Science

Sea Ice Thickens

On August 19, 2000 the New York Times published a front-page story claiming that open sea sighted by Dr. James J. McCarthy director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, at the North Pole was clear evidence of global warming.

The story implied that this hasnt occurred since the Eocene epoch 55 million years ago. McCarthy described the reaction to the sighting, “There was a sense of alarm. Global warming was real, and we were seeing its effects for the first time that far north.”

Ten days later the Times ran a retraction in a Science Times article that quoted Dr. Mark Serreze, a climatologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., as saying, “Theres nothing to be necessarily alarmed about. Theres been open water at the pole before. We have no clear evidence at this point that this is related to global climate change.”

Perhaps due to this embarrassing gaffe, the New York Times is shying away from publishing further sea ice stories. That might explain its failure to mention sea ice thickening in the Antarctica. According to the Agence France-Presse (October 31, 2001), “Global warming might be a popular worry but scientists on Antarcticas coast this southern summer are recording some of the thickest sea ice ever seen.”

“To my knowledge this is the greatest summer sea ice extent thats ever been recorded in McMurdo Sound,” said Michael Cameron a seal expert working from New Zealands Scott Base. “Everybodys guess is that its due to this giant iceberg off of Cape Bird blocking the swells that would normally break up any sea ice in the area.” The sea ice near McMurdo Sound was 40 percent thicker than normal last year, and this year its even thicker.

Of course, if the New York Times had reported this, they would have explained that thicker Antarctic sea ice is just the sort of thing one would expect with global warming.

Junk Science in Science

The October 26 issue of Science carried a study that attempts to use data from the Nenana Ice Classic, a betting lottery where participants guess the date and time when the frozen Tanana River, near the town of Nenana southwest of Fairbanks, Alaska, breaks up, to detect global warming.

A tripod connected to a clock mechanism on shore is secured to the ice on the river. When the ice melts the tripod is swept downriver tripping the clock and recording the time. This lottery has occurred every year since 1917, thereby providing a continuous record of ice breakup.

The Science study suggests two mechanisms to explain the ice breakup: thermal effects where the ice melts and dynamic effects where the ice is broken up by mechanical forces upstream. The first would be attributed to temperature, the latter to precipitation.

The study claims that there has been a trend towards earlier breakup that is correlated with a warming trend. But this conclusion is dubious, according to John Daly who maintains the “Still Waiting for Greenhouse” website. A look at the whole Nenana record shows significant cyclical variation ice breakup, but overall there is no trend.

The authors of the study, however, begin their statistical analysis at the year 1949, a very cold year. They also excluded the breakup of 2001, which was very late, later in fact than the breakup in 1917. The trend found in the analysis is entirely dependent on the starting and ending dates chosen.

Moreover, as Daly points out, the authors dismiss the possibility of dynamic effects as the major cause of earlier ice break up and claim that there are no significant precipitation and snowfall trends.

“Thats not how the Alaska Climate Research Center sees it,” writes Daly. “As we can see [from their chart] there has been a significant increase in tital snowfall during the 20^th century, the inevitable effect of which would be greater mechanical forces acting upon the river ice from upstream, causing it to break up earlier than would be the case with thermal melt alone.”

For a more comprehensive critique of the study, go to www.john-daly.com/nenana.htm.

Etc.

• The city of Marrakesh, Morocco, the site of COP-7 was likely chosen for its considerable charms and pleasant climate. Its interesting to note, however, that since 1924 there has been no warming and perhaps an overall cooling in that city (www.john-daly.com).

• IPCC Chairman Robert Watson told Kyodo News Service (October 18, 2001) that, “I could envision that the U.S. will sooner or later be part of the international debate on climate because industries in the U.S. will demand it.” Fortunately, Dr. Watsons expertise as a scientific bureaucrat makes his political prophecies as credible as his climatic predictions.

Is Greenlands Ice Sheet Thinning?

A new study in Nature (November 1, 2001) claims to have found significant thinning in the north Greenland ice sheet. The study compared current ice sheet thickness, measured by radar altimetry during 1994 and 1995, with ice sheet measurements from 1954, using “trigonometric leveling.” This entailed positioning a tripod at the midpoint of a 1,200-mile traverse from the east to the west coast of the ice sheet. The elevation of the tripod was then measured from 300 stations along the traverse.

The problem is that the east coast and west coast measurements differed by 11.8 meters, a rather large measurement error. The authors of the Nature study attempted to correct the errors through statistical processes based upon assumptions that may or may not be valid. So the 1954 data point is highly suspect.

The ice sheet was divided into six longitudinal bands, A through F. The authors found that the band A ice stream had thickened, bands B-D experienced no significant change, and that bands E and F had thinned.

Since, as the authors note, the “Greenland ice sheet is still responding to climatic changes that occurred thousands of years ago,” it is important to distinguish between long-term changes in ice dynamics with short-term changes in snow accumulation. They argue that their “41-year interval is long enough to ensure that we are measuring the dynamic response of the ice sheet rather than fluctuations in snow accumulation.”

But given that they are comparing two data points rather than a continuous record, their argument is unconvincing. They also note that, “The only other direct measurement of elevation changes in this area come from a study covering the whole ice sheet for the period 1994-99. It shows slight thickening in bands E and F where we measured significant thinning.” They attribute the thickening to “variations in snow accumulation.”

Sea Ice Expanding in Antarctica

We noted in the last issue that Antarctic sea ice has been thickening substantially for the past two years. Now we notice a scientific study published last spring that indicates that this is a longer-term phenomenon. A study published in the April 15 issue of Geophysical Research Letters finds that sea ice in Antarctica has been increasing rather than decreasing for decades. Satellite microwave imaging data from October 1987 to September 1999 “show an ongoing slight but significant hemispheric increase of 3.7 (0.3) percent in extent and 6.6 (1.5) percent in area.”

The authors also note, “These results suggest that the rather smaller increase of 1.0 (0.5) percent per decade in the Antarctic sea-ice extent and 1.3 (0.6) percent in area detected for the period November 1978-December 1996 is ongoing.”

Scientists Lack Necessary Tools to Predict Climate Change

A report in Science (September 7, 2001), looks at the issue of climate prediction by looking at one area of the planet that has experienced significant warming, the Antarctic Peninsula. According to Vaughan, et al., the average temperature increase for all Antarctic stations from 1959 to 1996 was about 1.2 degrees Celsius. Some regions, however, experienced cooling trends, while others experienced warming trends.

The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced a warming trend “considerably larger” than the Antarctic average. The authors argue that, “There is a 99 percent likelihood that the recent warming is exceptional compared with any part of the 500-year period recorded in the longest of these records.”

By analyzing sediment cores the authors found that seven ice shelves, including the Prince Gustav Channel ice shelf that collapsed in 1995, have been lost in the last fifty years in the Antarctic Peninsula. They also found, however, that between 6000 and 1900 years ago the Prince Gustav “ice shelf was absent and climate was as warm as it has been recently.”

“The recent rapid regional warming in the Antarctic Peninsula is thus exceptional over several centuries and probably unmatched for 1900 years,” according to the authors. “It may be tempting to cite anthropogenic greenhouse gases as the culprit, but to do so without offering a mechanism is superficial.” Of course, recent climatic conditions in the area are not exceptional for the last 6000 years.

The authors offer three possible explanations for the warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, but warn that, “Because we cannot distinguish between these widely differing mechanisms, we have no basis for predicting future changes, even if we accept that the recent warming is exceptional.” They conclude, “This suggests that we do not yet have tools to predict potentially socially significant regional climate changes in the next 100 years.”

Greening Earth not Necessarily Due to Warmer Climate

We reported in the September 5 issue about a study that was to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (September 16, 2001). The study argued, “that warmer temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide have led to a greening of the northern hemisphere.”

It seems, however, that there are some problems with the study. According to John Daly (Still Waiting for Greenhouse, www.john-daly.com), the studys claim that warmer temperatures are causing a greener greenhouse is wrong. Thus the increases in vegetation must be due solely to higher levels of CO₂, as hundreds of agricultural studies have shown.

A press release from the American Geophysical Union explains that, “Researchers using satellite data have confirmed that plant life above 40 degrees north latitude (New York, Madrid, Ankara, Beijing) has been growing more vigorously since 1981 due to rising temperatures and buildup of greenhouse gases, and Eurasia seems to be greening more than North America, as existing vegetation is more lush for longer periods of time” (www.enn.com).

The correlation between temperature and greening above 40 degrees latitude is fairly weak, according to Daly. From the early-to-mid 1980s there was significant greening even though temperatures were hardly changing. Other years also show significant greening in cooler years.

More importantly, however, when discussing the amount of greening the study includes the area above 30 degrees latitude, which includes the southern United States. But, the area between 30 and 40 degrees latitude is not included when the researchers correlate temperature and plant life. Since the southern U.S. has greened significantly while temperatures have trended downward, including that data would have made the correlation between temperature and plant life disappear altogether.

Daly argues that the CO2 fertilizer effect is the only remaining explanation for the greening of the planet.

Announcements

• Skeptical Environmentalist Speaks

Professor Bjorn Lomborg will speak at a Cooler Heads Coalition congressional and media briefing from noon to 1:30 PM on Thursday, 4th October, in Room HC-5 of the U. S. Capitol. Lomborg is author of the Skeptical Environmentalist, which was published in the U. S. this month by Cambridge University Press and which has received rave reviews. Those wishing to attend the briefing should Rsvp to Michael Mallinger at CEI: telephone (202) 331-1010, ext. 254, or e-mail: mmallinger@cei.org. Please give your name, affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address.

• The Cooler Heads Coalition will hold a congressional and media briefing on “Whats Wrong with Regulating Carbon Dioxide?” on Thursday, October 11. The briefing will be held from noon to 1:30 in room SC-5 of the U.S. Capitol building. The speakers will be Dr. Ross McKitrick, associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Ontario Canada, and Dr. Brian Fisher, executive director of ABARE, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics. Those wishing to attend the briefing should Rsvp to Michael Mallinger at CEI: telephone (202) 331-1010, ext. 254, or e-mail: mmallinger@cei.org. Please give your name, affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address.

• The seventh Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is scheduled to take place in Marrakesh, Morocco from October 29 to November 9 under a new chairman, Mohammed Elyazghi, Moroccos environment minister.

 Artful Bias or Outright Deception?

The IPCCs assessment reports and especially its summaries for policymakers have been criticized from many quarters and have been shown to contain many errors and weaknesses. One of the most recent criticisms, and perhaps the most devastating, is the one authored by Dr. David Wojick, president of Climatechangedebate.org, who has a Ph.D. in mathematical logic and philosophy of science.

In the report, The UN IPCCs Artful Bias, Wojick analyzes the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) for Working Group I, which deals with the science, of the IPCCs Third Assessment Report. According to Wojick, the SPM “is an artfully constructed presentation of just the science that supports the fear of human induced climate change. It is as one sided as a legal brief, which it resembles.” Wojick goes on to argue, “A line by line analysis of the SPM reveals that all of the science that cuts against the theory of human interference with climate has been systematically omitted.”

The first problem that Wojick presents is that the IPCC ignores the errors in the surface temperature data. The SPM claims, “The global average surface temperature has increased over the 20^th century by about 0.6 degrees C.” The certainty expressed in this statement, says Wojick, is unwarranted.

Despite the many problems with the surface temperature record, the IPCC only briefly mentions the urban heat island effect and claims that all errors have been taken into account, without explanation. But as Wojick explains, “There is no way to correct for most measurement errors, including the urban heat island effect. The magnitude of these errors, which may be quite large, is simply unknown. The supposed corrections that have been made to date are merely guesswork.”

Moreover, the temperature data that we have is not a random sample of the Earths surface, but a “convenience sample,” or data that is the most convenient. The IPCCs “reference to data gaps,” says Wojick, “suggests that sometimes a station did not record, or the data is bad, not that there is in actuality no data for most of the earth, most of the time. So the fact that we merely have a convenience sample is either omitted, or cleverly disguised.”

The importance of this point is that the IPCC has calculated its confidence levels as if it had a random sample. Given that the sample is not random, the margin of error in the data is much larger than suggested by the IPCC.

Other problems with the IPCCs SPM is how it glosses over the “profound contradiction” between the satellite temperature record and the surface record, the huge uncertainties with regard to aerosols, the omission of natural sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and the inadequate treatment of the chaotic nature of the Earths climate. The full critique can be found at www.john-daly.com.

No Rise in New England Hurricanes

Another peer-reviewed scientific study of hurricanes has failed to find a trend in hurricane activity in the United States, let alone a link between hurricane activity and global warming. The study, published in Ecological Monographs (71: 2001), looks at hurricane data from 1620-1997.

What the authors found was that, “there was no clear century-scale trend in the number of major hurricanes.” They did find that there were more lower intensity hurricanes reported in the 19^th and 20^th centuries than there were in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. But the authors attribute the difference to “improvements in meteorological observations and records since the early 19^th century.” Also, the data from the last 200 years show that there were five of the strongest category hurricanes reported in the cooler 19^th century and only one reported during the 20^th century.

Announcements

• The Skeptical Environmentalist Looks at Global Warming and the Kyoto Protocol

Professor Bjorn Lomborg will speak at a Cooler Heads Coalition congressional and media briefing from noon to 1:30 PM on Thursday, 4th October, in Room HC-5 of the U. S. Capitol. Lomborg is author of the Skeptical Environmentalist, which was published in the U. S. this month by Cambridge University Press and which has received rave reviews. Those wishing to attend the briefing must Rsvp to Michael Mallinger at CEI: telephone (202) 331-1010, ext. 254, or e-mail: mmallinger@cei.org. Please give your name, affiliation, phone number, and e-mail address.

 Wind Power Cheaper than Coal?

“The cost of wind energy is now less than that of coal.” With that startling declaration, Mark Z. Jacobson and Gilbert M. Masters, with the Department of Civil Environmental Engineering at Stanford University, conclude that the U.S. could meet its Kyoto target by replacing 59 percent of coal energy with between 214,000 and 236,000 wind turbines (Science, August 24, 2001).

How do they come to this conclusion? They point out that the direct cost of energy from a new coal power plant is about 3.5 to 4 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). But, claim the authors, there are many costs associated with coal use that are not accounted for.

“Coal-mine dust kills 2,000 U.S. miners yearly, and since 1973, the federal black lung-disease benefits program has cost $35 billion,” say Jacobson and Masters. “Coal emissions also cause acid deposition, smog, visibility degradation, and global warming; its particles increase asthma, respiratory and cardiovascular disease, and mortality.” Including these costs, say the authors, increases the cost of coal to 5.5 to 8.3 cents per kWh.

Wind power, on the other hand, only costs 3 to 4 cents per kWh. There is no mention of externality costs associated with wind power, however. Many of the costs that are attributed to coal are dubious, to say the least. Linking asthma to particulate pollution seems weak, since asthma rates have been going up even while particulate concentrations have fallen.

Moreover, most experts attribute the rise in asthma to higher levels of indoor air pollution. The harmful effects of acid deposition have been greatly exaggerated, and there is no evidence of any costs associated with higher carbon dioxide levels or global warming.

Glen Schleede, president of Energy Market and Policy Analysis, Inc., has heavily criticized the report. He notes several external costs associated with wind power that are ignored by Jacobson and Masters, including scenery impairment, noise, property value losses, the need for massive infrastructure investment to transport electricity from remote wind farms, and the provision of backup power to alleviate intermittency problems associated with wind power.

Moreover, the assumptions behind the analysis are wrong. Schleede points out, for example, that Jacobson and Masters assume that windmills have a capacity factor of between 35.8 and 39.6 percent. In reality, capacity factors are much smaller. Schleede assumes a 30 percent capacity factor (which is still higher than that currently seen in practice) to determine that it would take as many as 366,000 wind turbines to replace 59 percent of coal power.

Finding suitable sites for so many windmills (which are 300 ft. tall) would pose serious difficulties. Schleedes full critique, “Science article is wrong in claiming that wind energy is cheaper then coal,” can be found at www.heartland.org.

Speaking of costs, a proposed wind farm on a remote hillside in northeast Scotland has met with significant resistance. According to the September 1 issue of the Independent (London), “Accusations of foul play, misinformation, environmental destruction and dirty tricks have abounded in a fight over the siting of 21 turbines, each as large as a 30-story block of flats.” Worries about the adverse effects on local property values are a major concern to property owners in the area.

Renewable Energy Cant Compete in UK

Britains energy regulator, Ofgem, has told the government that more subsidies may be required for renewable energy if it is to meet the stringent greenhouse gas targets it has set for the country, according to the Financial Times (September 1, 2001). Britain has set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 23 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, and it wants half of those reductions to come through the use of renewable energy.

After implementing the New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) five months ago, there has been a drop in wholesale electricity prices of 20 to 25 percent for large power generators and a drop of 17 percent for smaller generators including renewable energy generators.

Producers of renewable energy claim that the new arrangement has harmed them disproportionately relative to the rest of the electric power industry, mainly because they are unable to predict power output due to the intermittency problems that plague renewable energy. NETA “requires power producers to forecast output four hours in advance, and to buy any shortfall at premium prices.”

Ofgems chief executive, Callum McCarthy, is unapologetic. “Put simply, reliable plant commands a premium under NETA, as the majority of electricity customers want a reliable source of supply and the electricity system needs to be kept in balance to maintain the security and quality of supply” (Daily Telegraph, September 1, 2001).

“If for wider environmental reasons the government wishes to encourage forms of renewable generation whose output is less predictable or less reliable,” said McCarthy, it should “consider additional support to these types of generators” (Financial Times).

A Greener Planet

A new study slated to appear in the September 16 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres has found that warmer temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide have led to a greening of the northern hemisphere. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which portrays global warming as an unmitigated disaster, this new study confirms what numerous other studies have found; that many benefits may result from a warmer planet.

A press release from the American Geophysical Union explains that, “Researchers using satellite data have confirmed that plant life above 40 degrees north latitude (New York, Madrid, Ankara, Beijing) has been growing more vigorously since 1981 due to rising temperatures and buildup of greenhouse gases, and Eurasia seems to be greening more than North America, as existing vegetation is more lush for longer periods of time” (www.enn.com).

One of the researchers, Ranga Myneni, of Boston University, “suggested that these results are indicative of a greener greenhouse. This is an important finding because of possible implications to the global carbon cycle, he said. Further, Myneni said, under the Kyoto Protocol, most of the developed countries in the north can use certain vegetation carbon sinks to meet their greenhouse gas emissions reduction commitments. If the northern forests are greening they may already be absorbing carbon dioxide. Myneni said, As to how much and for how long, that needs more research.”

Warming and Cooling in Alaska

Global warming alarmists have repeatedly pointed to warmer temperatures in Alaska as a major sign that significant global warming has already arrived. Recent research, however, has found that Alaska has undergone similar periods of warming before man began to burn fossil fuels.

In a study in the August 21 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Feng Sheng Hu, a professor of plant biology and geology at the University if Illinois, and his co-authors, constructed a continuous 2,000-year temperature record of the area by analyzing sediment samples from Farewell Lake, near the northwest foothills of the Alaska Range. What they found was that there were two periods of warm climatic conditions that occurred in A.D. 0-300 and 850-1200, which were also characterized by dryer than normal conditions.

An article about the study noted that Dr. Hu and postdoctoral associate Will Turner did a follow up study that found that forest fires were more abundant during the Little Ice Age than during warming periods, contradicting global warming predictions (www.news.uiuc.edu/).

Etc.

• The Los Angeles Times (September 1, 2001) reports that the San Fernando Valley is experiencing its coolest summer since 1987. According to Tim McClung, a Weather Service meteorologist, “The average temperature in downtown Los Angeles in July was 71 degrees, 3.9 degrees below the normal average of 74.9. The average August was 72 degrees, 4 degrees below the average of 76.”

Science Magazines Summer Silliness

This summers silly season has not generated anything approaching last summers top-of-the-front-page claim by the New York Times that “The North Pole is melting” because of global warming. The Timess story by John Noble Wilford was based on only one sourcea press release from a global warming nut, albeit one with an academic post at Harvard. As reported in the August 23 and September 6, 2000 issues of Cooler Heads, the story was obviously ludicrous and the Times was quickly forced to retract it.

Although nothing so delightful has been concocted for this Augusts hottest days, Science Magazine is trying to entertain. In its August 17 issue, Science published an article on “Hidden Health Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Mitigation.” The article claims that more people die from air pollution than from traffic accidents in New York City, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Santiago, Chile. Reducing fossil fuel use to cut greenhouse gas emissions would therefore have the additional immediate benefit of saving lives and improving health.

There are several problems with the “study.” First, improving air quality has already been accomplished in cities like New York, where fossil fuels are still consumed in huge quantities, but few people now die because of air pollution. Second, the study doesnt mention that cutting fossil fuel use will either be enormously expensive or force people to use much less energy, both of which have serious health consequences. Moreover, reducing fossil fuel use is by far the most expensive way to reduce air pollution.

Third, it is highly doubtful that more people die from air pollution than from traffic accidents in all but a few big cities in developing countries. And in most of those cities, the worst air pollution comes from things like using charcoal or cow dung for cooking. Using more fossil fuels in those cities could cut air pollution.

Fourth, the study implies that all greenhouse gases are pollutants. This last point was picked up by Paul Recers story for the Associated Press (August 16, 2001). Recer, whose title is given in the byline as AP Science Writer, lists carbon dioxide as one of the pollutants causing people to die prematurely.

Climate Scientists Meet in Halifax

More than eighty atmospheric scientists are attending the first “International Conference on Global Warming and the Next Ice Age” at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada this week. Sponsored by the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society and the American Meteorological Society, the conference is one of the few to bring together large numbers of scientific supporters and skeptics of global warming alarmism for debate and discussion.

The Halifax Chronicle-Herald reported (August 22, 2001) that Dr. Petr Chylek, professor of atmospheric science at Dalhousie, “organized the conference so that theories on climate change other than conventional thoughts about global warming could be discussed.” Dr. Chylek decided to hold the event after reading a newspaper story that cited scientific research claiming that the Greenland glaciers were melting because of global warming, whereas his own research showed that earlier temperature increases had not led to melting.

Dr. Chylek further explained that many of his peers believe that natural factors such as solar radiation and variation in climate patterns are contributing to global warming. He asserted, “Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to find a way to scare the publicand this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are.”

Dr. Greg Holloway, professor of oceanography at the Institute of Ocean Studies in British Columbia, pointed out that many past periods of dramatic climate change such as the ice ages occurred without significant human influence. “Everybodys ready for more evidence of global warming and not as ready for the scientific balance which is what you are receiving here.”

Etc.

• The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World by Bjorn Lomborg was published in Britain on August 15 by Cambridge University Press. CUPs American edition is due on September 15. Lomborg, who is a professor of statistics at Aarhus University in Denmark, re-examines many of the controversial environmental claims originally made by Julian Simon and concludes that Simon got most things rights. Lomborg backs up his own conclusions with a huge amount of documentation.

Considering the amount of environmental heresy the book contains, it is astonishing how favorable the press reaction has been. The Economist (August 4, 2001) and the New York Times (August 7, 2001) ran long, flattering pieces on Lomborg and his book, which expands and updates the 1998 Danish version. The ever-so-politically-correct Guardian in London ran a three-part series by Lomborg.

The books longest chapter is devoted to global warming. Although Lomborg accepts the IPCCs assessment reports, his conclusions are more in line with the Cooler Heads Coalition.

Here is just one sample: “Is it not curious, then, that the typical reporting on global warming tells us all the bad things that could happen from CO₂ emissions, but few or none of the bad things that could come from overly zealous regulation of such emissions? And this is not just a question of the medias penchant for bad news, as discussed in chapter 2, because both could make excellent bad news.”

Global Warming Quantified?

One of the major shortcomings of the report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is that it treats all of its scenarios, 35 in all, as equally likely. Many scientists have commented that the high end of the IPCCs estimate of future global warming, the range from 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C (2.5 to 10.4 degrees F), is highly unlikely.

A research group from MIT calculated that there is far less than one percent chance that temperatures will rise 5.8 degrees in the next 100 years. They also calculated that there is a 17 percent chance that the temperature increase will fall short of 1.4 degrees.

In a new paper published in the July 20 issue of Science, Thomas Wigley, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and Sarah Raper, with the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England, attempt to quantify the likelihood that temperature rise will fall within the range predicted by the IPCC.

What they found was that there is a 90 percent probability that temperatures will rise between 1.7 to 4.9 degrees C (3 to 8.8 degrees F) by 2100. This range, note the authors, “is very large compared with the observed warming over the last century.” They also conclude that the probability that temperatures will reach 5.8 degrees to be very low.

They come to this conclusion by attaching probability distributions, using IPCC values, to what they deem the most important uncertainties, such as climate sensitivity and the role of sulfate aerosols, in the climate models. They then run a simplified climate model that is calibrated to the more complex global circulation models, to generate a probability distribution for thousands of combinations.

Although this paper is important due to the fact that it focuses on the uncertainties in climate modeling, it is important to understand what the paper actually says. Its not so much a prediction of how temperatures will change in the future, but a prediction of how the models behave. In other words, if you run the model 100 times, it will give you a temperature rise that falls within 1.7 and 4.9 degrees 90 percent of the time. “Our results are only as realistic as the assumptions upon which they are based,” say the authors. Many of the IPCCs assumptions are demonstrably false.

Monster Hurricanes: Global Warming or Global Alarming?

A July 19th CNN story on the increasing severity of hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean highlights the uncertainty inherent in long-term predictions of the effects of global climate change. CNN Miami Bureau Chief John Zarrella recently interviewed Christopher Landsea of the National Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory/Hurricane Research Division about his recent article on hurricane activity in the journal Science.

In the interview, Landsea pointed out that a major upward shift in climate has been responsible for the increase in hurricane activity over the last six years. He anticipates this shift will continue for the next ten to 40 years. However, he acknowledges that the increase in injuries and property damage caused by hurricanes is due to population growth and economic development. Specifically, he states: “I think at this point the U.S. is so developed and theres so many people along the coast that just about anywhere is a major disaster ready to happen.”

In his journal article entitled “The Recent Increase in Atlantic Hurricane Activity: Causes and Implications,” (Science, 20 July 2001), Landsea explains that the increased activity is caused by a simultaneous increase in sea surface temperatures and decreases in vertical wind shear. He points out that local conditions in the tropical Atlantic have a direct effect on the development of hurricanes. In addition, he states that the oceans provide the best indicators of long run variability for hurricane activity.

For historical perspective, he explains that from 1944-1970, the average number of major hurricanes in the North Atlantic Basin was 2.7. However, from 1971-1994, this number fell to 1.5. The recent upsurge has taken place from 1995-2000, during which the number rose to 3.8. He explains that 1997 was a year of below average activity because of the strong El Nio event that occurred.

As for whether the recent upward trend is due to global climate change, he states: “The historical multidecadal-scale variability in Atlantic hurricane activity is much greater than what would be expected from gradual temperature increase attributed to global warming. There have been various studies investigating the potential effect of long-term global warming on the number and strength of Atlantic-basin hurricanes. The results are inconclusive. Some studies document an increase in activity while others suggest a decrease.” He concludes by offering a stern warning to policymakers that our nations emergency management infrastructure must be bolstered to counteract the threat of more severe hurricanes over the next decade.

Therefore, the threat of increased injuries and property damage due to more severe hurricane seasons is of serious concern. However, it is premature to blame the effects of this problem on global climate change. Policymakers would be wise to take Landseas recommendations into account when examining the perceived costs of global warming.

Natural Cycle Confounds Global Warming

One of the most important scientific questions that remains unanswered is the role of natural variability in the climate. As noted by Dr. Richard Lindzen in the Wall Street Journal (June 11, 2001), “Distinguishing the small recent changes in global mean temperature from the natural variability, which is unknown, is not a trivial task.”

A new study in the July 6 issue of Science adds another piece to the natural variability puzzle. The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is a climate pattern of winds that blow counterclockwise around the Arctic. In its “high-index phase” it does so at latitude even with the Great Lakes and eastern Europe. In its “low-index phase,” it extends south to the Ohio Valley and westward into France. It is an important climatic cycle that exerts “a strong influence on wintertime climate, not only over the Euro-Atlantic half of the hemisphere as documented in previous studies, but over the Pacific half as well.”

The study found that “High-index days are, on average, ~5 degrees C warmer over much of the Midwestern United States, central Canada, and Europe.” Low-index days exhibit colder conditions. “The NAO,” according to the study, “has exhibited a pronounced trend towards its high-index polarity since the late 1960s that is evident in its time series and is also reflected in the relative numbers of low- and high-index days in different decades,” leading to “warmer wintertime-mean temperatures across much of the NH [Northern Hemisphere] high-latitude continents.”

One of the authors of the study, Dr. David Thompson, of Colorado State University, noted in a July 5 Canadian Broadcasting Company article, “Public perceptions that winters are becoming less wintry appear to be as much or more due to the change in the Arctic Oscillation as to global warming.”

Where has all the Carbon Gone?

As environmentalists continue to harp on the evils of carbon dioxide, they may want to notice the lack of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Although carbon dioxide emissions are up almost 40 percent in the past 20 years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has decreased or remained the same, according to an article in Science (July 6, 2001). The author of the article Steven C. Wofsy with the Atmospheric Sciences Program, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University, notes, “The reason for this discrepancy is that increasing amounts of anthropogenic CO₂ are being removed by forests and other components of the biosphere.”

About 25 percent of carbon dioxide emitted by fossil fuels is sequestered according to the Wofsys estimates. “But,” said Wofsy, “analyses of forest inventories (which measure forest areas and timber volume) seem to indicate that forests sequester much smaller amounts of carbon. Thus we have a mystery: If our forests are sequestering billions of tons of carbon annually, why cant we find it? Evidently, we have not been looking in the right places.”

Right now, scientists are not entirely sure where the extra carbon dioxide is hiding, but they have some thoughts. Many organic materials, such as woody debris, soil, wood products and woody plants, are not reported in forest inventories because they are not economically valuable. All of these things can absorb carbon dioxide. Professor S. Pacala of Princeton University, et al. estimates that more than 75 percent of carbon sequestration takes place in organic matter that is not inventoried (Science, June 22, 2001). Indeed, Pacala et al. estimates that carbon uptake in the U.S. equals 20 to 40 percent of worldwide CO₂ emissions.

According to S. Fang et al., the carbon might be holed up in Asia (Science, June 22, 2001). Forests in China have absorbed substantial amounts of carbon dioxide thanks to reforestation and afforestation projects. When China planned its reforestation policy, it was not for carbon sequestration, but to restore ecosystems and produce wood for fuel. Wofsey points out that carbon sequestration will not stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but it could significantly slow it.

Fossilized Leaves Challenge Climate Models

A new study of fossilized leaves cast further doubt on the reliability of climate models. An international team of scientists gathered Cretaceous era leaf fossils from Europe, Asia, and North America in an effort to calculate the temperatures at ancient sites. The leaf temperature calculations matched ocean bed oxygen isotope measurements. The surprise came when the scientists tested modern climate models, ability to predict ancient temperatures.

The results from the different models varied greatly. At most of the sites, the results of the models did not match the actual temperature data. “Were talking about an error on the order of 20^oC, so its not small-not by any means” says modeler Paul Valdes from the University of Reading. What could cause such large errors in the climate models? Researchers think the answer lies in the way that climate models simulate the effects of clouds. “Its a generic problem with all climate models,” says Valdes.

The discrepancies between climate models predictions and actual temperatures leads to troubling conclusions about their ability to predict the future (New Scientist, July 9, 2001).