A guest post by Roy. W. Spencer
While a politician might be faulted for pushing a particular agenda that serves his own purposes, who can fault the impartial scientist who warns us of an imminent global-warming Armageddon? After all, the practice of science is an unbiased search for the truth, right? The scientists have spoken on global warming. There is no more debate. But let me play devil’s advocate. Just how good is the science underpinning the theory of manmade global warming? My answer might surprise you: it is 10 miles wide, but only 2 inches deep.
Contrary to what you have been led to believe, there is no solid published evidence that has ruled out a natural cause for most of our recent warmth – not one peer-reviewed paper. The reason: our measurements of global weather on decadal time scales are insufficient to reject such a possibility. For instance, the last 30 years of the strongest warming could have been caused by a very slight change in cloudiness. What might have caused such a change? Well, one possibility is the sudden shift to more frequent El Niño events (and fewer La Niña events) since the 1970s. That shift also coincided with a change in another climate index, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The associated warming in Alaska was sudden, and at the same time we just happened to start satellite monitoring of Arctic sea ice. Coincidences do happen, you know…that’s why we have a word for them.
We make a big deal out of the “unprecedented” 2007 opening of the Northwest Passage as summertime sea ice in the Arctic Ocean gradually receded, yet the very warm 1930s in the Arctic also led to the Passage opening in the 1940s. Of course, we had no satellites to measure the sea ice back then.
So, since we cannot explore the possibility of a natural source for some of our warming, due to a lack of data, scientists instead explore what we have measured: manmade greenhouse gas emissions. And after making some important assumptions about how clouds and water vapor (the main greenhouse components of the atmosphere) respond to the extra carbon dioxide, scientists can explain all of the recent warming.
Never mind that there is some evidence indicating that it was just as warm during the Medieval Warm Period. While climate change used to be natural, apparently now it is entirely manmade. But a few of us out there in the climate research community are rattling our cages. In the August 2007 Geophysical Research Letters, my colleagues and I published some satellite evidence for a natural cooling mechanism in the tropics that was not thought to exist. Called the “Infrared Iris” effect, it was originally hypothesized by Prof. Richard Lindzen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
By analyzing six years of data from a variety of satellites and satellite sensors, we found that when the tropical atmosphere heats up due to enhanced rainfall activity, the rain systems there produce less cirrus cloudiness, allowing more infrared energy to escape to space. The combination of enhanced solar reflection and infrared cooling by the rain systems was so strong that, if such a mechanism is acting upon the warming tendency from increasing carbon dioxide, it will reduce manmade global warming by the end of this century to a small fraction of a degree. Our results suggest a “low sensitivity” for the climate system.
What, you might wonder, has been the media and science community response to our work? Absolute silence. No doubt the few scientists who are aware of it consider it interesting, but not relevant to global warming. You see, only the evidence that supports the theory of manmade global warming is relevant these days.
The behavior we observed in the real climate system is exactly opposite to how computerized climate models that predict substantial global warming have been programmed to behave. We are still waiting to see if any of those models are adjusted to behave like the real climate system in this regard.
And our evidence against a “sensitive” climate system does not end there. In another study (conditionally accepted for publication in the Journal of Climate) we show that previously published evidence for a sensitive climate system is partly due to a misinterpretation of our observations of climate variability. For example, when low cloud cover is observed to decrease with warming, this has been interpreted as the clouds responding to the warming in such a way that then amplifies it. This is called “positive feedback,” which translates into high climate sensitivity.
But what if the decrease in low clouds were the cause, rather than the effect, of the warming? While this might sound like too simple a mistake to make, it is surprisingly difficult to separate cause and effect in the climate system. And it turns out that any such non-feedback process that causes a temperature change will always look like positive feedback. Something as simple as daily random cloud variations can cause long-term temperature variability that looks like positive feedback, even if in reality there is negative feedback operating.
The fact is that so much money and effort have gone into the theory that mankind is 100 percent responsible for climate change that it now seems too late to turn back. Entire careers (including my own) depend upon the threat of global warming. Politicians have also jumped aboard the Global Warming Express, and this train has no brakes.
While it takes only one scientific paper to disprove a theory, I fear that no amount of evidence will be able to counter what everyone now considers true. If tomorrow the theory of manmade global warming were proved to be a false alarm, one might reasonably expect a collective sigh of relief from everyone. But instead there would be cries of anguish from vested interests.
About the only thing that might cause global warming hysteria to end will be a prolonged period of cooling…or at least, very little warming. We have now had at least six years without warming, and no one really knows what the future will bring. And if warming does indeed end, I predict that there will be no announcement from the scientific community that they were wrong. There will simply be silence. The issue will slowly die away as Congress reduces funding for climate change research.
Oh, there will still be some diehards who will continue to claim that warming will resume at any time. And many will believe them. Some folks will always view our world as a fragile, precariously balanced system rather than a dynamic, resilient one. In such a world-view, any manmade disturbance is by definition bad. Forests can change our climate, but people aren’t allowed to.
It is unfortunate that our next generation of researchers and teachers is being taught to trust emotions over empirical evidence. Polar bears are much more exciting than the careful analysis of data. Social and political ends increasingly trump all other considerations. Science that is not politically correct is becoming increasingly difficult to publish. Even science reporting has become more sensationalist in recent years.
I am not claiming that all of our recent warming is natural. But the extreme reluctance for most scientists to even entertain the possibility that some of it might be natural suggests to me that climate research has become corrupted. I fear that the sloppy practice of climate change science will damage our discipline for a long time to come.
Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His book, Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor, will be published this month.
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This has been my thoughts exactly for the last couple of years. True science poses a theory, and tries to find a way to show that it is wrong. This ‘new’ science is just the opposite. It is only looking at results that support the theory, even when the results are obviously flawed.
I like the point on causation. Most people can not understand how difficult it is to differentiate cause and effect. Most people will not question the cause and effect suggested by the media outlet reporting it.
I agree. It seems that only Mother Nature intervening in a big way will stop the momentum . Maybe, just maybe she is with the recent cold snap and I notice that global ice area will almost certainly be a record this year. The change from ‘Global Warming” to “Climate Change” will allow AGW proponents to link every hurricane,flood or other climatic disaster to CO2 and the media will aid them.
This article had an air of resigned pessimism. Never give up!
Today, I drew attention to myself in the lab when I found myself loudly stating to a colleague “The bloody polar bears are not dying!”
One must continually speak out against wrongness. And this warming wrongness is beyond error; it is a scam and a fraud.
I cringe whenever I see the words “real climate” now (he said it twice). How about “Planet Earth’s climate”, since the folks at RC seem to be in another world entirely, sort of a climate wonderland.
It would be so nice if the AGWer’s would at the very least consider some of the point raised by Dr. Spencer. But we already know what the response will be over at Real Climate – his science is all wrong, the science is settled, he’s a denialist, blah, blah, blah…
Jeff:
Your comment on posing a theory, then testing the hypotheses associated with it describes exactly how I was taught science 50+ years ago. I noticed the change when the Freon vs Ozone hole debacle occurred. I’m still waiting for the chemical equations and actual observations of the process which is supposed to take place. In the meanwhile, the whole thing was politicized, and the reaction was declared de facto by the government, and Freon phased out. Trying to just find actual measurements (not easy, I grant) of the amount of Freon in the stratosphere is difficult. All I have found INFER the amount from production, ambiguous IR loss measurements, etc.
With AGW, they did not quite get that far before people like Steve McIntyre and Roy Spencer noticed what was going on and started publicizing the real facts. But, having experienced victory banning Freon, they are not about to let science stand in the way of making a lot of bucks, Enron style off of CO2.
Who gets credit for the brilliant choice of illustration to go with the post?
REPLY: Thats me, its the only thing that came up with an image search…not sure if you are being facetious or not.
Dr Spencer, if warming does indeed end, and if sources for the downturn are truly identified, climate science will remain intact. The battle cry will simply change. The projections will then become how high the temperature will rise when the anomalous downward behavior stops.
For those of us who aren’t climate scientists, it appears it would be easy to isolate the amount that solar, the frequency of El Ninos versus La Ninas, and the AMO have contributed to warming over the past three decades. Since the IPCC has not bothered to do this simply and honestly, leads me to believe they are hiding the truth. Their most recent projections cannot have assumed these variables would continue indefinitely, could they? Can they truly believe that nature has so little impact?
Then again, how many people would have interest in AGW if natural variation was responsible for 70, 80, 90% of the warming?
Anthony,
I can think of very few guest posters that would have been better than Dr. Roy Spencer. I have spoken with him and he is a man of great integrity. It disturbs me greatly when I see him derided on other blogs. I have even seen posts asking what reputable association or group would even recognize him. It is a great shame when the science has been degraded to the point that skeptical investigation is denied any value at all. I agree with Dr. Spencer’s view of the science. It is to bad that it has been so politized.
Great post, very informative.
Bill Derryberry
Vigo, Alabama
Momentum will slow when the rubber meets the road. Take a look at Europe. An early adopter of the GW religion are now finding it impossible to make the sacrifices necessary to do anything meaningful about CO2.
Fantastic article! The final paragraph sums up what I have thought for some time.
The comment about the illustration was intended as a complement. Humourous yet amazingly appropriate given the piece 🙂
About the only thing that might cause global warming hysteria to end will be a prolonged period of cooling…or at least, very little warming.
Actually, Dr. Spencer, there is one other thing, and, from everything I’ve read, it’s on the verge of exploding — a technological revolution in energy production that will significantly lower mankind’s carbon footprint. I’ve recently read of two new competing methods of hydrogen generation that show great promise within the next year or two. Craig Venter is also part of a venture that is perhaps 18 months away from a breakthrough in a new generation of biofuels that uses surplus CO2 (how cool is that?) as a feedstock. It’s entirely possible that within 2 or 3 decades it will be impossible to blame man if CO2 continues to increase.
“But what if the decrease in low clouds were the cause, rather than the effect, of the warming? ”
It seem like that a lot of “climate scientest” don’t get out of the office much. If “climate scientest” did work outside, 40 hrs a week, 50 weeks a year, they would understand the above statment. It was the one of main reasons why I didn’t buy into “CO2 induce global warming theory” five years ago.
“The issue will slowly die away as Congress reduces funding for climate change research.”
I hope that funding does not slowing die away. To many livelyhoods depend on accurate forcast. Although, it may take a lawsuit for Congress to change its view.
Time to face the facts. Old Farmer’s Almanc boost of being right 85% of the time. That’s far better than any type of playstation based on CO2.
Great article!…..but it sounds a little downhearted. I’m sure that sooner or later, as the actual climate data begins to overwhelm the “modelled” predictions of AGW, the media will, in time-honoured fashion, turn on its new found friend. At this stage the “warmists” will no longer be able to hoodwink the general public and the issue will die a natural death.
What will take longer to fix, however, is the damage done to the credibility of the scientific community. Perhaps in the end the AGW debacle will serve to reform the peer review process and herald a return to theose halcyon days when hypotheses were viewed with healthy scepticism until thoroughly and verifiably tested.
We live in hope!
PS. Two reports came out over the week-end concerning global warming. The first, a report about 3000 ocean temp sensors recording a slight cooling trend in the worlds oceans, which is contrary to AGW, got almost no, if any airtime. The other story, about how the flora and fauna are emerging from spring and blooming earlier than they did thirty years ago due to… drumroll please… man made global warming, was all over the new this morning. Oh, and the new science of Phenology, which measures and catalogs such things, is a direct offshoot of the global warming hysteria currently embedded in climate science.
Froggie — “The first, a report about 3000 ocean temp sensors recording a slight cooling trend in the worlds oceans, which is contrary to AGW, got almost no, if any airtime.”
Believe it or not dept… this is already being “debunked.” I’ve read claims elsewhere that there were sensor problems and once these were corrected, the oceans warmed up on cue.
Figures.
I wonder who’s debunking this for us.
Phenology isn’t a new science; it’s just being co-opted at the moment. Don’t make the same logical error that the AGWers make, sonicfrog, and blame the messenger for the message.
It sort of annoyed me when I heard that Vikings had discovered America, who would have guessed that a few Nordic adventurers, leaving behind some trinkets in the 1300’s, would come to be a powerful argument debunking the strongest socialist world government power grab to date.
First a map drawn on parchment showing a complete circumnavagable icefree island of Greenland circa 1400. This map is so damaging to the notion that today’s weather is exceptional that the climate change coalition refuses to acknowledge it’s authenticity to this day.
I’m shuffling through back copies of National Geographic and stumble on Eskimo and Viking Finds in the High Arctic by Peter Schledermann in the May 1981 issue.
From the article, Dr. Peter Schledermann, during an archeologic dig of an ancient Inuit village, finds chainmail, cloth, and metal bits from a Viking ship, on Ellesmere Island – locked in year round icepack today. The Viking artifacts are carbon dated to the 14th century.
Just on a hunch, I googled the doctor’s name. Found this article from the New York Times. (Check the third page)
So not only is the map most likely genuine, it is an undisputed fact that Viking sailors plied ice free waters around the entire Island of Greenland in the 14th century.
Tadocha.
Froggie — “The first, a report about 3000 ocean temp sensors recording a slight cooling trend in the worlds oceans, which is contrary to AGW, got almost no, if any airtime.”
I heard this on NPR yesterday morning, I thought it was fairly impressive hearing the reporter and scientist wondering what happened or where the heat might have gone. At least NPR covered it. I sent the URL, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025 , to Joe D’Aleo and he put it on Icecap. Argo also recorded a 0.5″ rise in ocean levels, that should not be ignored. See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071029172833.htm for a mostly unrelated Argo story.
I’m an interested, but untrained, observer in the AGW debate, so if these questions seem out-of-date, or silly, please forgive me; but let me know!
1) If human activity is the major cause of GW, why did the polar caps on Mars start to shrink in the mid 1970’s (the same time ours started)?
2) The greenhouse gas models don’t seem to fit history. The ice core data shows that over a very long period of time, changes in atmospheric CO2 levels lag average surface temperatures by 800 to 1400 years. Why should we believe that CO2 levels cause GW?
Great Post by Dr Spencer! Keep up the great work.
To paraphrase John Davison (with a twist)
“Mankind fiddles while Earth does whatever the hell it wants”
Ric Werme (20:23:22) says
“Argo also recorded a 0.5″ rise in ocean levels, that should not be ignored.”
The sea level meaurements are a different source and reported in the IPCC. However, there are a number of different scientific opinions on sea level measurements – some estimate the sea level rise to be no more than a 1/4″ over the same period.
In other words, there is no reason to believe the argos are wrong and the sea level measurements are right. Given what has been happening with global temperatures I would say the argos are most likely right and the IPCC sea level measurements are wrong.
Hmmmm …
Spencer says, “I am not claiming that all of our recent warming is natural. But the extreme reluctance for most scientists to even entertain the possibility that some of it might be natural suggests to me that climate research has become corrupted.”
He is the one being sloppy by this nefarious distortion.
I would ask him to find a scientist who does not recognise underlying natural causes. What a lot of them are saying is that CO2 is is a major driver to this latest round of GW. This is where the AGW debate should be focussed, including but not limited to “climate sensitivity”.
Further to my note on Mother Nature taking a hand I found the last graph of annual global temperatures at HADCRUT ( not a skeptic site) and find it incomprehensible that alarm bells are not ringing everywhere .
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/climon/data/themi/g17.htm
If this was a business profit graph you’d be sending for the consultant. If the stockmarket had a graph like this it would cause huge amounts of concern around the world. Do you think for one minute an exchange announcement that their computer models show there is nothing to worry about would stop the panic.
However for people worried about AGW it is good news indeed.
WE should now be thinking about planning a world celebration for averted disaster . It is a little early for the champagne yet however but it should be on ice.
Now I am not a climatologist but a retired electronics engineer but simple temperature graphs are easy to read and this is the type of empirical evidence that is hard for anyone to refute.