2002

Climate Models Are Wrong. Are We Repeating Ourselves?

by William Yeatman on February 19, 2002

in Science

A new study appearing in Physica A (302: 2001), tests the accuracy of climate models and finds them lacking. The problem, say the authors, is that the models do not adequately take into account persistence in the climate system.

“The persistence of short term weather states is a well-known phenomenon: there is a strong tendency for subsequent days to remain similar, a warm day is more likely to be followed by a warm day than a cold day and vice versa,” say the authors. They also note that persistence can occur at time scales of several weeks due to stable high pressure systems that remain stable for long periods of time.

The authors also note that, “There have been also indications that weather persistence exists over many months or seasons, between successive years, and even over several decades. Such persistence is usually associated with slowly varying external (boundary) forcing such as sea surface temperatures and anomaly patterns.”

This issue of persistence is another reason why “separating the anthropogenic forcing from the natural variability of the atmosphere may prove to be a major challenge since the anthropogenic signal may project onto and therefore be hidden in the modes of natural climate variability.”

The authors tested several models. “We are interested,” they write, “in the way the models can reproduce the actual data regarding (a) trends and (b) long-range correlations. Of course, we cannot expect the models to reproduce local trends like urban warming or short-term correlation structures. But long-range correlations show characteristic universal features that are actually independent of the local environment around a station. So we can expect that successful models with good prognostic features will be able to reproduce them.”

“It turns out,” according to the study, “that the models considered display wide performance differences and actually fail to reproduce the universal power law behavior of persistence. It seems that the models tend to underestimate persistence while overestimating trends, and this fact may imply that the models exaggerate the expected global warming of the atmosphere.”

Etc.

Al Kamen in his “In the Loop” column in the February 15 Washington Post: “The Bush White House excels at keeping secrets from the press, opponents, and, sometimes, even friends, judging from a somewhat testy exchange Wednesday evening when White House Council on Environmental Quality aides and others briefed a dozen or so senior GOP congressional staff members on the administrations new environmental package.

“The Hill folks protested that they had not been consulted about the package beforehand. When the White House disagreed, one Hill aide apparently asked for a show of hands from those whod been consulted. None went up, were told. Then talking points were distributed. Bushs goal of reducing our greenhouse gas intensity by _____ will reduce overall U.S. emission by _____ million metric tons by 2012, one point said, calling it an extremely ambitious, yet realistic goal.

“Numbers would help, the Hill team said. After some reluctance, the numbers were supplied. Its like the Wheel of Fortune: you can buy a vowel, you can buy a number.”

Bush Administration Tip-Toeing Toward New Policies; Looking For New Things to Regulate, States Focus on CO2; NSR Settlement Incl

by William Yeatman on February 5, 2002

in Politics

Bush Administration Tip-Toeing Toward New Policies

The New York Times and Washington Post reported this week (February 6, 2002) that the Bush Administration is getting close to deciding on a new set of global warming policies, which President Bush may announce before he visits Asian leaders next week. The only public indication of what those policies may be is contained in the Economic Report of the President, released by the Council of Economic Advisers on February 5.

The Report states that, “The current uncertainty surrounding climate change implies that a realistic policy should involve a gradual, measured response, not a risky, precipitous one.” Andrew Revkin in the Times notes that the Report contains a generally favorable review of the pros and cons of emissions trading schemes.

The Post story reports that, “One idea winning favor would replace the notion of setting fixed targets for power plant emissions of carbon dioxide with emission intensity targets measures that would expand or contract with economic growth.”

“Another proposal,” says the Post, “dealing with pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury, calls for an emissions trading program that would allow big polluters that exceed mandatory emission targets to buy credits from cleaner companies whose emissions come in lower than the targets.”

EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman “argued persuasively in favor of a trading approach with mandatory targets during Mondays meeting,” according to the Post, a plan that the Department of Energy opposes.

A February 1 article by David Wojick in Electricity Daily details more specific possible proposals. “According to one administration source,” Wojick writes, “a 20 percent reduction in emission by 2012, below a 2000 baseline, is being discussed,” a target similar to the U.S. reduction required under Kyoto.

His story goes on to explain that, “The CO2 restriction is part of a complex package that includes New Source Review regulatory reform and a three-pollutant nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and mercury control proposal.”

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told Electricity Daily that the administrations climate plans will go far beyond a No Regrets strategy. “No regrets implies that you are doing nothing,” he said, “and our policy will be very proactive, and we will commit major resources toward it.”

This quote implies that Chairman Connaughton doesnt know what No Regrets means, which could prove a serious problem in trying to devise sensible policies.

Looking For New Things to Regulate, States Focus on CO2

A bill approved last week in the California Assembly instructs the California Air Resources Board to formulate regulations that would limit carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.

According to the Environmental News Service (February 1, 2002), “If the measure becomes law, state regulators will draft rules aimed at achieving the maximum feasible reduction of carbon dioxide emitted by California’s passenger vehicles and light duty trucks, including sport utility vehicles. The regulations would need to be in place by January 2004, but auto manufacturers would be given flexibility in deciding how to achieve the new standards.”

Assemblymember Fran Pavley (D) stated, “This bill will give us the opportunity to protect Californias economy, public health and the environment from the potentially devastating effects of global warming. The bill will also allow California to greatly affect the outcome of the worlds global warming crisis.”

Other states may well follow Californias lead. Plans are in the works for some type of global warming regulation in New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Washington, New Jersey, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

Sandy Liddy Bourne, Director of the American Legislative Exchange Councils Energy Task Force, has been monitoring state carbon dioxide regulation proposals, which ALEC opposes. “Now is not the time to voluntarily impose CO2 emission standards as a knee jerk response to environmental hysteria,” she said. “At a time of recession, the best way to fuel our economy is to use the best energy technology the free market has to offer.”

NSR Settlement Includes CO2 Cuts

A New Jersey utility has settled a Clean Air Act enforcement action by signing a consent agreement that “for the first time will require the company to participate in a voluntary scheme to reduce carbon dioxide emission,” according to a story in Inside EPA (February 1, 2002). The settlement between PSEG Fossil, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the State of New Jersey, which was announced by the Department of Justice on January 23, concludes one of many New Source Review actions begun by former EPA Administrator Carol Browner in the Clinton Administration.

The Bush Administration has been reviewing the Clinton-era interpretation of New Source Review regulations since last summer and is expected to announce reforms soon. In the meantime, the Justice Department has decided that the NSR enforcement efforts that they inherited from the Clinton Administration are reasonable and will be continued.

The latest settlement requires large cuts in sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides emissions at PSEG Fossils two coal-fired power plants in addition to a 15% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels to be achieved by 2005.

In 2000, David McIntosh then Indiana Representative and Chairman of the House National Economic Growth, Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs subcommittee, wrote a letter to EPA regarding their NSR enforcement, accusing it of using “intimidation” to secure “voluntary” agreements from electric utilities to cap CO2 emissions. “In short,” said McIntosh, “if I were attempting to implement, or prepare to implement, the Kyoto Protocol and build a pro-Kyoto business clientele, I would proceed exactly as EPA has done and apparently plans to do.”

PSEG Fossil is the first to agree to a settlement with the EPA that includes a voluntary CO2 emissions cap. Inside EPA, argues that “The appearance of at least tacit approval for carbon controls could provide the administration which has historically resisted the idea with political headaches when the issue is taken up by the Senate later this year.”

Studies Find More Model Weaknesses; No Global Warming in Alaska

by William Yeatman on February 5, 2002

in Science

Studies Find More Model Weaknesses

Two studies appearing in the February 1 issue of Science give further evidence that climate models are still wholly inadequate to predict future climate change. Using satellite data from the last two decades, a team of researchers led by Bruce A. Wielicki with NASAs Langley Research Center found that, “The top-of-atmosphere (TOA) tropical radiative energy budget is much more dynamic and variable than previously thought.”

The study explains that, “Earths climate system is driven by a radiative energy balance between the solar or shortwave radiation absorbed by Earth and the thermal infrared or longwave radiation emitted back to space.” For the Earths climate to remain unchanged, this energy budget must equal zero. “The TOA radiation budget,” says the study, “is crucial in determining climate variability and feedbacks.” It also provides a rigorous test of the ability of climate models to represent the atmospheres physical processes.

The data show that there was a drop in longwave radiation of about 2 W/m2 (watts per square meter) from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s followed by a rise of about 4 W/m2 from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s. “Because radiative forcings of 1 W/m2 or less are important for climate change prediction, natural variability of 4 W/m2 in the longwave part of the tropical radiation budget is considered a major change.”

The researchers argue that this is not likely due to global warming since, “The flux changes are far too large to be explained by the small surface and atmosphere warming over this time period, which will tend to be offset by increased CO2 and water vapor greenhouse gas trapping.”

More importantly, however, “These changes are sufficiently large that, in principle, they should be seen in climate model predictions.” The researchers tested five different models, including the well known Hadley Centre and National Center for Atmospheric Research models. They found that “There is remarkably little variation in the tropical mean fluxes from the models when compared to the data.”

The other study attempts to answer the question of whether the changes observed in the satellite data in the Earths radiative balance over the last two decades are the result of natural variability or manmade global warming. The researchers, Junye Chen, Barbara E. Carlson, and Anthony D. Del Genio, with NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, found that the “Earth has been radiating more heat and reflecting less sunlight in the region from 30 degrees S to 30 degrees N over the past decade, the net result being more energy leaving the tropics.”

This change is due to a strengthening of two different tropical circulations known as the Hadley cell and the Walker cell. “Equatorial convective regions,” say the researchers, “have intensified the upward motion and moistened, while both the equatorial and subtropical subsidence regions have become drier and less cloudy.”

So whats the upshot? “The possibility that lapse rates were decreasing instead [of increasing] before 1980 suggests that the observed intensification of the Hadley-Walker cell may be due to natural variability on decadal or longer time scales rather than to a forced climate change.”

No Global Warming in Alaska

In 2001, the U.S. National Assessment on climate change concluded that Alaska would warm between 5 and 18 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. It further claimed that Alaska has already experienced an average “4 degrees F warming since the 1950s.”

This claim is highly misleading, according to Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In an article appearing on Tech Central Station (www.techcentralstation.com, January 22, 2002), the two scientists explain that the apparent warming in Alaska is due to an entirely natural phenomenon.

The National Assessment stated, “Much of the recent warming occurred suddenly around 1977, coincident with the most recent of the large-scale Arctic atmosphere and ocean regime shifts.” What the report failed to mention, however, is that the global circulation models it used to make its predictions show a gradual warming due to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, not sudden jumps.

The cause of the 1977 climate jump was a phenomenon known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. As explained by Baliunas and Soon, “The Pacific Ocean temperature changes naturally on multiple time scales. The major pattern in the northern Pacific Ocean is for it to hold at a low average temperature for roughly 20 to 30 years, and then to suddenly shift upward, where it remains for some decades. Then it shifts back down again.”

This is a pattern that has been directly measured for the last 100 years. The pattern has also been observed in temperature data derived from tree rings, and reaches back at least 1,000 years. Moreover, a look at the temperature data in Alaska after 1977 shows that 22 of the 30 locations from which Alaskas temperature is measured have experienced “either no warming or a significant cooling trend.”

Emissions Rise in England, Germany and Japan; Winds Dying Down in Denmark

by William Yeatman on February 3, 2002

in Blog

Emissions Rise in England, Germany and Japan

Carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise in the worlds leading economies. The latest report from the United Kingdom estimates that emissions went up three percent in 2001. In Germany, the figure is 1.5 percent. And Japan has announced a 1.1 percent rise in the year to March 2001.

Germanys carbon dioxide emissions rose by 1.5 percent in 2001, according to Germanwatch, an environmental lobby group based in Bonn. The group claims that the opening of brown coal power plants in former East German states and colder winter temperatures that increased heating oil consumption caused the increase.

The good news, according to Germanwatch, is that higher fuel taxes caused a five percent decrease in traffic, with gasoline consumption falling by 2.8 percent and diesel consumption falling by one percent (Reuters, February 4, 2002).

A report from economic forecaster Cambridge Econometrics says that Britain is unlikely to meet its self-imposed carbon dioxide reduction target of 23 percent below 1990 levels, because power generators are switching from burning natural gas to cheaper coal. “The achievement of the governments own 20 percent reduction target looks increasingly unattainable,” said the report (Reuters, February 4, 2002).

As a result, Britains emissions rose three percent in 2001, following a 2 percent increase in 2000. According to an Environmental News Service article (February 4, 2002), Cambridge Econometrics reports that, “The UK data reflected inherent contradictions in government policies aimed simultaneously at providing cheaper energy and achieving energy and emission savings.”

Japans carbon dioxide emissions increased by 1.1 percent from March 2000 to March 2001, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), making it the second consecutive year that emissions have increased.

The growth in emissions was due to economic growth. Said a METI spokesman, “The economy was not doing so badly at the timeso [energy] consumption in the industrial sector rose as well” (Reuters, February 4, 2002).

Winds Dying Down in Denmark

The Wall Street Journal Europe (January 24, 2002), Reuters (January 25, 2002), and The Week That Was (February 2, 2002, www.sepp.org) have picked up reports from Danish newspapers that the new Danish government intends to cancel plans for three new offshore wind power facilities. According to Reuters, financial daily Borsen quoted Economy Minister Bendt Bendtsen, “We are very concerned about the costs for society and for Denmarks competitiveness if we continue to expand the use of green energy.”

The Danish government provides subsidies for wind power, and 6300 windmills have been erected as a result. But there is speculation that the new government may discontinue the subsidy. According to The Week That Was, an editorial in Jyllandposten, Denmarks largest newspaper, states that without the subsidy no more wind farms will be built.

Share prices in Danish wind turbine manufacturers Vestas Wind Systems and NEG Micron, the worlds largest and third-largest respectively, have dropped as a result of the weakening U.S. market for their products, according to the Wall Street Journal. The U.S. subsidy of 1.7 cents per kilowatt-hour lapsed at the end of December. Renewal of the subsidy is contained in the House-passed energy bill, but that bill has been blocked from consideration by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (DSouth Dakota).

German Industry Opposes European Unions Emissions Trading Scheme; Maine Co-Op Against Regulating CO2

by William Yeatman on January 22, 2002

in Blog

German Industry Opposes European Unions Emissions Trading Scheme

German industry has come out in public against the European Unions scheme to trade greenhouse gas emissions permits. In a November 28, 2001 letter to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a number of major German corporations, including Thyssen Krupp, Bayer, and BASF, state that the EU Commissions “Draft Guidelines for Emissions Trading at the Company Level for CO2” would be “economically unbearable for German industry.”

In an attachment to their letter, the German companies explain their main objections to the EUs draft guidelines. First, the trading scheme would punish companies that are expanding production and provide “shutdown premiums” to companies that were cutting production and closing facilities. This would encourage moving production to other countries.

The attachment details other problems with the EUs emissions trading plan most of them economic. For example, “Emission trading heightens the costs of national businesses, which are already subject to special burdens affecting their global competitiveness from eco-taxes, the Renewable Energies Law, the CHP [combined heat and power] Preliminary Law, the planned CHP law, and self-imposed obligations.”

Another objection is that the EUs plan would “lead to centralized production, employment, and investment controls by Brussels [that is, by the EU].”

Maine Co-Op Against Regulating CO2

The Eastern Maine Electric Co-operative came out against regulating carbon dioxide emissions at a board meeting on January 23. The directors passed a resolution that charges the chief executive officer “with the objective of helping prevent such economic harm by using his resources to influence legislators, regulators, executives and administrative departments with respect to the C02 issue.” The board also requires the CEO to educate the public about global warming issues.

Antarctic Cooling Down; The Antarctic Ice Sheet is Growing; Hansen Downgrades Warming Threat

by William Yeatman on January 22, 2002

in Science

Antarctic Cooling Down

A forthcoming study in Nature, that has appeared on its website as an “advance online publication,” has found that the Antarctic has been cooling for some time now (www.nature.com). This contradicts the findings of the climate models upon which the case for global warming is built. They predict that the Earths poles will warm more rapidly than the rest of the Earth.

According to the study, “Climate models generally predict amplified warming in the polar regions, as observed in Antarcticas peninsula region over the second half of the 20th century.” The new study finds that “Our spatial analysis of Antarctic meteorological data demonstrates a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000, particularly during summer and autumn.” The McMurdo Dry Valleys, for example, have cooled about 0.7 degrees Celsius per decade during this period of time.

The authors conclude that, “Continental Antarctic cooling, especially the seasonality of cooling, poses challenges to models of climate, and ecosystem change.”

The research into the continents temperature record was motivated by the unexpected coldness of the summers, according to lead author Peter Doran with the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois. “Two or three years ago when we were waiting for the big summers, we noticed that they didnt come,” said Doran. We were thinking that warm summers were the norm, and we were saying, Its going to get back to normal, but it never did” (Washington Post, January 14, 2002).

Michael Oppenheimer, chief scientist for Environmental Defense isnt buying it, however. “Id be very careful with this,” he told the Washington Post. “My general view has been that theres simply not enough data to make a broad statement about all of Antarctica.”

Of course, lack of data has never stopped Oppenheimer from making “broad” statements about the whole Earth. In November 2000, Environmental Defense press release he stated, for instance, “The 1990s, likely the hottest decade of the past thousand years, capped decades of shrinking glaciers, thinning Arctic ice, intensifying rainstorms, and rising seas,” and that this means that, “The world must end its dependence on fossil fuels that are too dirty and too expensive. Governments must take action now.”

It seems that the climate models have struck out. Strike one: they cant simulate the current climate. Strike two: they predict greater and more rapid warming in the atmosphere than at the surface. The opposite is happening. Strike three: they predict amplified warming at the poles, which are cooling instead.

The Antarctic Ice Sheet is Growing

A new study appearing in Science (January 18, 2002) concludes that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is thickening, rather than thinning as was previously thought. Earlier studies found that in the Ross Sea Sector, “The grounding line (the point where the ice sheet loses contact with its bed and begins to float) has retreated nearly 1300 km along the western side of the Ross Embayment,” since the last glacial maximum.

This led researchers to predict that the entire WAIS would collapse in 4000 years, implying a sea-level rise of 12.5 to 15 centimeters per century. This was based on a measurement of a loss of ice mass of 20.9 13.7 gigatons per year.

The authors of the new study, Ian Joughin and Slawek Tulaczyk, with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, note, “The ice-discharge estimates of earlier studies relied on relatively sparse in situ measurements of ice-flow velocity. For some ice streams theestimates were based on only one or two velocity measurements.”

The new study used satellite remote sensing to get better measurements. Contrary to earlier studies, the authors found “strong evidence for ice-sheet growth (26.8 14.9 gigatons per year).” They conclude, “The overall positive mass balance may signal an end to the Holocene retreat of these ice streams.”

Hansen Downgrades Warming Threat

James Hansen, the director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has published a study in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (December 18, 2002) that downgrades the magnitude of global warming.

According to his analysis, the growth rate of climate forcing from greenhouse gases peaked in 1980 and has since declined from about 5 watts per square meter (W/m2) per century to about 3 W/m2 per century. When all forcings, both negative and positive, are taken into account total net forcing is about 1.6 1.1 W/m2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumes a 4 W/m2 forcing. As the study notes, “Most climate simulations, as summarized by the IPCC, do not include all of the negative forcings; indeed, if they did, and other forcings were unchanged, little global warming would be obtained.”

Hansen and his co-author Makiko Sato, with Center for Climate Systems Research at the Columbia University Earth Institute, predict that “Global warming at a rate +0.15 0.05 degrees C per decade will occur over the next several decades.” This is what the so-called skeptics have been saying all along.

Hansen and Sato put an interesting twist on their argument, however. They state that “the slowdown was caused mainly by phase-out of CFCs” (chlorofluorocarbons), which are also greenhouse gases, under the Montreal Protocol. The previous claim that sulfate aerosol emissions are masking the warming is no longer satisfactory since that has been cancelled out by the discovery of an equal but opposite forcing from black carbon.

Despite Hansens latest conclusion that the planet will only warm about 1.5 degrees C over the next century, a miniscule amount, he still argues for international cooperation to stop global warming. He calls for a “cooperative, not punitive” program of technology transfer from developed to developing world to reduce emissions.

News from Australia

Opponents of the Kyoto Protocol in Australia are clearly making progress in their campaign to defeat ratification. The Canberra Times (January 10, 2002) recently published an op-ed by Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute that attacks the Lavoisier Group in vitriolic terms.

The Lavoisier Group provides the principal intellectual and organizational opposition in Australia to Kyoto and was organized by our colleague, N. Ray Evans of Melbourne. Hamilton accuses the Lavoisier Group of painting the UNs global warming negotiations as “an elaborate conspiracy in which hundreds of climate scientists have twisted their results to support the climate change theory in order to protect their research funding.” Sounds plausible to us.

Global Warming Tied To Sun’s Variability

by William Yeatman on January 15, 2002

in Science

Global warming is apparently normal. Iceberg debris on the floor of the North Atlantic indicates the world has had nine global warmings, followed by nine coolings, in the past 12,000 years. All were apparently caused by a 1500-year cycle in the intensity of the suns radiation. The iceberg data is strongly confirmed by the solar activity record produced from carbon-14 dating of tree rings and beryllium-10 dating of Greenland ice cores.

Dr. Gerard Bond and a research team at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, painstakingly assembled this new evidence that climate variability is natural and global. It was published online November 16 by the prestigious journal Science.

Bond used Atlantic sediment cores to measure the rocky debris picked up by glaciers as they ground their way across Canada, Greenland and Iceland, dropping to the Atlantic ocean floor when the icebergs melted. Bond and his colleagues found the amount of debris increased sharply every 1500 years as ice surged farther out into a temporarily colder Atlantic.

Glacier expert Richard Alley of Penn State University says The Bond data are sufficiently convincing that [solar variability] is now the leading hypothesis to explain the Medieval warming that occurred in the 11th and 12th centuries and the Little Ice Age that followed it in the 17th century.

Bond notes that the correlation between earth climate (as measured by his iceberg debris data) and solar activity (as measured by carbon-dated tree rings and beryllium-dated ice cores) is statistically very high. However, Bond says hes even more impressed by the close match between the peaks and troughs of the climate and solar records.

David Thomson, a time-series analyst soon to be at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, says, Their experiment may be good enough even without statistics. For Bond, thats the scientific equivalent of a touchdown pass.

The Bond study severely undercuts the popular theory of global warming, which holds that greenhouse gases from modern autos and factories are causing a dramatic artificial warming of the earths atmosphere. Current global temperatures are not significantly higher than those of the pre-industrial 1930sor the year 1000. The Medieval warming occurred without autos or factories spewing CO 2, and if it was solar-driven had to be global. It was followed by the Little Ice Age which cannot be attributed to any human cause.

The Bond study indicates we will have to adapt to a gradual increase in world temperatures over the next 200 years or so, because humanity is powerless to alter the sun.

Should we fear the warming? The last global warming is also known to the history books as the Medieval Climate Optimum, the finest weather that humanity can remember, notes climatologist Fred Singer. Singer, who heads the Science and Environmental Policy Project, is also an elected Fellow of the Geophysical Society.

He points out that during the Medieval warming, crops were more abundant, due to more rainfall and longer growing seasons. The Vikings pastured cattle in Greenland, now frozen tundra. The polar ice cap did not melt, and sea levels did not rise abnormally. The wild species migrated with the weather changes as theyd always donethe animals rapidly and the plant species slowly. Storms were milder, because the temperature difference between poles and the equator was smaller. (The bad storms came during the icy part of the cycle, around 1800.)

Will human activity aggravate the next warming cycle? Singer says human impact on the climate is dwarfed by natural variability from such factors as solar cycles and volcanic eruptions. He expects the next warming to be mild and useful, with the biggest effects felt on winter nights in northern climates. We may plant more grain in Canada and Russia, for example. Slightly higher temperatures for farmers at the equator will be more than offset by the crop growth benefits of higher CO2 levels from human activity.

The Kyoto Protocol, he warns, would radically raise world energy prices, hurting humanitys ability to adapt without significantly reducing any warming trend. He believes the real problems, for society and most wild species, will come during the harsh storms of the next Ice Age. Fortunately, Singer says, thats apparently several hundred, and perhaps several thousand, years away.

It remains hard to figure out exactly how the sun has mattered to [recent] climate, says Alley, and why it has mattered so much. The changes in the suns activity have been too small to change the earths temperature directly, but ocean currents could have amplified them.

An oscillation in the northern Atlantic Ocean currents had been the leading alternative in scientists minds to a solar cause for global climate change. The Bond study indicates the two are linked, with the sun as the hammer and the ocean as the nail.

Europeans Pay More and More

by William Yeatman on January 8, 2002

in Small business

The British government keeps raising taxes on energy, and businesses are feeling the pinch. Industrial gas prices rose 20 percent last year, due in large part to Britains climate change levy. As noted by Reuters (January 7, 2002), higher taxes exacerbate an already turbulent energy market in Britain. “UK prices have doubled over the last two years, partly because the opening of the UK/Belgium interconnector pipeline linked British prices to European gas prices which are indexed to oil prices.”

“Gas demand in Britain,” said Reuters, “has doubled over the last 10 years. Industrial, commercial and domestic use has risen 16 percent but usage in power generation has grown from virtually nil in 1990 to around 30 percent last year.”

Several German utilities have announced hikes in household power prices effective January 1, reflecting higher taxes and fees, reports Reuters (January 3, 2002). Customers served by the utilities will see their monthly power bill increase by about 5 percent, although some will see their rates go up by as much as 10 percent. Two thirds of the rate hikes are due to higher taxes, according to one industry spokesman.

Japan Gets Cold Feet; New Bush Policies this Month?

by William Yeatman on January 8, 2002

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics

 Japan Gets Cold Feet

Japan, the host of the 1997 negotiations that culminated in the Kyoto Protocol, may now be abandoning the treaty. According to the BBC (January 3, 2001), the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported: “The Central Environment Council, a government advisory body, has said in a report that, for now, industries will not be given any regulations to follow and, instead, will be allowed to combat gas emissions on a voluntary basis.

“Industry, which is responsible for 40 percent of all emissions,” it said, “will be asked to devise its own methods of control to publicize the amount of greenhouse gases emitted during the first phase of reductions, from 2002 to 2004.”

Putting off mandatory emission cuts may signal that Japan is having second thoughts about ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. Or it may mean that the Japanese government is taking account of the fact that the text of the protocol to be ratified includes no legally binding enforcement provisions. Thus there will be no penalties if Japan misses its 2008-12 reduction target.

“Prospects are that it will be very difficult for Japan to reduce gas emissions by 6 percent from the 1990 level as dictated by the protocol,” noted Yomiuri Shimbun. That would weaken the likelihood of Kyoto ever coming into force.

New Bush Policies this Month?

The Bush Administration has remained characteristically close-mouthed about its plans to announce new global warming policies, but rumors are swirling at an increasing rate. Informed sources on Capitol Hill told Cooler Heads that they expect the administration to announce a package of new policies before the Congress re-convenes on January 23.

On the other hand, there has been some press speculation, in Inside EPA and elsewhere, that President Bush will talk about global warming in his State of the Union address, scheduled for January 29.

The content of any possible announcement is an even greater mystery. Administration sources have talked vaguely in private about creating a mandatory registry for greenhouse gas emissions plus some sort of voluntary trading program for emission credits. It is not clear what would give value to owning, and hence purchasing, such credits unless the program were mandatory or offered some possibility of profit through future mandatory controls or federal payments or tax credits.

Administration decisions may be affected by the current media flap over contacts between the Bush White House and Enron Corporation, whose December 2 bankruptcy is one of the most spectacular in history. Enron was a founding member of the Pew Center on Global Climate Changes Business Leadership Council.

It is known that one of Enrons chief lobbying objectives during the waning years of the Clinton-Gore Administration was ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and adoption of mandatory carbon dioxide regulations in the U. S. Enron Chairman and CEO Ken Lay was reported to be the source of language in the 2000 Bush campaigns energy plan that advocated regulating CO2 emissions by electric utilities.

Enron would profit from mandatory cuts in CO2 emissions as a natural gas producer, pipeline operator, and trader in both energy and emission quota markets. Other major corporations have also been privately lobbying the Bush Administration to create a market for emission quotas (that is, to assign value to not producing or using fossil fuel energy). It is not known whether any of these corporations are doing this in order to forestall collapse.

Uncertainty Still Reigns; 2001 Slightly Warmer Than Average

by William Yeatman on January 8, 2002

in Science

Uncertainty Still Reigns

A new paper in Science (January 4, 2001) attempts to quantify uncertainties in the climate system. Due to its vast complexity, it is difficult for scientists to extract the anthropogenic signal from background noise to determine the most likely future scenarios.

The researchers attempted this by running an “intermediate-complexity model” so that they could make hundreds of runs of the climate for the period 1860 to 1995. They then compared their results to actual temperature changes at the surface, upper atmosphere and deep ocean.

They limited themselves to three variables that they could adjust to determine which range of values would lead to the closest match with actual data: climate sensitivity to a change in greenhouse gas concentrations, ocean heat transfer, and the effects of aerosols that offset warming. According to a news article accompanying the study, the researchers adjusted the variables “over a range of values, ran the model under a large number of setting combinations, and then compared the simulated climate trends with the three observed temperature records.”

“By their own concession,” the researchers had “varied success pinning down the key parameters of the climate system.” They especially had difficulty with ocean heat transfer. What they concluded, however, was that there is a 90 percent chance that the temperature would increase from between 1.4 degrees Celsius and 7.7 degrees C with a doubling of CO2 concentrations. The upper end of the range is much higher than the IPCCs range of 4.5 degrees C.

The really surprising finding, however, is that the net effect of aerosols was to reflect a mere 0.30 to 0.95 watts per square meter of solar power back into space as opposed to the IPCCs scenario of zero to 4 watts per square meter.

What this means, but seems to have escaped the studys researchers, is that there are still serious problems with the existing climate models. In the early 1990s, the climate models predicted far more warming than actually occurred.

To solve the problem, climate modelers hypothesized that anthropogenic emissions of sulfate aerosols, primarily from burning coal, were masking the warming that the models said should be occurring due to rising greenhouse gases. By adding aerosols to the equation, modelers were able to get results closer to reality. But if the cooling effect of aerosols is not as large as thought, as found in the study, then the models are still deficient.

2001 Slightly Warmer Than Average

The year 2001 was only slightly warmer than “average,” according to global climate data gathered by NOAA satellites. The composite global temperature for 2001 was 0.06 degrees Celsius (about 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 20-year (1979-to-1998) average, said Dr. John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Compared to other years, 2001 was the ninth warmest (and the 15th coolest) since satellite instruments started gathering global climate data in 1979.

As part of an ongoing joint project between UAH, NOAA and NASA, Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer, also with UAH, use data gathered by NOAA satellites to get accurate temperature readings for most regions of the Earth, including remote areas for which reliable climate data are not otherwise available.

The satellite instruments look at microwaves emitted by oxygen molecules in the atmosphere. These microwave emissions vary according to temperature, giving precise indications of temperatures over broad regions of the atmosphere (http://unisci.com/).

Etc.

One of the areas of the planet that is supposed to warm most due to greenhouse gas emissions is the coldest regions of Russia. Moreover, most of the warming is supposed to occur in the winter. Well, this winter Russians are having serious doubts about the validity of the global warming hypothesis as temperatures plummet. Central Europe is also experiencing difficulties due to severe winter weather.

Reuters (January 3, 2002) reports the following:

“Plunging temperatures killed 10 people in Moscow overnight into Thursday in a cold spell that even saw snow fall on palm trees along Russia’s sub-tropical Black Sea coast

“Central Europe meanwhile dug its way out of snowdrifts from the worst blizzards in 15 years and road and rail travel remained hazardous. Avalanche warnings were posted in mountain resorts.

“The international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontiers said 250 people had died in the [Russian] capital this winter. News reports said power cuts had left whole districts in the world’s largest country without light or heat, including the coal mining town of Dzhebariki-Khaya in far northern Yakutia, where temperatures were a seasonal minus 40 degrees Celsius.”

For a list of news stories about record winter weather, see www.john-daly.com.

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