Science

News of Kyotos Death Spreads; UK Government Steps Up Pressure on Bush Administration; Lomborg Vindicated

by William Yeatman on January 6, 2004

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics, Science

The realization that the Kyoto Protocol is as good as dead seems to be slowly spreading through the American media establishment.

For example, The New York Post ran an editorial on Dec. 28 that stated, The truth is that Kyoto is dead, and has been for some time. The article, entitled Kyoto Protocol, RIP, concluded, Kyoto was a bad idea in 1997, and it’s a bad idea today. If President Putin’s government scotches all remaining hope for its coming into effect, Russia will have done the whole world a favor. The Post echoed a Dec. 2 editorial in The Wall Street Journal.

First to break the establishment party line, however, was The New York Times, which on Dec. 31 forgot to assert that Russia was still moving towards ratification of the protocol, despite all evidence to the contrary (see last issue). In an article reviewing Russias drift away from Europe and towards America in many policy areas, the Times pointed out that, In recent negotiations over joining the World Trade Organization and ratifying the Kyoto treaty on climate change, Russia has clashed fundamentally with Europe’s vision on free markets and the environment, arguing in both cases that its unique geography merits exclusive consideration. By admitting that Russia has turned away from Europe on the issue, it basically admitted the protocol was no longer a going concern.

A few days later, The Denver Post actually used the d-word, but urged activists to fight on, writing, The Kyoto treaty is dead, but its demise must not end focused, concerted efforts to slow global warming (Jan. 4).

Even the Council on Foreign Relations got in on the act. In an interview for Newsday (Jan. 4), Council President Richard Haass admitted that Kyoto was the wrong approach from the start. The paper summarized his views as follows: Haass is critical of the administration for rejecting such diplomatic initiatives as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Treaty on global warming without offering alternatives. Even if those were proposals were flawed-and the facts suggest they were-the United States could have maintained a consensus by proposing better ways to accomplish the goals, Haass says.

Cooler Heads looks forward to reporting more obituary notices, as the news spreads among the protocols band of diehard supporters.

UK Government Steps Up Pressure on Bush Administration

In what now appears to be a two-pronged assault on the U.S. administrations position on climate change, the UK Governments Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, published an article in Science magazine (Jan. 9) that asserted the reality of damaging global warming and attacked the administration for failing to act to prevent it.

Kings article began with a series of highly questionable assertions: Climate change is real, and the causal link to increased greenhouse emissions is now well established. Globally, the ten hottest years on record have occurred since 1991, and in the past century, temperatures have risen by about 0.6C. In that same period, global sea level has risen by about 20 cm-partly from melting of land ice and partly from thermal expansion of the oceans. Ice caps are disappearing from many mountain peaks, and summer and autumn Arctic sea ice has thinned by up to 40% in recent decades, although there is some evidence for stabilization.

The article continues, In Britain, usage of the Thames Barrier, which protects London from flooding down the Thames Estuary, has increased from less than once a year in the 1980s to an average of more than six times a year (see the figure, below). This is a clear measure of increased frequency of high storm surges around North Sea coasts, combined with high flood levels in the River Thames. Last year, Europe experienced an unprecedented heat wave, France alone bearing around 15,000 excess or premature fatalities as a consequence. Although this was clearly an extreme event, when average temperatures are rising, extreme temperature events become more frequent and more serious. In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today-more serious even than the threat of terrorism.

King concluded with an appeal to international solidarity: The United States is already in the forefront of the science and technology of global change, and the next step is surely to tackle emissions control, too. We can only overcome this challenge by facing it together, shoulder to shoulder. We in the rest of the world are now looking to the U.S.A. to play its leading part.

As this issue went to press, the Independent revealed the other part of the strategy on Sunday (Jan. 11), which said that, (Prime Minister) Tony Blair is persuading President George Bush to launch a new international initiative to fight global warming. The move, in part an attempt by Mr. Blair to shrug off the label as the President’s poodle, is the result of a series of behind-the-scenes meetings between high-level officials, the Independent on Sunday has learnt. The two leaders are close to agreement on combating climate change at the next two G8 meetings of the world’s most powerful leaders.

The article went on to explain the meetings referred to: Last month, Professor Sir David King Mr. Blair’s chief scientific adviserled a delegation to Washington to work out the details with senior members of the Bush administration. The President will concentrate in this year’s summit on how to develop new technologies. Senior scientists and environmentalists consulted by Sir David in Washington warned him that Mr. Blair would have to go far beyond merely endorsing these technologies if he wanted to avoid being seen as the Mr. Bush’s poodle. They stressed Britain must insist that more than enough is already known about the dangers of global warming to demand immediate action to cut the pollution that causes it.

It is not yet known to what extent the Independents coverage reflects wishful thinking on the part of Sir David and his colleagues. Such a major change in the Bush administrations position seems highly unlikely, especially after Sir Davids scathing attack on the administration in subsequent press interviews.

Lomborg Vindicated

On January 11 last year, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) found Bjrn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, guilty of scientific dishonesty in writing the book. Alarmists hailed the decision as proof that the immensely popular work was flawed, while more careful observers who bothered to read the flimsy judgment excoriated it. The Economist magazine, for instance, commented, The panel’s ruling-objectively speaking-is incompetent and shameful.

The Danish Ministry of Technology, which oversees the DCSD, agreed on December 17. The Ministry quashed the judgment, declaring, amongst many other harsh criticisms, that, The DCSD has not documented where [Dr Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and… the ruling is completely void of argumentation for why the DCSD find that the complainants are right in their criticisms of [his] working methods. It is not sufficient that the criticisms of a researcher’s working methods exist; the DCSD must consider the criticisms and take a position on whether or not the criticisms are justified, and why.

Referring to the lack of solid evidence against him, Dr Lomborg commented that it has now been established that…mudslinging is not enough. You have to use solid arguments. The DCSD now have to decide whether to reopen Dr Lomborgs case.

Urban Heat Island Effect Still an Issue; McIntyre and McKitrick Praised; More Fiddling with Paleoclimatology

by William Yeatman on December 16, 2003

in Science

Urban Heat Island Effect Still an Issue

British scientist Phillip Stott reports on an intriguing new piece of research on his highly-recommended EnviroSpin Watch web log (http://greenspin.blogspot.com). Canadian researcher Dr. Ian G. McKendry (University of British Columbia) has compiled a progress report on the question of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect for the latest issue of Progress in Physical Geography: (PIPG 27[4], 2003, pp. 597-606).

Stott quotes him as saying that, “UHIs continue to present a problem for the detection of changes in the global surface temperature record (the so-called greenhouse effect). Typically the urban bias is removed from climate records on the basis of relatively simple regression models that utilize population size as an indicator of the urban excess…. Several studies have recently exploited long historic records to illustrate that such methods may not be sufficient to adequately correct for the urban bias.”

According to Stott, McKendry “further points out that recent studies have also begun to examine more closely the effects of UHI intensity on meteorological conditions, a topic first considered in 1951. Some of this new work indicates that the UHI effect may well be implicated in changes in both precipitation and storm patterns.”

Stott calls the article an “extremely well-referenced review.” McKendry concludes: “Recent studies suggest that attempts to remove the urban bias from long-term climate records (and hence identify the magnitude of the enhanced greenhouse effect) may be overly simplistic. This will likely continue to be a contentious issue in the climate change community.”

McIntyre and McKitrick Praised

The careful investigation of Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick into Michael Manns “hockey stick” data has received praise from sources not usually friendly to climate science skepticism.

Writing in Londons Observer (Dec. 7), influential British left-winger Will Hutton castigated the reception given to McIntyre and McKitricks paper, saying, “An important and neutral paper by Canadians Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick suggests that the best guess is that, while temperatures are currently rising, they probably lie within the range for the past 600 years. Environmentalists, just as in a battle over a new runway, are being as partisan in their use of science as their opponents.”

Meanwhile, University of California Berekeley physics professor Richard Muller, a long-time supporter of global warming alarmism, wrote in MITs Technology Review (Dec. 17), “Last months article by McIntyre and McKitrick raised pertinent questions. They had been given access (by Mann) to details of the work that were not publicly available. Independent analysis and (when possible) independent data sets are ultimately the arbiter of truth. This is precisely the way that science should, and usually does, proceed. Thats why Nobel Prizes are often awarded one to three decades after the work was completed — to avoid mistakes. Truth is not easy to find, but a slow process is the only one that works reliably.”

Muller continued, “It was unfortunate that many scientists endorsed the hockey stick before it could be subjected to the tedious review of time. Ironically, it appears that these scientists skipped the vetting precisely because the results were so important.”

More Fiddling with Paleoclimatology

There is further evidence for the existence of the Little Ice Age– in Europe at least — in new research on the history of violins, of all things. Two researchers believe they have found the answer in paleoclimatology to why Stradivariuss violins are so good.

The Associated Press reports (Dec. 8), “Grissino-Mayer at Tennessee and Dr. Lloyd Burckle at Columbia suggest a Little Ice Age that gripped Europe from the mid-1400s until the mid-1800s slowed tree growth and yielded uncommonly dense Alpine spruce for Antonio Stradivari and other famous 17th-century Italian violinmakers.

“The ice age reached its coldest point during a 70-year period from 1645-1715 known as the Maunder Minimum, which was named after the 19th century solar astronomer, E.W. Maunder, who documented a lack of solar activity during the period.

“Stradivari was born a year before the Maunder Minimum began, and he produced his most prized and valued stringed instruments as the period ended — his golden period from 1700-1720.

“We would suggest that the narrow tree rings that identify the Maunder Minimum in Europe played a role in the enhanced sound quality of instruments produced by the Cremona [Italy] violinmakers,” Grissino-Mayer and Burckle write, noting that “narrow tree rings would not only strengthen the violin but would increase the wood’s density.”

“The onset of the Maunder Minimum at a time when the skills of the Cremonese violinmakers reached their zenith perhaps made the difference in the violin’s tone and brilliance,” they conclude.

AGU Issues Statement on Climate Change

The American Geophysical Union has issued its long-awaited new position statement on climate change (available on the internet at http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change_position.html). The position paper is the usual blend of carefully-worded scientific platitudes used to back up alarmist rhetoric.

For instance, the statement says, “Model projections of future global warming vary, because of differing estimates of population growth, economic activity, greenhouse gas emission rates, changes in atmospheric particulate concentrations and their effects, and also because of uncertainties in climate models.” In other words, lots of non-scientific factors are essentially guesswork, compounding the scientific uncertainties.

The statement goes on to stress investment in “education of the next generation of climate scientists.” Could the AGU be worried that some scientists might not naturally incline towards study of climate science without the lure of research grants? Why ever not?

Announcements

Federal Government Seeks Contributors for IPCC Report

The following announcement appeared in the Federal Register on Dec. 12:

United States Climate Change Science Program

ACTION: Request U.S. nomination of experts for consideration as coordinating lead authors, lead authors, contributing authors, expert reviewers, and review editors for the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

SUMMARY: The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, the scientific, technical, and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts, and options for adaptation and mitigation. The IPCC has three working groups: Working Group I assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change; Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it; and Working Group III assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change. The IPCC provides scientific, technical, and socio-economic advice to the world community, and in particular to the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) through its periodic assessment reports and special reports. The IPCC has decided to continue to prepare comprehensive assessment reports and agreed to complete its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.

The U.S. Government has received a request from the IPCC to nominate experts for consideration as coordinating lead authors, lead authors, contributing authors, expert reviewers, and review editors for the different chapters and volumes of the Fourth Assessment Report.

Further information on this request — such as the IPCC request for nominations, the approved outlines of the three IPCC working groups for the AR4, a description of the roles and responsibilities associated with them, and a nomination form that must be completed for each nominee — may be found at either the IPCC Secretariat (http://www.ipcc.ch/ar4/nominations/nominations.htm) or CCSP (http://www.climatescience.gov)

DATES: Completed nomination forms for each nominee should be returned to the Climate Change Science Program Office (ipcc_nominations@usgcrp.gov) by noon Monday, January 5, 2004.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: David Allen, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, Suite 250, 1717 Pennsylvania Ave, NW., Washington, DC

Hockey Stick Critics Speak on Hill; Satellite Wars Rage On; Methane Emissions Leveling Off

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2003

in Science

Hockey Stick Critics Speak on Hill

Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, authors of the paper that raises questions about the quality of the data underlying the IPCCs hockey stick graph of temperatures in the last 1000 years, briefed congressional staff on the issue at a meeting organized by the George C. Marshall Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition on November 18.

McIntyre gave a compelling account of how he became interested in the hockey-stick controversy and then suspicious of the claim that the last decade was the hottest in the third millennium A. D. His experience in the mineral explorations business taught him that all data must be checked, so that is what he and McKitrick did in their paper.

The authors gave a chronological account of the charges made by the inventor of the hockey stick, Michael Mann, since their critique was published in Energy and Environment in late October. Mann first claimed that they had analyzed the wrong data sets, which had mistakenly been sent to McIntyre by one of Manns collaborators. Instead they should have used the data sets that had long been publicly available on an ftp site.

According to McIntyre and McKitrick, this criticism was irrelevant since they had rebuilt Manns 112 data sets from original sources. They then discovered that the data sets that they had been sent were the same as those on the ftp site. Mann has since deleted the data sets from his ftp site.

Mann then explained that McIntyre and McKitricks results showed a warm period in the fifteenth century because they had failed to include three key principal components. McIntyre and McKitrick replied that they omitted one because it double counted readings included in another component and updated another with newer data from the original source. This updated data changed the components effect considerably. McIntyre pointed out that the hockey-stick graph, at least for the 1400s, appears to be driven by only three of 112 principal components, which is a slender database upon which to base any conclusion.

McIntyre and McKitrick stressed throughout the presentation that they were not saying that they had proved the 1400s were warmer than today. What their statistical re-analysis had demonstrated was that it was not possible to conclude from the data Mann used that temperatures in the 20th century were unusual. Access to all the documents in the ongoing controversy can be found online at www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html.

Satellite Wars Rage On

Modellers at the Remote Sensing Systems firm continue to raise objections to the University of Alabama at Huntsville satellite temperature readings of Roy Spencer and John Christy. In a new article in the Journal of Climate (published by the American Meteorological Association), they claim that a re-analysis of the dataset show[s] a global trend of 0.097 0.020 K decade−1, generally agreeing with the work of Prabhakara et al. but in disagreement with the MSU analysis of Christy and Spencer, which shows significantly less (0.09 K decade−1) warming.”

The article re-asserts the claim already made by RSS that their imputations from climate models are more reliable than the actual data from weather balloon radiosonde readings, which corroborate the findings of Christy and Spencer.

Although the finding was widely reported as confirming human influence on global warming, Christy told the New York Times (Nov. 18) that the evidence was pointing more firmly toward a modest impact from rising greenhouse gases, “We’ve had enough years of this human-induced forcing to get some boundaries on it, and it’s just not going in the dramatic and catastrophic direction.”

This view was confirmed in Newsweeks coverage of the same story (Nov. 23). In a remarkably candid paragraph, the magazine said, Recently scientists predictions [of future temperature increases] have begun to converge on a narrower range, and the forecasts have gotten more modest. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York has pointed out that in recent years the actual rise of greenhouse gases hasnt accelerated as fast as the IPCC predicted. Carbon-dioxide emissions increased 4.7 percent a year from 1945 to 1973, but since then, the average increase has been only 1.4 percent a year. The rate for methane, another powerful greenhouse gas produced in landfills and rice farming, is barely increasing at all. Hansen thinks that even if nothing is done, the planet would warm only 1.5 degrees by 2050.

It is a shame, then, that Newsweek followed this anti-alarmist finding with the distinctly alarmist suggestion that, If [developing nations] succeed in making the air cleaner, temperatures may soar-perhaps by as much as seven to 10 degrees Celsius.

Methane Emissions Leveling Off

Australian scientists have determined that atmospheric concentrations of methane have leveled off. Over the past four years there has been no growth in atmospheric methane concentrations compared to a fifteen percent rise over the preceding twenty years and a 150 percent rise since pre-industrial times, said Paul Fraser, a chief research scientist at the atmospheric research section of Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (The Australian, Nov. 25).

The findings come from CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorologys gas monitoring station at Cape Grim in Tasmania. Methane (the principal ingredient of natural gas) is a potent greenhouse gas, but persists in the atmosphere for a far shorter time than does carbon dioxide.

According to the Australian, Dr. Fraser thinks that methane levels “would start to fall if this global decline in methane emissions continued. He speculated that emissions are declining due to better management of the exploration and use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and the increasing recovery of landfill methane.

Announcements

Cato Conference on Global Warming

The Cato Institute is holding a daylong conference on Global Warming: the State of the Debate, on December 12 at the institutes Hayek Auditorium, 1000 Massachusetts Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C.

Speakers include: Patrick Michaels (University of Virginia and a Cato Senior Fellow), Robert Balling (Arizona State University), John Christy (University of Alabama at Huntsville), Michael Schlesinger (University of Illinois), Robert Mendelsohn (Yale University), and Indur Goklany (Department of Interior).

The complete program and registration information may be found on the internet at http://www.cato.org/events/gw031212.html.

“Provably False Statements” in Defense of Hockey Stick?; Antarctic Ice Expands while Arctic Contracts; The Next Ice Age is a Rea

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2003

in Science

“Provably False Statements” in Defense of Hockey Stick?

As mentioned last issue, the initial response by University of VIrginia Assistant Professor Michael Mann to the questions raised by Canadian analysts Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick over the data underlying the infamous “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the last 100 years (MBH98) was to allege that his critics had used an incorrect data set. Mann said that they should have used data available on a “public” FTP site.

McIntyre and McKitrick have now replied to this allegation. The summary of their detailed rebuttal (available at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html) states, “We refute suggestions by Professor Mann that collation in the proxy data set criticized in [our paper] were introduced in a special purpose Excel spreadsheet prepared for McIntyre in April 2003…. [W]e have determined that the uncollated series at the Mann FTP site are identical to the versions in the data set we examined and criticized in MM [that is, the paper by McIntyre and McKitrick].

“Accordingly, the criticisms of MM in respect to unjustified truncation and fills, use of obsolete data and geographical mislocations apply equally to the acknowledged MBH98 data archive.”

Referring to the detailed allegations made by Mann on the web site of freelance propagandist David Appell, McIntyre and McKitrick say, “It is self-evident that Mann’s comments are a pastiche of false statements. The rebuttal also relates how the contents of the FTP site were changed without notice between when MM were first informed of the site and Nov. 8.

McIntyre and McKitrick conclude that “Professor Mann’s public comments regarding MM contain many provably false statements.” They also point out that, as data he suggested were “meaningless” are identical to those contained in the FTP site, “Professor Mann himself has made a prima facie case for a new refereeing of MBH98.”

Antarctic Ice Expands while Arctic Contracts

New research from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reveals that a 30-year satellite record of sea ice at the poles shows that while Arctic ice has melted, Antarctic ice has increased in recent years. Although the volume of Antarctic ice has decreased over the entire period, this was due to a dramatic loss of Antarctic sea ice between 1973 and 1977.

The researchers suggest that the greater loss of sea ice in the Arctic “may be due to a general warming trend in the Arctic as well as the influence of long-term oscillations or other changes in atmospheric pressure systems, which could pull in more warm air from the south.”

In the Antarctic, the researchers say, “The gradual advance of ice from the late 1970s may be related to long-term atmospheric oscillations in the Southern Hemisphere resulting in stronger westerly winds and cooler temperatures.”

Co-author Claire Parkinson of NASA said, “Trying to explain why these things happen becomes tricky. The temperature connection where warmer temperatures lead to greater melt is reasonably direct, but far from the complete story. Winds and waves move ice around, and consequently the ice can move to places where it is warm enough that it wouldn’t have formed.”

The lead author of the study, NASA’s Don Cavalieri, said, “It seems the two regions are responding to different hemispheric variations. What remains is to sift out and understand how these variations are driving the sea ice in each hemisphere.” (Eurekalert, Nov. 12)

More Problems for Hydrogen Technology

A New York Times article on November 12 pointed out that, “Even some hydrogen advocates say that use of hydrogen could instead make the air dirtier and the globe warmer.”

The paper points out that the most cost-effective way to produce hydrogen involves the burning of coal, rather than using renewable energy sources, and quoted Ronald Kenedi, Managing Director of Sharp Solar, as saying, “It seems like hydrogen is the buzz word right now, with the president talking about it, and maybe putting some money towards it. But the first stop on the hydrogen trail will be coal.”

According to the article, carbon dioxide emissions are a problem: “According to the Energy Department, an ordinary gasoline-powered car emits 374 grams of carbon dioxide per mile it is driven, counting the energy used to make the gasoline and deliver it to the service station, and the emissions of the vehicle itself. The same car powered by a fuel cell would emit nothing, but if the energy required to make the hydrogen came from the electric grid, the emissions would be 436 grams per mile, 17 percent worse than the figure for gasoline.”

The Times also found the cost problematic: “Reuel Shinnar, a professor of chemical engineering at City College of New York, reviewing the options for power production and fuel production, concluded in a recent paper, ‘A hydrogen economy is at least twice as expensive as any other solution.'”

The Next Ice Age is a Real Problem

Continuing with our New York Times-theme issue, the Times’s Tuesday science section celebrated its 25th anniversary on November 11 by running short articles on “25 of the most provocative questions facing science.” Surprisingly, global warming was not on the list, but, “When is the next ice age?” was addressed by veteran Times science writer Andrew C. Revkin.

“The next ice age almost certainly will reach itspeak in about 80,000 years,” wrote Revkin, “but debate persists about how soon it will begin, with the latest theory being that the human influence on the atmosphere may substantially delay the transition.”

Since the next ice age would be a calamity for human civilization, “It would seem that human-driven global warming, although perhaps a disaster on the scale of centuries, may be a good thing in the long run if it fends off the next ice age.” So those who really care about, as former President Bill Clinton might have put it, their children’s children’s children’s descendant’s grandchildren should be burning a lot of gasoline in their Ford Excursions and GM Hummers.

Now Here’s a Really Scary Future

According to a former United Kingdom environment minister, environmental apocalypse is imminent and the solution is–a world environment court!

“The most important issue is enforceability…. What is really needed is a world environment court,” wrote Michael Meacher, MP, in London’s Guardian on October 25. Meacher served as environment minister in the Blair Government from 1997 until he was fired earlier this year.

Meacher continued: “The right to bring cases before such a court should not be confined to the governments of nation states, but should include public interest bodies, notably NGOs. The court should also have permanent specialist bodies to investigate damage to the global environment, whether inflicted or threatened, with powers to subpoena evidence and prosecute individuals and corporate bodies. This would only work if properly funded. However, if the fines imposed on corporate offenders were recycled, the court’s investigative and legal work would quickly become self-financing.”

Raise a Glass to a Warmer World

Many news outlets carried the story in early November that Southern Oregon University researcher Gregory Jones had ascertained that global warming would be good for wine harvests.

According to his press release, “Jones and his colleagues used records of Sotheby’s 100-point vintage rating scale data (where wines scoring over 90 are ‘excellent to superb’ and under 40 are ‘disastrous’) along with climate records dating back to 1950 to look for trends in wine quality or growing season temperatures. What they found was an average temperature rise of 2C rise over the past 50 years and higher vintage ratings.

“‘There were no negative impacts,’ Jones said of the apparent temperature rise in the world’s most renowned wine producing regions.”

Hockey Stick Data Wrong?; Hockey Stick Crowd Dismiss Medieval Warm Period

by William Yeatman on October 29, 2003

in Science

Hockey Stick Data Wrong?

The “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the last thousand years was featured prominently in the IPCCs Third Assessment Report and the National Assessment on Climate Change and is a key component of the case for action on global warming. It shows an unprecedented spike in temperatures in the 20th century. That graph is based extensively on research by University of Virginia assistant professor Michael Mann and others in 1998 and 1999.

Now, however, two Canadians with expertise in statistical analysis, Stephen McIntyre and economics professor Ross McKitrick, have looked again at the source data, supplied to them by Manns research associate at his request, and found considerable errors in the way the data was collated. They were unable to replicate Manns results either by re-running his calculations once the errors were corrected or by constructing their own data set from the original sources. Their reconstruction of the Mann et al. data set from the original sources shows clearly that there was a period of greater warmth than the last century in the 15th century, and that the spike is not unprecedented. They have suggested that Mann should account for the discrepancies.

Manns initial response was that this was a “political stunt.” Further comments were published on the web log of freelance propagandist David Appell. They suggested that McIntyre and McKitrick (“M&M”) had used the wrong data set and that the correct data was publicly available. McIntyre and McKitrick responded with the e-mail exchanges that showed that Manns associate had sent them the data they used at Manns request. Mann also suggested that they should have used 159 proxies rather than the 112 they did. McIntyre and McKitrick responded with e-mails showing that Manns associate referred to 112 proxies (which accorded with references to 112 proxies in the original published research articles). The article has been published on the web by Energy and Environment (http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ee_openaccess.htm) , an English journal, and will appear in the November printed issue. Further details can be found at McKitricks website: (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html. No doubt there is much more to come before this controversy is settled.

Solar Frenzy

German scientists from the Max Planck Institute along with Finnish scientists from Oulu University have reconstructed sunspot activity over the past millennium. They conclude that the sun has been in what they term a “frenzy” since 1940, which may be a factor in global warming.

The research is based on amounts of the beryllium 10 isotope found in ice deposits in both Greenland and the Antarctic. The team also discovered a burst of activity between 1100 and 1250, which corresponds closely to the usually agreed extent of the Medieval Warm Period, but the scientists note that there were fewer sunspots then than today.

The scientists found that the current surge is 2.5 times as great as the long-term average and that solar activity closely matched average temperatures on Earth.

Spokesman Sami Solanki said that, despite discovering a new climate influence, the team still believed the recent surge in warming was caused by fossil fuel emissions. “Even after our findings,” he was reported as saying, “I would say the sharp increase in global temperatures after 1980 can still be mainly attributed to the greenhouse effect arising from carbon dioxide.” (News24, South Africa).

Hockey Stick Crowd Dismiss Medieval Warm Period

Raymond Bradley of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Malcolm Hughes of the University of Arizona (partners with Michael Mann in the research referred to above), together with Henry Diaz of NOAA, have written an article concluding that the Medieval Warm Period was not global. In “Climate in Medieval Time,” published in the Oct. 17 issue of Science, they argue that there is not enough evidence to conclude that regional warm spells between 500 AD and 1500 AD occurred simultaneously.

The scientists concluded that medieval average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere “were not exceptional” because some regions cooled whereas other regions warmed. They also dismiss solar arguments, noting that recent modeling studies show that increased solar irradiance does not warm Earth’s surface at all locations. Instead, they say, ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation, warming the stratosphere and altering atmospheric circulation patterns. If such changes happened in the 12th century, they could well have altered large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns linked to the Arctic Oscillation, thereby warming some regions but not others. (Science Daily, Oct. 20)

Senate Defeats Lieberman-McCain Bill to Cap Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Attorneys General Appeal EPA Decision on CO2; Reactions to

by William Yeatman on October 29, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics, Science

Senate Defeats Lieberman-McCain Bill to Cap Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The U.S. Senate defeated a scaled-down version of Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCains (R-Az.) Climate Stewardship Act, S. 139, on October 30 by a vote of 55 to 43. Forty-five Republicans and ten Democrats voted against the measure. Thirty-seven Democrats were joined by six Republicans in favor.

The Democrats voting against were: Baucus, Breaux, Byrd, Conrad, Dorgan, Landrieu, Levin, Lincoln, Miller, and Pryor. Republicans voting for were: Chafee, Collins, Gregg, Lugar, McCain, and Snowe. Democrats Edwards and Ben Nelson missed the vote.

Lieberman and McCain gained some additional support for their cap-and-trade bill by making special deals for some sectors of the energy economy and by offering only the phase one target of cutting emissions to 2000 levels by 2010. The obvious hypocrisy of this ploy became apparent during the floor debate. The initial emissions cap will do nothing to address the alleged potential problem of global warming, so further, much more expensive reductions would be necessary. S. 139 would create the structure and incentives necessary to make those further reductions. This goal is made explicit in the section on “Ensuring Target Adequacy,” which would require the Under Secretary of Commerce to review the emissions reduction targets in relation to the aim of stabilizing greenhouse gas levels at a safe level.

Senator McCain warned repeatedly that they would be bringing the bill back to the floor again and again. However, immediately after the vote, Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.), who led the opposition to the bill, moved that S. 139 be referred back to the Environment and Public Works Committee, which he chairs. S. 139 was discharged from the committee to the floor as part of the unanimous consent agreement to pass the energy bill in July. It lacks the votes to be voted out of committee

Attorneys General Appeal EPA Decision on CO2

An article in Environmental Science and Technology (Oct. 13), the journal of the American Chemical Society, suggests that a global treaty focusing on intercontinental air pollution could be a better approach to controlling climate change than the Kyoto Protocol. The researchers claim that, by cooperating to reduce pollutants like ozone and aerosols, countries could address their own regional health concerns, keep their downwind neighbors happy and reduce the threat of global warming in the process.

The study, from researchers at Columbia, Harvard and Princeton universities, acknowledges a need to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but proposes that a treaty dealing with air pollutants, like ozone and aerosols, could be a better first step because it unites the interests of all countries concerned. As aerosols and ozone contribute to large-scale climate problems, the researchers argue, the implications of controlling them go beyond air pollution into the realm of climate change.

The researchers suggest a treaty based loosely on the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), which initially addressed acid rain deposition in Europe through voluntary participation. The convention has since been amended to cover a broad range of pollutants, and participants include countries from Western and Eastern Europe as well as the United States and Canada.

Expanding such a treaty to include Asia would give the United States even more incentive to participate, the researchers claim, since westerly winds spread pollution from that part of the world to North America. (Eurekalert, Oct. 15)

Reaction to Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putins decision to put off ratification of the Kyoto Protocol has led to a variety of confused reactions from the climate change industry and their backers.

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri was only able to assert, “I don’t think a negative decision on Kyoto would be in Russia’s interest overall.” He went on to say: “Russia is a large country with a rich history and has ambitions to emerge once again as a global power. It cannot, therefore, gain in standing politically if it does not join hands with other countries in doing what is required to mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases.” (Reuters, Oct. 17).

EU ministers responded by merely restating their position as held before the Moscow conference. The environment ministers of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement concluding, “Climate change is a real problem. Over the last few years, we have begun to experience more extreme climatic phenomena. This summer, parts of Europe faced an exceptional heat wave and drought that caused deaths and illness among older age groups, heat stress to livestock, forest fires, and damage to crops.”

They went on, “The scientific community has gathered convincing evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. Extreme events, such as heat waves or heavy precipitation, will be more frequent, more intense. What we experienced this summer is effectively an illustration of what we are likely to see more frequently in the not too distant future. The international community needs to act with determination to deal with this problem. . . There is no credible alternative to [Kyoto] on the table. We call upon Russia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.” (BBC News Online, Oct. 23).

The David Suzuki Foundation in Canada alleged that Putin was being “leaned on” by President Bush and could not have come up with his decision independently (http://www.davidsuzu ki.org/files/Climate/Ontario/Oct03Russia.pdf).

The World Wildlife Federations representative in Moscow, meanwhile, concluded that the current position was irrelevant: “But the Kyoto accord is a win-win proposition for Russia. One can expect the government and legislature to move ahead with ratification next summer, when the elections are over and they can return to considering Russia’s long-term interests.” (International Herald Tribune, Oct 28).

Return of Malthus; Lindzen Meets the Mayors

by William Yeatman on October 20, 2003

in Science

Return of Malthus

In an inversion of the way Malthusian arguments usually run, a team of Swedish geologists has said that constraints on fossil fuel resources mean that there is not enough oil and gas available to fuel the doomsday scenarios of greenhouse gas production envisaged by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Geologists Anders Sivertsson, Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell of Uppsala University say there is not enough oil and gas left for even the most conservative of the 40 IPCC scenarios to come to pass. Their research suggests that the combined reserves of oil and gas amount to barely 3500 billion barrels of oil, which is considerably below the 5000 billion barrels assumed by the “best-case” IPCC scenario. The “worst-case” assumes 18,000 billion barrels, a level Aleklett calls “completely unrealistic.”

Nebojsa Nakicenovic of the IPCC team counters that their scenarios included a much broader and more internationally accepted range of estimates than the “conservative” Swedes put forward and told New Scientist (Oct. 3) that coal could be used to make up the difference. Aleklett conceded that coal could fill the gap, and both agreed that its use in such an eventuality would be “disastrous.”

Lindzen Meets the Mayors

In response to steps taken by the Mayors of Newton and Worcester, Mass., to mitigate the effects of climate change on their townships, Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published an open letter in The Washington Times on October 9.

He concluded, “Capping CO2 emissions per unit electricity generated will have a negligible impact at best on CO2 levels. It certainly will, however, increase the cost of electricity, and place those states pursuing such a path at a distinct competitive disadvantage. Why would any elected official want that, even at the admittedly severe risk of appearing politically incorrect?

“It is important to understand that the impact of CO2 on the Earth’s heat budget is nonlinear. What this means is that although CO2 has only increased about 30 percent over its pre-industrial level, the impact on the heat budget of the Earth due to the increases in CO2 and other man-influenced greenhouse substances has already reached about 75 percent of what one expects from a doubling of CO2. “Assuming that all of the very irregular change in temperature over the past 120 years or so-about 1 degree F-is due to added greenhouse gases-a very implausible assumption-the temperature rise seen so far is much less (by a factor of 2-to-3) than models predict.

“If we are, nonetheless, to believe the model predictions, the argument goes roughly as follows: The models are correct, but some unknown process has canceled the impact of increasing greenhouse gases, and that process will henceforth cease. Do we really want to put the welfare of the nation, much less any one community, at risk for such an argument? I for one would hope for greater prudence from my elected officials.”

Moscow Conference Casts Doubt over Kyoto’s Future; Schwarzenegger’s Campaign Cheers Environmentalists

by William Yeatman on October 20, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics, Science

Moscow Conference Casts Doubt over Kyoto’s Future

The United Nations’ World Climate Change Conference, which concluded in Moscow on October 3, ended without reaching a consensus on the issue. A senior economic adviser to President Putin stated that he found the answers from the scientific organizers to his detailed questions over climate change science (which for the most part simply quoted from the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report issued two years ago) were unconvincing. When the debate was opened up to the floor on the final day, conference chairman Bert Bolin was forced to admit that nine out of 10 questions from the floor questioned the “consensus” on anthropogenic climate change.

After the conference, Russian advisers were at pains to stress that their skepticism towards Kyoto was based on genuine misgivings over the treaty’s scientific basis and the effects of climate change on Russia rather than simply a negotiating tactic to extract more concessions from the west. An unnamed source told Reuters Oct. 14, “I do not know how clearly what [the senior adviser] said was translated, but judging by the commentaries that appeared the words were interpreted as brinkmanship…. This is not a game, it is a very serious question…about the theory that (the protocol) is based on, and a number of other questions such as the economic issue.”

At time of writing, there has been little official reaction to the conference’s outcome from Kyoto-supporting governments or environmental lobby groups. Annie Petsonk of Environmental Defense, who attended the conference, alleged to Greenwire (Oct. 15) that, “Scientists and economists who spoke in favor of Kyoto often found their microphones cut off and were not allowed to speak until the last day of the conference.”

However, sources suggest that high-level officials preparing for the UNFCC’s ninth Conference of the Parties in Milan in December are bowing to the inevitable. BNA’s Daily Environment Report reported (Oct. 10) that, “For the first time since its drafting, official discussions will include the possibility of combating climate change without the Kyoto Protocol, although talks will focus more on other issues that include the use and transfer of new technologies, capacity building in developing countries, and sustainable development.”

Schwarzenegger’s Campaign Cheers Environmentalists

According to Greenwire (Oct. 15), California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “policy agenda reads like an environmentalist’s wish list.” He has set a target of reducing “air pollution by up to 50 percent, through incentives for clean fuel usage, and build hydrogen car fueling stations along California highways. The governor-elect also supports the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which would require that 20 percent of the state’s power come from solar and wind power by 2017.”

In addition, he has promised to defend the state’s greenhouse gas legislation against legal challenges, saying, “California’s landmark legislation to cut greenhouse gases is now law, and I will work to implement it and to win the expected challenges in court along the way.”

Schwarzenegger’s campaign was not wholly attractive to the environmental lobby, which reacted badly to his suggestion that he might want to close down the state’s environmental protection agency as part of his campaign against government bureaucracy. However, Terry Tamminen, an unpaid adviser to Schwarzenegger on environmental issues, and executive director of Environment Now, told Greenwire that he hoped the new Governor would be able to work more closely with the White House than Gov. Davis did on issues like global warming and air pollution, saying, “As a Republican governor, Arnold is much more likely to be able to work with the Bush administration to resolve differences…. California could persuade the federal government to take another look at those policies.”

Deal on Energy Bill “Close”

Progress on the energy bill conference stalled over recent weeks, but Republican conference leaders are now confident they are ‘close’ to a deal on the outstanding disagreements over electricity, tax, and MTBE issues. Those disagreements are over whether merchant power generators should have to pay for transmission upgrades and issues surrounding liability protection for and a federal ban on the fuel additive MTBE. Sources suggest that one of the issues (it is not known which one) has been sent to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) to try to reach some resolution. The package of tax incentives has not been finished, either. The conferees have agree to drop the Senate’ bill’s three climate titles and the 10% renewable porfolio standard for electric utilities. There is confusion over whether the provisions for oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and for an inventory of oil and gas resources in the outer continental shelf have been dropped. Sen. Joseph Liebermen (D.-Conn.) had issued a press release congratulating Republican conference leaders for removing the provisions, but retracted his statement when no announcement was forthcoming.

Collusion Charges “Absurd”

Following an allegation by the Attorneys General of Connecticut and Maine that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, had colluded with administration officials to sue the Environmental Protection Agency under the Federal Data Quality Act over its dissemination of the junk-science based Climate Action Report 2002, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D.-Conn.) has written to the White House asking officials to release to him any documents relating to the alleged collusion.

CEI rejected the charge as preposterous. “This started as a suit against a Clinton administration global warming report,” CEI President Fred L. Smith, Jr. said in a press release. “The accusations of collusion are absurd and just an attempt to divert attention from the real issue-that junk science is being used as the basis for climate change reports, which could lead to policies that cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars with little, if any, benefit.”

CEI’s legal action began against the Climate Action Report’s predecessor, the National Assessment on Climate Change, in October 2000.

Satellite Data under Fire Again; European Flooding Not Unusual; Russian Scientists Question Alarmism

by William Yeatman on September 16, 2003

in Science

Satellite Data under Fire Again

Satellite readings of atmospheric temperature have long been a thorn in the side of greenhouse theorists, because they fail to show atmospheric warming at the level their theory demands. A new study manipulates the current data to provide that warming trend. Konstantin Vinnikov of the University of Maryland and Norman Grody of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a paper on scienceexpress.org, the online supplement to Science magazine on September 11, in which they calculate that the lower atmosphere has warmed by 0.5 F per decade since 1978.

The findings have been attacked not only by John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, who along with colleague Roy Spencer produces the generally-accepted satellite temperature data, but also by Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in California, which has published data that finds more of a warming trend than Christy’s data. Wentz told the Wall Street Journal (Sep. 12), “It just adds noise to the whole debate.”

Christy went further, saying, “I think it’s a paper that should not have been published … There are many fatal problems with it.” The principal objection is that Vinnikov and Grody did not correct the measurements for inaccuracies introduced by the heating up of the satellites by the sun. “They allowed it to remain in the data,” he told Cox News (Sept. 12), “and it corrupted all of their calculations, like a computer virus.” Grody responded that he did not think Christy should have made the adjustments. He did not address the objection that Christy’s data are closely corroborated by weather balloon measurements.

Michael Mann, an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia who has recently played historian in an attempt to back up his claim that 20th century warming was unprecedented in human history, took on the role of satellite expert in the Cox News story. He said, “It becomes increasingly difficult for climate change ‘contrarians’ to try to make the argument, as they often do, that this satellite information in any way calls into question the far more robust ground observations.”

European Flooding Not Unusual

European headlines in the summer of 2002 were dominated by the news of severe flooding across central Europe. The Vltava flooded the Czech capital of Prague and its floodwaters then caused the Elbe to break its banks in Dresden and other German cities. Five years earlier, the river Oder had caused similar problems in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. The media and politicians pointed the finger of blame firmly at global climate change, with the clear implication being that something new was at work and things could only get worse.

New research from Michael Mudelsee and colleagues from the University of Leipzig published in Nature (Sept. 11) looks at data reaching as far back as 1021 (for the Elbe) and 1269 (for the Oder). They conclude that there is no upward trend in the incidence of extreme flooding in this region of central Europe.

The researchers write, “For the past 80 to 150 [years], we find a decrease in winter flood occurrence in both rivers, while summer floods show no trend, consistent with trends in extreme precipitation occurrence. The reduction in winter flood occurrence can partly be attributed to fewer events of strong freezing-following such events, breaking river ice at the end of the winter may function as a water barrier and enhance floods severely. Additionally, we detect significant long-term changes in flood occurrence rates in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and conclude that reductions in river length, construction of reservoirs and deforestation have had minor effects on flood frequency.”

UK Met Office Gives Everyone a Climate Model

Taking a leaf from another scientific quest for something of which there is no scientific evidence, SETI-the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, the UK Meteorological Office has decided to enlist the public’s help in refining its data. They have released a computer program that runs a version of their climate model on a desktop computer, enabling the Met Office to assess its performance. The model will produce different results depending on what information is fed into it. By having the model run on a great many machines, the researchers will get a better idea of the range of results it produces and how they are distributed.

The reasoning behind the decision reveals one of the biggest problems with climate models, that their interpretation is largely guesswork. “We can’t predict which versions of the model will be any good without running these simulations, and there are far too many for us to run them ourselves,” Dr Myles Allen of Oxford University told Reuters. “Together, participants’ results will give us an overall picture of how much human influence has contributed to recent climate change and the range of possible changes in the future,” he added.

The model can be downloaded from www.climateprediction.net, but needs a fairly modern computer to run. Several early downloaders have noted that it cannot be manipulated and provides little value to anyone running it. Some disruption to internet connections has also been reported.

Russian Scientists Question Alarmism

In an article dated September 9th for Novosti, the official Russian information agency, Alexander Frolov, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, stated baldly that, “Russia does not believe in apocalyptic forecasts” of global warming.

He wrote, “The “grimaces” of climate are due mainly to natural fluctuations, with man-made causes having only a partial effect. On the other hand, the climatic system is incredibly complex, depends on many factors, and is driven by direct and reverse forces that turn cause into effect and back again, and so are hard to translate into credible quantitative estimates of ongoing changes.” He went on, “I am not one inclined towards extreme views. Surely, one should take note of the climate warming, adopt preventive measures, evacuate people from risk zones, restore the rivers to their normal regimens, make adaptations, etc. Fluctuations that we observe are in effect random events resulting in an increasingly unstable climatic system. Growing instability, however, actually means only the possibility, not the inevitability, of some or other change.”

Meanwhile, according to co2science.org, “In a recent discussion published in the Russian journal Geomagnetizm i Aeronomiya (Vol. 43, pp. 132-135), two scientists from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences challenge the politically-correct global warming dogma that vexes the entire world. Bashkirtsev and Mashnich (2003) say that ‘a number of publications report that the anthropogenic impact on the Earth’s climate is an obvious and proven fact,’ when in actuality, in their opinion, ‘none of the investigations dealing with the anthropogenic impact on climate convincingly argues for such an impact.'”

The Russians commend the work of Friis-Christensen and Lassen on the correlation between sunspot activity and climate and back it up with their own research. They find such a close correlation that they are able to predict that because of the lessening activity over the next few solar cycles, the Earth may enter a cooling phase. Indeed, they say, “The available data of observations support our inference about the cooling that has already started,” because “the average annual air temperature in Irkutsk, which correlates well with the average annual global temperature of the surface air, attained in 1997 its maximum equal to +2.3C” and afterwards “began to diminish to +1.2C in 1998, +0.7C in 1999, and +0.4C in 2000.”

Etc.

From the Miami Herald’s Cancun edition for September 12 comes this gem from a page 3 “point of view” column by Tere Carpinelli of Le Voz de Mexico:

“Believe it or not, one expert even believes that millions of menopausal Baby Boomer women are partly to blame for the rise in the Earth’s temperature! ‘There are more than 900 million middle-aged women worldwide in the early stages of menopause who are experiencing what are commonly known as hot flashes on a regular basis,’ professor of meteorology Dr. Cyrill Sanders told a convention of environmental experts in Osaka, Japan. “That is why the Earth is warming at an increasing rate and there is no end in sight. Sanders said he and his team discovered a clear correlation between the number of women entering menopause over the past 25 years and steadily increasing temperatures.”

As far as we can tell, the source of this ridiculous claim was an August 19 issue of Weekly World News, which ranks below Scientific American for credibility. Perhaps Carpinelli was not sure that this was a joke because of the constant confounding, perpetuated by environmental groups, of correlation and causality.

Scientists Play Historians; Satellite Wars

by William Yeatman on September 2, 2003

in Science

Scientists Play Historians

Stepping up the attack on the study by Willie Soon et al. that demonstrates that there is nothing unusual about temperatures in this century, Michael Mann’s coauthor Philip Jones of the University of East Anglia played amateur historian when he tried to explain away common knowledge about past warm and cold spells in Northern Europe. He pointed the Guardian (Sept. 1) towards the part of their paper (see last issue) that contends that many of the obvious indicators of past temperature variability do not mean what people suppose they mean.

Mann et al. contend that the medieval presence of vineyards in Britain is meaningless because there are 350 vineyards there now, compared to 50 or 60 in the Middle Ages. In arguing thus, they ignore advances in technology that allow vineyards to prosper in colder climates as well as increases in population (there were 5-6 million people in England before the Black Death, making the rate of vineyards to people almost twice as high as it is today).

They also allege that the Viking colonization of Greenland was motivated by exile, not by a search for good climate. This may be true, but has no bearing on the fact that evidence from insect habitats shows that Greenland was livable at that time but ceased to be afterwards. The Viking settlers were forced to abandon Greenland when they were no longer able to grow hay to feed their livestock.

Finally, the researchers allege that the Little Ice Age-era “frost fairs” on the River Thames in London were possible only because the design of London Bridge dammed the tidal flow of salt water upstream. This appears to ignore the fact that that particular design of London Bridge was first built in 1176, while frost fairs did not begin till much later. Whatever the effects of the bridge, temperatures much colder than today would still have been necessary for the river to freeze.

A wealth of information on the Little Ice Age as a global phenomenon may be found in University of California archaeologist Brian Fagan’s book, The Little Ice Age, published by Basic Books in 2000. The chapters on “The Great Hunger” and “The Specter of Hunger” are especially instructive. Apparently, Mann and Jones have not had time to read it.

Satellite Wars

The attempts to discredit John Christy and Roy Spencer’s satellite data that show no appreciable warming in the atmosphere over recent years continue. Ben Santer and his colleagues, who prefer the recalibration of the data from Remote Sensing Systems because it fits their climate model better, argue in a letter to Science (Aug. 22) in response to Christy’s criticisms of their data that the independent validation of Christy’s data by weather balloon measurements are “not an unambiguous ‘gold standard’ for the evaluation of satellite data.”

The Greening Earth Society comments (www.co2andclimate.org/co2report/int_0902.html), “Different agencies and researchers have put together several different compilations of the weather-balloon data records. Each has been carefully scrutinized and corrected to the best ability of the respective researchers in order to account for the data problems Santer describes. The methods used to make these corrections vary across research groups. Yet, when the final data are combined and global trends examined, the trends fall very close to (and in most cases are slightly less than) the UAH satellite record.

“Santer and his co-authors would be in a much stronger position if the global trends from weather-balloon data were all over the board, with some closer to the RSS trend than to the UAH trend. But that isn’t the case. The consistency of results indicates that the weather-balloon record errors Santer is so worried about are not nearly as problematic as they lead the reader to believe they are. This is because the errors are accounted for. As a consequence, any claim that climate models are better than actual observations rings hollow.

“There remains a large discrepancy between the patterns of temperature change at the surface and those in the lower to middle atmosphere (especially in the tropics) that the model does not replicate. This discrepancy indicates a fundamental weakness in the current generation of climate models. Something in their internal workings fails to parameterize negative feedback loops that appear to be ridding the atmosphere of excess greenhouse heating. As a result they overestimate future warming rates. The controversy continues.”

Announcement

The Cato Insitute will hold a briefing on “McCain-Lieberman on Global Warming: a Journey to Nowhere,” at noon on Friday, September 12, in Room B-369, Rayburn House Office Building. The speaker will be Patrick Michaels, Cato senior fellow and professor at the University of Virginia. Lunch will be provided. Reservations, which are required, may be made on the Cato web site at www.cato.org or by calling Krystal Brand at (202) 789-5229. The briefing will also be broadcast live online.

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →