2500 minus one

by William Yeatman on February 1, 2005

in Politics, Science

Dr. Christopher Landsea of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administrations Hurricane Research Division at NOAAs Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, has withdrawn as an author of the Fourth Assessment Report under preparation by the UNs Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for release in 2007.

       Landsea has written more than forty articles on hurricanes and other tropical storm systems for refereed scientific publications during the last twelve years (see www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/landsea_bio.html for specific references). As an author, he contributed to the last two IPCC Assessments and had primary responsibility for sections describing the past, present and future behavior of tropical cyclones.

       He recently wrote and circulated an Open Letter among his colleagues to announce and explain his decision to withdraw from further IPCC participation. We have his permission to quote it. We have added bold-faced emphasis to certain section that are not in the original.

Dear colleagues,

      After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

      With this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process. The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be altered in the future due to manmade global warming. I had served both as an author for the Observations chapter and a Reviewer for the 2nd Assessment Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, primarily on the topic of tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons). My work on hurricanes, and tropical cyclones more generally, has been widely cited by the IPCC. For the upcoming AR4, I was asked several weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead Author Dr. Kevin Trenberth to provide the writeup for Atlantic hurricanes. As I had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.

      Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic.  The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and other media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have the potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.

      I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.

      Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricanes will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).

      It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberths role as the IPCCs Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings thatthis will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.

      My concerns go beyond the actions of Dr. Trenberth and his colleagues to how he and other IPCC officials responded to my concerns. I did caution Dr. Trenberth before the media event and provided him a summary of the current understanding within the hurricane research community. I was disappointed when the IPCC leadership dismissed my concerns when I brought up the misrepresentation of climate science while invoking the authority of the IPCC. Specifically, the IPCC leadershipsaid that Dr. Trenberth was speaking as an individual, even though he was introduced in the press conference as an IPCC lead author. I was told that that the media was exaggerating or misrepresenting his words, even though the audio from the press conference and interview tells a different story (available on the web directly); and that Dr. Trenberth was accurately reflecting conclusions from the TAR, even though it is quite clear that the TAR stated that there was no connection between global warming and hurricane activity at this time. The IPCC leadership saw nothing to be concerned with in Dr. Trenberth’s unfounded pronouncements to the media, despite his supposedly impartial important role that he must undertake as a Lead Author on the upcoming AR4.

      It is certainly true that “individual scientists can do what they wish in their own rights,” as one of the folks in the IPCC leadership suggested. Differing conclusions and robust debates are certainly crucial to progress in climate science. However, this case is not an honest scientific discussion conducted at a meeting of climate researchers. Instead, a scientist with an important role in the IPCC represented himself as a Lead Author for the IPCC and has used that position to promulgate to the media and general public his own opinion that the busy 2004 hurricane season was caused by global warming, which is in direct opposition to research written in the field and is counter to conclusions in the TAR. This becomes problematic when I am then asked to provide the draft about observed hurricane activity variations for the AR4 with, ironically, Dr. Trenberth as the Lead Author for this chapter. Because of Dr. Trenberth’s pronouncements, the IPCC process on our assessment of these crucial extreme events in our climate system has been subverted and compromised, its neutrality lost. While no one can “tell” scientists what to say or not say (nor am I suggesting that), the IPCC did select Dr. Trenberth as a Lead Author and entrusted to him to carry out this duty in a non-biased, neutral point of view. When scientists hold press conferences and speak with the media, much care is needed not to reflect poorly upon the IPCC. It is of more than passing interest to note that Dr. Trenberth, while eager to share his views on global warming and hurricanes with the media, declined to do so at the Climate Variability and Change Conference in January where he made several presentations. Perhaps he was concerned that such speculation though worthy in his mind of public pronouncements would not stand up to the scrutiny of fellow climate scientists.

      I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth’s actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4.

Sincerely,

Chris Landsea

            What Landseas letter illuminates is yet another example of what climatologist Patrick Michaels, our senior editor, calls the predictable distortion of global warming in his book Meltdown in which he argues that, in general, climate scientists are not policy-neutral. Professional advancement often is best-served by exaggerating threats of climate change in public discourse. A glaring example was the complete omission of the word satellite in the Summary for Policymakers of the 1996 IPCC Second Assessment. As a result, policymakers were not aware that orbiting temperature monitors show no statistically significant warming a difference with the surface thermometer record that nine years later is yet to be resolved.

            Ironically, previous IPCC report sections on hurricanes (for which Landsea was a major contributor) were accurate and comprehensive. In the Second Assessment, for example, Landsea provided the IPCC a graphic showing that the average maximum wind speed attained in Atlantic Ocean tropical storms and hurricanes declined between 1944 and 1993 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Annual average maximum wind speeds recorded in Atlantic basin tropical cyclones (Landsea et al., 1996).

            Updating this data through 2004 shows that even considering the recent upswing in hurricane activity over the past decade there has been no long-term change in the average maximum wind speed. This observation runs counter to proclamations that anthropogenic changes to the earths atmosphere have made hurricanes more severe. Landsea probably would have ensured such an updated figure became part of the upcoming IPCC report. Now it is unlikely to appear.

            As more scientists find the heavy-handed tactics of the global warming fanatics to be unsettling, the oft-heard claim that IPCC findings represent the consensus view of 2,500 scientists will need to be modified. If not, such a statement will fail to reflect the fact the remaining participants in the IPCC process are distorting climate science. What else can anyone conclude given the now abundantly clear fact the IPCC leadership encourages and participates in such activity. This latest flap over hurricanes, resulting in Landseas resignation, should signal IPCC participants theyd better prepare to reap the whirlwind if this trend remains unchecked by courageous acts similar to Landseas.

February 2, 2005

Reference

Landsea, C.W., et al., 1996. Downward trends in the frequency of intense Atlantic hurricanes during the past five decades. Geophysical Research Letters, 23, 1697-1700.

Michaels, P.J., 2004. Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, Cato Institute, Washington DC, 271pp.

Detecting secondary aerosols

by William Yeatman on February 1, 2005

in Science

COPAP has developed a new detection device that will aid research into global climate change, environmental studies, life-science research and environmental monitoring and improve understanding on aerosols.

“It is now recognised that aerosols play a central role in a range of environmental problems such as respiratory diseases, climate change and decreased visibility,” says Dr Vidmantas Ulevicius, Head of the Environmental Physics and Chemistry Laboratory at the Lithuanian Institute of Physics, the project’s lead partner.

The problem arises because the majority of the mass in fine aerosol particles is not directly emitted but formed through numerous reactions with other gasses in the atmosphere. These reactions are extremely difficult to define as many reactions are short lived and others produce minute particles in the atmosphere. It is these secondary aerosol particles that create environmental problems; these can now be detected thanks to the research in this project.

The sources of each of the major chemical constituents of the aerosols must be known and their role in atmospheric processes must be determined, in order to regulate and reduce their detrimental effects. “In this sense, aerosol science is now at the same level as the measurement of most gaseous pollutants was over a decade ago,” says Ulevicius.

To help increase knowledge and thereby develop efficient abatement strategies, the EUROENVIRON COPAP project designed a new particle counter able to measure the concentration of these small aerosol particles. It can measure particles as small as 5 nm in diameter, in concentrations between 0.01 and 105 particles/cm3.

The new device will provide reliable aerosol data, the lack of which has until now hindered the understanding of the formation of secondary aerosols and evaluation of ways to regulate and prevent environmental damage.

Professor Markku Kulmala, who leads the Physics Department at the University of Helsinki, co ordinated the Finnish academic and commercial partners and supervised the theoretical, calibration and field studies. He says: “EUREKA was crucial. Without it, this work would not have been possible.”

Ulevicius agrees: “EUREKA not only helped in the development of the new instrument but also forged co operation between scientists and commercial companies in Lithuania and Finland.”

The project is set to increase the turnover of the commercial partners – Eltera Ltd in Lithuania and Dekati Ltd in Finland – both of which will manufacture and market some 50 instruments per year.

Science archive: Solar variations and climate

by William Yeatman on January 31, 2005

in Science

Living in sunny times 
American Scientist, Dec 25 2004
A publication in Nature last October by solar physicist Sami K. Solanki of the Max-Planck-Institut fr Sonnensystemforschung and four of his colleagues is bound to intensify the arguments. Solanki and coworkers attempted to estimate “sunspot numbers,” a general barometer of solar activity, for times long before the beginning of the observational record, which starts four centuries ago. Their main result is expressed in the title of their paper: “Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years.”

Evidence for sun-climate link reported by UMaine scientists
University of Maine, Dec 22 2004
A team led by University of Maine scientists has reported finding a potential link between changes in solar activity and the Earth’s climate. In a paper due to be published in an upcoming volume of the Annals of Glaciology, Paul Mayewski, director of UMaine’s Climate Change Institute, and 11 colleagues from China, Australia and UMaine describe evidence from ice cores pointing to an association between the waxing and waning of zonal wind strength around Antarctica and a chemical signal of changes in the sun’s output.

Sun is more active now than over the last 8000 years
Max Planck Society, Oct 28 2004
Because the brightness of the Sun varies slightly with solar activity, the new reconstruction indicates also that the Sun shines somewhat brighter today than in the 8,000 years before. Whether this effect could have provided a significant contribution to the global warming of the Earth during the last century is an open question.

Dim Sun: Global dimming? Global warming?
Grist Magazine, Sept 22 2004
Until Ohmura poked his nose into the radiation record, nobody had noticed that between 1958 and 1988, a whopping 10 percent of solar radiation had disappeared.

Global warming: Tony Blair and other stellar effects
JunkScience.com, Sep 19 2004
Tony Blair has made much of enhanced greenhouse and global warming – the Central England Temperature record suggests his fears are groundless. You can either believe a 340-year temperature record or a politician – suit yourself.

UHIE? UHIE who?
JunkScience.com, Sep 10, 2004
UHIE is the acronym for Urban Heat Island Effect.

How strongly does the sun influence global climate?
Max Planck Society, Aug. 3 2004
As the scientists have reported in the renowned scientific journal, Physical Review Letters, since 1940 the mean sunspot number is higher than it has ever been in the last thousand years and two and a half times higher than the long term average. The temporal variation in the solar activity displays a similarity to that of the mean temperature of the Earth.

Chat transcript: The science (or lack thereof) in ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ with Dr. James O’Brien
GlobalWarming.org, Jun 03 2004
Of course any variation in the sun will be felt in our climate. I am not an expert on solar variations. Recently however, I read that pollution from increasing pollution was reflecting sunlight and reducing short wave energy (light) from reaching the ground and ocean and turning into longwave energy (heat).

Chat transcript: Iain Murray on ‘The Kyoto Protocol and its future’
GlobalWarming.org, May 27, 2004
I have no doubt that the solar wind and other cosmic phenomena affect climate, but I don’t think this particular research is precise enough to say that the temperature rises since 1970 were due mostly to cosmic ray flux.

Urban Heat Island Effect Still an Issue; McIntyre and McKitrick Praised; More Fiddling with Paleoclimatology
Cooler Heads Coalition, Dec 17, 2003
“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.

Hockey Stick Data Wrong?; Hockey Stick Crowd Dismiss Medieval Warm Period
Cooler Heads Coalition, Oct 30, 2003
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.

Russian Scientists Question Alarmism
Cooler Heads Coalition, Sep 17, 2003
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.

Cosmic Influence on Climate
Cooler Heads Coalition, Jul 09, 2003
In new research published in GSA Today, a publication of the Geological Society of America, researchers Nir Shahiv and Jan Veizer conclude that cosmic rays emanating from dying stars account for 75 percent of the change in the Earths climate over the past 500 million years.

Troubling Lack of Science Behind Global Warming Claims
Cooler Heads Coalition, Mar 19, 2003
Essex also explained that the earths so-called greenhouse effect does not work like a greenhouse. “Incoming solar radiation adds energy to the Earths surface,” he said. To restore radiative balance the energy must be transported back to space in roughly the same amounts that it arrived in. The energy is transported via two processes infrared radiation (heat transfer) and fluid dynamics (turbulence).

Climate Variation is the Norm, not the Exception
Cooler Heads Coalition, Feb 19, 2003
The mechanisms include solar variation, emergence from the Little Ice Age, lunar energy variation, internal oscillations (such as El Nio), Milankovitch forcing (variations in the Earths orbit), ocean variation, biospheric variation, cryogenic variation (variations in the amount and distribution of ice), surface versus satellite temperature variation, and aerosol forcing mechanisms.

Solar Magnetism and Global Warming
Cooler Heads Coalition, Jun 10, 1999
Evidence that the Sun plays a major role in climate change continues to mount, casting doubt on the CO2-global warming link. A new study in Nature (June 3, 1999) has found that the Suns magnetism has increased dramatically over the last one hundred years.

Hansen Falls Back to Weaker Position
Cooler Heads Coalition, Nov 25, 1998
In 1988 James Hansen put global warming on the political map by exclaiming in a Senate hearing that he was 95 percent sure that manmade global warming was upon us. However, he now believes “The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change.” His discussion of solar irradiance is important because he challenges the notion that “climate forcing due to solar variability is negligible because it is much smaller than GHG forcing.”

New Light Shed on Sunspots
Cooler Heads Coalition, Jul 12, 1998
Professor Terry Robinson and Dr. Neil Arnold at Leicester University have constructed a computer model that may provide an explanation of how sunspots effect the climate.

Sunshine, Cosmic Rays, and Climate Change
Cooler Heads Coalition, Apr 26, 1998
Its obvious to most people that the sun plays an important role in the climate of the planet. Recently evidence has been accumulating that the sun may have more to do with temperature variations than manmade greenhouse gases.

Sun, Sun, Sun, Sun, Sunshiny Day
Cooler Heads Coalition, Mar 13, 1998
A new study published by Switzerlands Federal Institute of Technology corroborates recent studies that find that variations in the suns brightness contributes significantly to climate change.

Sun Sheds Light on Climate Change
Cooler Heads Coalition, Mar 01, 1998
Two papers delivered at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) shed light on suns role in climate change.

Carbon sequestration archive

by William Yeatman on January 31, 2005

in Science

A Climate Change Glossary
US Environmental Protection Agency, Jan 01, 2003
Carbon Sequestration. The uptake and storage of carbon. Trees and plants, for example, absorb carbon dioxide, release the oxygen and store the carbon. Fossil fuels were at one time biomass and continue to store the carbon until burned.

Carbon sequestration by grasslands in a CO2-enriched world
CO2science.org, Oct 20 2004
Enough has been learned, however, to know that soils beneath grasslands will significantly increase their carbon-storing prowess as the atmospheric CO2 concentration continues its upward trajectory; and every extra bit of carbon storage helps, especially that which comes automatically, courtesy of the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content.

No realistic way to stabilize CO2
Financial Times, Jul 02, 2004
“Energy rationing without tears”that should have been the title of Lord Browne’s column (“Small steps to limit climate change”, June 30). He imagines that the world’s nations, via a series of “small steps”, could stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) at 500 to 550 parts per million by 2050 “without doing serious damage to the world economy”. This is pie in the sky. A study in the November 1, 2002 issue of the journal Science, co-authored by 18 energy and climate experts, including several who worry about global warming as much as Lord Browne, examined possible technology options that might be used in coming decades to stabilise atmospheric CO2 concentrations, including wind and solar energy, nuclear fission and fusion, biomass fuels, efficiency improvements, carbon sequestration and hydrogen fuel cells.

U.S. carbon dioxide piped, pumped into Canadian oil well
Environment News Service, June 28 2004
A partnership among U.S., Canadian and European researchers has developed a new approach that is one of the first to successfully store carbon dioxide (CO2) underground. Carbon sequestration is being evaluated internationally as a means of long-term carbon dioxide storage.

Et tu, Edison?
Competitive Enterprise Institute, Apr 27, 2004
The Edison Electric Institute (EEI), the association of shareholder-owned electric power companies, opposes the Kyoto Protocol, the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, and kindred proposals to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2), the inescapable byproduct of the carbon-based fuelscoal, oil, and natural gasthat supply 86 percent of all the energy Americans use. Why, then, is EEI pressing the Bush Administration to institute an early credit programthe accounting framework and political setup for Kyoto-style energy rationing? Edison has a lot of explaining to do.  

Sequestration Appears Sustainable
Cooler Heads, July 23 2003
The idea that carbon sequestration via forests is a sustainable option for reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has come under attack in recent years. The theory is that new forest growth will quickly become saturated and will start returning stored carbon to the atmosphere by 2050. New research from Luo et al published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles suggests that this may not be the case.

Prospects of Stabilizing Emissions Appear Bleak
Cooler Heads Coalition, November 13 2002
In a major challenge to the conventional wisdom, a team of scientists has delivered a devastating blow to the Kyoto Protocol in a review of energy technologies published in the November 1 issue of Science.

CO2 Dumping: Are They Joking?
 Cooler Heads Coalition, July 24 2002
Environmental pressure groups are succeeding in their efforts to stop scientific experiments with long-term deep-ocean sequestration of carbon dioxide. On July 2, an international consortium gave up on its application to 5,000 gallons of liquefied CO2 into ocean 3,000 feet below the surface off the island of Kauai in Hawaii. The purpose was to determine its dispersal and effects on ocean chemistry.

 Where has all the Carbon Gone?
 Cooler Heads Coalition, July 11 2001
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).

Pachauri must resign as head of UN climate panel

by William Yeatman on January 26, 2005

in Politics, Science

The Competitive Enterprise Institute today called on Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri to resign as chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the grounds that his political activism fatally compromises his IPCC responsibilities. 

Dr. Pachauris actions are those of a policy advocate, not an objective official, said Iain Murray, Senior Fellow in International Policy.  The world can no longer rely on him for accurate and unbiased analysis. 

Dr. Pachauri recently served as scientific adviser for a report written by a consortium of American, British, and Australian leftist advocacy groups.  The report, entitled Meeting the Climate Challenge, makes outlandish scientific claims that are not supported by the IPCCs previous publications and recommends a number of ineffective and economically unsound policies. 

Political activism is entirely inappropriate for the chairman of the IPCC.  Dr. Pachauri has abused his official position, which carries great responsibilities, and thereby forfeited the publics trust, said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy.    

 Dr. Pachauri has a history of associating himself with left-wing advocacy. He provided a foreword to an alarmist report from the United Kingdoms New Economics Foundation and told Reuters that he hoped the next IPCC report, due in 2007, would produce a much stronger message for the world.

 Last week, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hurricane scientist Chris Landsea resigned from the IPCCs Fourth Assessment Report in protest at a senior IPCC scientists decision to utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming.  Dr. Pachauri did nothing to address Dr. Landseas concerns.

Under Dr. Pachauris leadership, the IPCC appears institutionally biased towards unscientific conclusions that support a particular political agenda, said Murray.

JunkScience: Antarctic warming

by William Yeatman on January 24, 2005

in Science

“Antarctica, Warming, Looks Ever More Vulnerable” – “A continent is quickly changing. The questions are how and why.” (New York Times)

Antarctic1903-2004.gif (34129 bytes) Antarctica, however, is not warming. While the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis insists the Antarctic should demonstrate the most dramatic response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels due to its cold, dry atmosphere, the simple fact is the Antarctic is not cooperating.

South Polar air samples record atmospheric CO2 rising from 328 ppmv to 373 ppmv subsequent to the 1949-1974 temperature increase – almost 15% increase apparently without affecting Polar temperatures, while startling temperature changes of ~4 C (+ve and -ve) are recorded in periods when we know atmospheric CO2 was increasing at a more leisurely rate.

A treasured hypothesis insists increasing atmospheric CO2 should lead to increasing temperature and the South Polar super-cold, super-dry air mass should respond dramatically. Well, we looked for the CO2 increment and it is obvious. We looked for the temperature increment and… what? Found it missing? There it was, gone?

We’ve already had the “you could see the warming if it wasn’t being hidden by the cooling (which is being hidden by the warming)” thing – see “Stratospheric Cooling?” What is Big Warming going to come up with now – “Please Miss, the ozone hole ate my Antarctic warming”?

U.N.: No ‘natural’ disasters?

by William Yeatman on January 20, 2005

in Politics, Science

The United Nations is trying to blame natural disasters on, of all things, people. President Bush, however, is standing in its way.

The U.N. is holding its second-ever “World Conference on Disaster Reduction”  this week in Kobe, Japan. Scheduled for the 10th anniversary of the deadly January 1995 earthquake in Kobe and following in the wake of the Indian Ocean tsunami, you might think that the conferences focus would be natural disasters.

But the first indication that this isnt necessarily the case comes when you compare the titles of the current and previous U.N. disaster conferences.

The title of the U.N.s first disaster conference, held in 1994, was the World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction, which, incidentally, occurred during the U.N.-proclaimed “International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction” (1990-1999).

Natural disasters, as far as the U.N. is concerned anyway, apparently are no longer natural.

Behind the “1984”-like de-natural-ization of the disaster conference is, of course, the ongoing effort by the U.N. a leading promoter of the unproven notion that humans are significantly altering global climate for the worse to be able to blame people, as opposed to Nature, for deadly and costly occurrences such as hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and the like.

And the particular people that the U.N. would most like to pin the blame for global warming on would be deep-pocket Americans, American businesses and the American government. As the global warming alarmist community likes to point out, the U.S. is the largest single contributor to the alleged global warming, emitting 25 percent of all greenhouse gases while possessing only 4 percent of the worlds population.

Toward the goal of blaming the U.S. for what used to be considered natural disasters in order to eventually extract financial compensation, the U.N. conferences draft action plan is riddled with references to climate change [read, U.S.-made climate change] as causing or contributing to disasters.

The Bush administration rightly opposes the U.N.s effort to de-naturalize disasters and has requested that the documents references to climate change be removed. But U.N. officials oppose such changes.

I hope there will be a global recognition of climate change causing more natural disasters, said Jan Egeland, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

Weather disasters like hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves, cold snaps, ice storms always have, and always will plague man. As far as we know, they are entirely natural occurrences. There is absolutely no credible evidence that humans much less Americans in particular have had have any discernible impact on the frequency and severity of dare I say it? natural disasters.

Given the medias new habit of linking virtually any extreme or unusual weather with global warming, some scientists now even feel compelled to go out of their way to reaffirm that global warming isnt causing natural disasters, as in the case of the string of hurricanes that hit south Florida last summer.

The U.N. dramatizes the need for its action plan by claiming that: economic damages resulting from disasters have increased from about 1,500 disasters costing $200 billion during the 1970s to 6,000 disasters costing $700 billion during the 1990s; and the number of people threatened by disasters has increased from about 750 million people in the 1970s to about 2.5 billion people in the 1990s.

I dont know how accurate those estimates may be, but to the extent that natural disasters do wreak more economic havoc and threaten more people now than 30 years ago, that is most likely due to all the upscale development that has spread during that time to coastal regions and other areas more vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature.

Participating in the U.N. conference is the German insurance company Munich Re, which issued a report Megacities Megarisks: Trends and challenges for insurance and risk management, bemoaning the alleged impacts of global warming and other disasters on insurers.

Munich Re claims, for example, that the urban heat island effect the modern-day phenomenon where cities are warmer than surrounding rural areas due to increased heat trapping by concrete and asphalt amplifies the effect of global warming to increase the number of deaths caused by heatwaves.

Despite any intuitive appeal, this assertion is unfounded since there is no scientific evidence that global warming which involves a hypothesized few-degree rise in global temperatures over the course of a century has anything to do with summer heatwaves which involve sudden dramatic, short-term shifts in local temperature.

Weather, after all, is not climate.

The end-game of the insurance industry, like that of the U.N. , is to be able to blame natural disasters on global warming so that it also can eventually seek compensation for its losses from U.S. businesses and taxpayers.

Insurers, apparently, are more than happy to accept premiums for writing risky policies, but not too happy when Mother Nature and policyholders force them to make good on claims.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRwatch.com, is adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and is the author of Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato Institute, 2001).

Respond to the Writer

  

Sarewitz says global warming not to blame for tsunami

by William Yeatman on January 20, 2005

in Science

The shock and awe resulting from the massive tsunami that hit Indian Ocean nations Dec. 26 has left many wondering what could have caused such a disaster and if there is anything humans can do to control or mitigate future events.

Some quickly suggested that an increase in the frequency of natural disasters such as the tsunami were a harbinger of what we have in store because of the increase of Earths greenhouse gases resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.
Nothing could be further from the truth, says Daniel Sarewitz, a professor of science and society and director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at ASU.

In an article in The New Republic, Rising Tide The Tsunamis Real Cause, Sarewitz and Roger Pielke Jr., of University of Colorado, Boulder, say that tying the tsunami and other natural disasters to human induced climatic change is both scientifically and morally unsupportable.

“Reducing emissions is important, but it will not reduce vulnerability to disasters, Sarewitz adds.

Sarewitz notes that while the world has seen a sharp increase in natural disasters, from around 100 per year reported in the early 1960s to 500 800 per year by the early 21st century, the cause is not an increase in the frequency or severity of such events, but an increase in human vulnerability caused by where people live and how they live.

“We know how to prepare for disasters, but the world has not made this a high enough priority, Sarewitz says. If disaster preparation received the same political attention as global warming, significant progress could be made.

While more people live in coastal regions, especially in poor and developing countries, and while it is true that sea levels are rising, there is no research that suggests that the Kyoto Protocol or even more ambitious emissions reduction proposals would significantly reduce the impacts of disasters like hurricanes and tsunamis.

“It is absurd to suggest that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is an important part of the answer, Sarewitz says.

Yet coastal populations will continue to swell, putting more people in a vulnerable position should another tsunami strike. Sarewitz adds that tools to mitigate the effects of these disasters are at hand.

“Most tools needed to reduce disaster vulnerability already exist, such as risk assessment techniques, better building codes and code enforcement, land-use standards, and emergency preparedness plans, both researchers say. The question is why disaster vulnerability is so low on the list of global development priorities.

For Sarewitz, the answer is clear: Fruitful action on climate change and disaster vulnerability should proceed simultaneously.

“This will not happen until the issues of climate change and disaster vulnerability are clearly separated in the eyes of the media, the public, environmental activists, scientists and policymakers, Sarewitz says.

CEI comments on proposed New Jersey CO2 rule

by William Yeatman on January 17, 2005

in Politics, Science

Full document available in pdf format

Dear Ms. Previte: 

On behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a non-profit public policy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., I am pleased to submit this comment on the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protections (DEP) proposed rule, Reclassification of CO2 as an Air Contaminant (PRN 2004-399).

I. Introduction

DEP proposes to revise its regulatory definitions so that carbon dioxide (CO2) is removed from the category of distillates of air and reclassified as an air contaminant (pp. 3-4). This change in CO2s status is a regulatory prelude to anticipated future regulatory adoption of a Model Rule proposed through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), culminating in a Northeast/Mid-Atlantic regional CO2 cap-and-trade program (p. 5).

 DEP believes that regulating CO2 is in the best interest of human health, welfare, and the environment (p. 5). I respectfully disagree. A carbon cap-and-trade program would make energy scarcer and less affordable, adversely affecting economic output, job creation, and household income. Because wealthier is healthier and richer is safer, cap-and-trade has a high potential to harm public health and welfare. The environmental benefits of a regional trading program, if any, would be so miniscule as to be undetectable.

The proposed rule is a conceptual muddle. Logically, DEP cannot classify CO2 as an air contaminant unless it is prepared to apply the same designation to water vaporthe atmospheres main greenhouse gas. Presumably, DEP has no intention to cap steam from nuclear power plants, or evaporation from public green spaces, but it should be aware of the regulatory folly that its argument implicitly demands.

 More importantly, the proposed rule lacks a credible scientific rationale. There is no solid evidence that CO2 emissions are causing, or are likely to cause, dangerous interference with the global climate system. On the contrary, the balance of evidence suggests that CO2 emissions are greening the planet, enhancing biodiversity and global food availability.

Even if DEPs scientific premises were correct, the RGGI cap-and-trade program would have no discernible effect on global climate change. Thus, any DEP-administered CO2 regulatory program is bound to fail a rudimentary cost-benefit test.

Stratospheric cooling?

by William Yeatman on January 16, 2005

in Science

FONT face=”arial, verdana, helvetica” size=2>One of the more interesting “Sky Is Falling” postulations made in recent years has been the claim that the apparently cooling stratosphere is masking observation of anticipated warming in the troposphere. Quaintly, such claimants point to satellite MSU (Microwave Sounding Unit) stratosphere data suggesting such cooling to try to invalidate satellite MSU troposphere data, data which obstinately declines to demonstrate the trend Big Warming requires to maintain the scare and nurture the cash cow.

One of the reasons suggested for stratospheric cooling is that more infrared (re-)radiation from the Earth is being trapped by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and is thus unavailable to warm the stratosphere (you are required to ignore any thought of saturation to believe this). Another, more plausible explanation would be reduced stratospheric ozone (ozone is a greenhouse gas) from whatever cause and the stratosphere is thus capturing less energy and cooling. Possible reasons for ‘loss’ of ozone are not addressed here but no, we are not staunch supporters of the Montreal Protocol either.

Typically, the cry at JunkScience.com is “Show me the data!” and, happily for our band of wandering skeptics, the required data is readily available here. Since most people exhibit signs of distress when faced with tabular data we have provided a representation in graphical format (linked from the thumbnail below). Two startling anomalies are obvious in the data, the stratospheric response to explosive volcanic eruptions of El Chichon in 1982 and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. Although they are of limited value we know that people will ask, especially as they are not marked on the graph so, entire series trend value: y = -0.0038x + 0.5538 and first split 12/78 – 12/93 trend value: y = -0.0021x + 0.4581.

http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Stratosphere1278-1204.gif (32588 bytes) We’ve all heard the claims (repeatedly) that the Earth is currently hot and getting hotter. In fact, a quick sort on the GISTEMP near-surface amalgam shows the top 7 global mean temperatures since 1880 have occurred in the period following our Pinatubo shading. Logically then, if “global warming” (enhanced greenhouse) causes stratospheric cooling and 7 of the 11 years in our final trend split are the hottest years, at least since 1880, we expect to see stratospheric temperatures cooling, no? Let’s look at the graph…

… uh-oh – that’s not Big Warming’s desired result is it. What could have gone “wrong?”

Perhaps the near-surface record is now so UHIE-corrupted that the planet wasn’t really that warm? Possible but they won’t go there because that would trample the enhanced greenhouse thing about increased infrared capture in the troposphere denying the stratosphere and causing cooling there (which is masking the warming in the tropospheric record – right?).

Recovery in the stratospheric ozone? Nope, that would upset too many fellow travelers because there’d be no need to continue attacking chlorine/bromine compounds as alleged ODS (Ozone Depleting Substances) – imagine a world where you couldn’t get rid of so useful a compound as methyl bromide – unthinkable!

Hmm… a tough one. Big Warming seems to have [another] problem.

How long, do you suppose, before they come up with the old shell game: stratospheric cooling being masked by tropospheric warming?

No? Why not? Big Warming, the three-M coalition of Misanthropists, Miscreants and Misguided are certainly masters of the art of circular reasoning. The troposphere is really warming, despite what your lying eyes and empirical data tell you, it’s just being masked by the cooling stratosphere – which you could see to be cooling except that cooling is being masked by tropospheric warming. Quod erat demonstrandum.

http://junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Strato2.gif (33037 bytes) More for amusement than anything the two tracks prove here then is the combination showing both the lower troposphere and lower stratosphere along with a few important influences noted.

Presenting data in this fashion does not help Big Warming’s campaign since, absent obvious external factors, one track neither consistently mirrors nor mimics the other – not what we might expect if warming one cools the other.

We might surmise that components of Mt. Pinatubo debris increased ozone destruction, contributing significantly to stratospheric cooling as the atmosphere cleared following that event. It is interesting that there appears to be two step reductions in stratospheric temperature following both the explosive volcanic events that caused initial warming – that would not appear consistent with enhanced greenhouse-induced cooling since increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has been more or less consistent over the period. We might surmise a lot of things but we find no support for Big Warming’s contention though.

Obviously we’re still having trouble with the “it’d be hotter if it wasn’t cooled” thing.

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