Hansen as the base climate is not broad enough. In the least, there should be no objection to using 1931-1980 as a reference-base for a non-enhanced-greenhouse climate.

Last week, I posted a commentary on NASA scientist James Hansen’s study and op-ed, which attribute recent extreme weather to global climate change. In the op-ed, Hansen stated:

The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks’ time, it’s likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.

My commentary concluded: “Hansen’s sweeping assertion that global warming is the principal cause of the European and Russian heat waves, and the Texas-Oklahoma drought, is not supported by event-specific analysis and is implausible in light of previous research.”

Although Hansen does not explicitly attribute the ongoing U.S. drought to global warming, he does blame global warming for both the 2011 Texas-Oklahoma drought and the current summer heat. And in his study, Hansen states: “With the temperature amplified by global warming and ubiquitous surface heating from elevated greenhouse gas amounts, extreme drought conditions can develop.”

This week on World Climate Report, Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger argue that the current U.S. drought “is driven by natural variability not global warming.” Their post (“Hansen Is Wrong“) is concise and layman-friendly. Here I offer an even briefer summary.

A standard measure of drought in the U.S. is the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), which measures the combined effects of temperature (hotter weather = more soil evaporation) and precipitation (more rainfall = more soil moisture). “The more positive the PDSI values, the wetter conditions are, the more negative the PDSI values, the drier things are.” The PDSI for the past 117 years (1895-2011) shows a small non-significant positive trend (i.e. towards wetter conditions). There is no greenhouse warming signal in this data.

What Hansen is claiming, however, is not that U.S. temperatures are causing drought but that global warming is causing drought. So Pat and Chip attempt to determine the influence of global temperatures on U.S. temperatures. They find that about 33% of U.S. temperature trends is explained by global temperature variations, although there is little relationship from year to year.

Figure explanation: The observed annual U.S. temperatures from 1895 through 2011 (open circles) and that part of them which is explained by global temperatures (black circles).

Pat and Chip then compare the black part of the chart above (the portion of U.S. temperatures influenced by global temperatures) with the PDSI. They find no relationship between global temperature variations and U.S. drought conditions (graph below, left) but a significant relationship between PDSI and non-global warming factors (graph below, right).

Pat and Chip conclude: “In other words, the situation is as it always has been. And the 2012 drought conditions, and every other drought that has come before, is the result of natural processes, not human greenhouse gases emissions.”