Congressional Memo
More Talking Than Listening in the Senate Debate About Climate Change
WASHINGTON — About a day into the debate over legislation to combat global warming but before Republicans brought the discourse to a stop on Wednesday by insisting that the clerk read every word of the 492-page bill, Senator James M. Inhofe decided to get a few things off his chest.
Mr. Inhofe, who believes that fears of catastrophic climate change are hugely overblown, has insisted that there is no need to get into a scientific argument because there are enough other reasons to oppose the Senate bill, which would cap the production of heat-trapping gases and force polluters to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide.
Still, for a guy who said he did not want to talk about science, Mr. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, was the only senator to utter the phrase “anthropogenic gases.” He also wanted to talk about the recent cold winter in his home state and mention a few small points of disagreement with Al Gore and Mr. Gore’s co-recipients of the Nobel Prize, the roughly 2,000 scientists who are part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations.
“We in the state of Oklahoma have had the worst cold spell during this last winter than we have in 30 years,” Mr. Inhofe said. “I find this to be true all over the country. You just can’t have it both ways.” (Most scientists say year-to-year weather changes are irrelevant to the clear, long-term warming trend.)
“One of the good things about this discussion and this debate is we are not going to be discussing the science,” Mr. Inhofe continued. Then, he unleashed an attack on the United Nations climate panel.
“We talked about 2,000 scientists,” he said. “We have a list of 30,000 scientists who said, ‘Yes, there can be a relationship between CO2 and a warming condition but it’s not major.’ ”
Next, he turned to Mr. Gore, the former vice president. “Al Gore has done his movie. Almost everything in his movie, in fact, everything has been refuted. Interestingly enough, the I.P.C.C. — on sea levels and other scare tactics used in that science fiction movie — it really has been totally refuted and refuted many times.”
Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, wanted to challenge Mr. Inhofe. “Will the senator yield?” Mr. Kerry asked.
“No I will not,” Mr. Inhofe replied.
Moments later, Mr. Kerry tried again. “Will the senator yield for a question?”
“No. I will not. Not now,” Mr. Inhofe declared, shifting his speech into the need for expanding nuclear power.
After being rebuffed a fourth time, Mr. Kerry was exasperated. “With all due respect,” he said, “we are here to have a debate. It is hard to have a debate when you are talking all by yourself.”
Even for the Senate, where members are well-known to prefer talking to listening, the amount of unilateral jabbering on the climate bill has been remarkable, with lawmakers both for and against it arguing repeatedly over how much time was allotted for them to speak.
It was also hard to keep track of who was on which side. The bill’s main sponsors are Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California.
Typically, the floor debate is divided evenly between the two parties, but there has been constant confusion about whose time was being used.
At one point Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, was struggling to get his turn. “It’s my understanding that I have 15 minutes at 12:15 which I have been waiting for all morning,” he said.
A short argument followed — involving Mr. Specter, Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, Mrs. Boxer and Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee — over who should speak and for how long. As they bickered, Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, who was serving as the president pro tempore, made an announcement: “The time of the senator from Tennessee, three and a half minutes, has expired.”
Mr. Domenici was perplexed. “How did his time expire?” he asked.
“Through this conversation,” Mr. Tester explained.
To help give everybody time on center-stage, the senators on Tuesday proposed delaying the weekly party lunches by 10 minutes. The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said that was all right, but he also urged senators to be back in time for their official portrait.
“I hope people can come,” Mr. Reid said. “I know comparing it to global warming, it is not a very important issue. Staff has worked some six weeks to set up this place to take the picture at 2:15.”
The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has expressed glee that the Democrats chose to bring up the climate bill. Mr. McConnell, like many of the bill’s critics, said it would raise oil prices at a time when Americans were already furious at the high cost of gasoline.
And though it was Mr. McConnell who insisted that the entire bill be read aloud (as punishment, he said, for Mr. Reid’s breaking a deal on judicial nominees) the Republican leader also said he hoped for a lengthy, perhaps weeks-long, debate on the climate change measure to highlight its flaws.
In response to the required read-aloud, which ended before 10 p.m., Mr. Reid requested a late-night quorum call, summoning senators back to the Capitol as Washington was being hit by scattered thunderstorms.
Mrs. Boxer, the main Democratic proponent of the bill, accused the Republicans of stalling and refusing to address global warming in part to support big oil companies. She repeatedly invoked support from religious leaders and scientists.
“Here, as shown in this picture, is a beautiful creature, the polar bear,” she said in a speech on the Senate floor. “And people say, ‘Oh, is this all about saving the polar bear?’ It’s about saving us. It’s about saving our future. It’s about saving the life on planet Earth. And, yes, it is about saving God’s creatures.”
Republicans, however, accused Democrats of putting on political theater at a time when they know the bill has no chance of being approved let alone signed into law by President Bush.
“This bill is going down in flames, as it should,” Mr. Corker “And we’ll have a real debate about this next year.”
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Hey counters,
OK, I need time to respond, if you wanna take it to tomorrow’s first thread, fine, or we can keep at it here, it’ll become a low-noise zone as new threads pile forward. Regardless we can explicate ourselves silly with details.
The link to the Pew site is corrupted, linkee no workee.
Overall I read you as a climate moderate, we just need to get you away from the ivory tower a bit longer …. 😉
counters:
Have you been to Lucia’s blog?
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/ipcc-projections-continue-to-falsify/
> But that trend isn’t a decrease – it’s a leveling off with
> a HUGE increase in the variance. Furthermore,
> throughout the entire graph, there seems to be a
> strong 4 year “up and down” cycle.
That heating & release cycle goes back quite a ways though, don’t you think? I’ve noticed it before as well in data showing the inverse correlation between stratosphere & troposphere temperatures quite a time back. It does seem a bit more pronounced, as though a heat exchange systems is more active.
> It’s simply too early to claim there is a “new trend.”
> What happens if later this year the temperature
> sky rockets upwards?
Wait, apples and oranges.
The point is this: Richard Lindzen cites the actual zero trend goes back to before the ’98 el Nino, a longer trend. I don’t think anyone or Lindzen are wrong for citing that b/c a zero-return plateau, no matter how rough the perturbations, is still a plateau – a plateau that was never supposed to be there by even recent IPCC predictions. Now we have the Keenlyside post-diction….
But let’s be clear: We’re not talking just air temperatures, we’re also looking at ocean warming. The problem is, and as Kevin Trenberth states quite pointedly, somehow the oceans are offloading heat.
We just got done w/ a discussion w/ Leif Svalgaard. One of the things that came up was the net potential loss of solar heating. Something he kept alluding to was that TSI is misleading, that Drew Shindell over-modeled the effect of lower TSI to get the -0.3 to -0.4 degrC drop of the Little Ice Age.
The problem I have with that argument that average TSI has already fallen -0.1 degrC since the early 1990’s. The sun has already become slight less active.
Is there a correlation between that & Trenberth’s quandary? The sun warmed over most of the 20th C., the oceans warmed. The sun starts to dim, the heat goes errant.
Others are suggesting that solar tropospheric heating is only 50-60% of total solar influence on climate and other unaccounted solar forcing mechanisms are at play. I surmise that again, the oceans play a bigger role than anticipated in acting as negative heat exchange systems when the sun dims.
We know the seas demonstrate a 10-year lag behind solar flux and we may be seeing the seas offload heat commensurate with a gradual drop in solar flux since the early 1990’s.
If it’s not to be found in TSI, then what could it be? What other mechanisms could warm the seas? It may sound like science fiction, but we don’t know much about the effects of gravitational, neutrino or magnetic flux. Neutrino detectors are usually huge vats of distilled water….
If the sun’s activity level falls even more (and it has every appearance of doing so by many different astrophysicists’ accounts) then we could well be in for another -0.1 degrC drop by 2020. Other astrophysicists are saying something of the order of -0.2 degrC decrease in solar forcing.
Shindell’s model relied exclusively on a -1.3 w/m-2 change from decreased UV hitting the upper troposphere (reduced solar faculae that went along w/ low sunspot activity). Svalgaard contends that evidence is showing TSI is far more stable than that, but then it’s controversial. So either the climate is more sensitive to solar forcing or TSI didn’t cause the LIA. I think that’s too facile of an either-or.
Here’s how I might break down the problem:
-0.1 degrC decrease solar effect thus far
-0.1 degrC decrease solar effect by 2020
-0.025 degrC effect cloud cover (cosmic rays)
—-
-0.225 degrC decrease from total solar influence
+0.75 degrC global warming since 1880
—-
+0.525 degrC net since 1880
—-
-0.1 degrC effect indirect ocean emissivity
—-
+0.425 degrC net since 1880
That’s a WAGing of course, esp. the ocean emissivity, but think about the chances that indeed there’s some unaccounted solar influence and it’s not in the troposphere. I also suspect that the extra open waters of the Arctic, although higher in albedo, would see a higher emissivity:insolation ratio during the darker months which are 2/3rds of the year past the Arctic circle. Ice sheets act as a blanket as well.
The point being that we need to just break the problem down & look at our options.
Take soot. Please. But seriously folks…
Ramanathan says that globally soot is ~ 60% of CO2’s effect. What shall we say is CO2’s effect per decade? 0.1 degrC/decade? And soot is responsible for 0.06 degrC? Let’s say we aggressively abated industrial soot, which might be 6/10ths of the total soot effect:
-0.036 degrC industrial soot abatement
+0.425 degrC net since 1880 (above)
—–
+0.389 degrC since 1880
OK, Zender (& even Hansen) cite the soot component of the boreal thaw as causing around 19% of all global warming since the 1850’s. Let’s say soot mitigation (the blackest of the black carbons from coal have the most effect, 8x that of preindustrial wood fuels). Let’s trim back the reclamation to half the loss, so say we can reclaim via progressive remediation 9%…
-0.07 degrC from Arctic reclamation
+0.389 degrC since 1880
—–
+0.32 degrC since 1880
This is what I’m talking about. And not one of these points mentions abating CO2 in the near future. Even if there weren’t any feedback mechanisms to worry about (and we may have to adjourn until a new jury is selected on that one….) we’d ultimately want to mitigate CO2 emissions, if for any other reason than 1000 ppm might start feeling a bit stuffy.
> If you insist on claiming a new trend is occuring,
> you need to show some error bars; they’re going
> to be giant for the past two years.
Kinda like that Keenlyside study, eh?
🙂
I’ll address the temperature plateau and its implications in a day or two….
> Your first graph is a cool summary. But I fail to see
> the “leveling off” that you implicate. As for why
> the trends between temperature and CO2 don’t
> precisely correlate, there are several plausible reasons.
> The most important one is the intrinsic lag time
> between the CO2 increase and the resulting
> temperature increase.
But a major component of the lag time constant is the “heat bucket”/”smoking gun” hypothesis of OHC. Which brings us to Trenberth’s quandary: Where did the missing OHC go? ENSO?
> That the temperature signal
> and CO2 signal both increase exponentially
> (logarithmic is concave down, not concave up)
> is important evidence which deserves its own
> comment: this correlates well with the physical
> mechanism by which CO2 increases temperature.
Exponentially? The baseline effect of CO2 is exponential? Not what I’ve read:
Temperature = Temperature0 + ln(1 + 1.2x + 0.005x^2 + 0.0000014x^3), where “x” is the CO2 concentration in ppmv. This formula works pretty well up to 1,000 ppmv.
And this is the standard inverse log f() we all know and love.
Any additional feedback would also be inverse log as a multiplier. I can’t fathom that any feedback could be exponential, that’s like burning our faces off by looking at ourselves in the mirror.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3012/716/1600/addams-mirror-recursion-barber-shop-monster.jpg
(take a close look at recursion #3)
And the CO2 levels are rising geometrically. I don’t see an exponential line anywhere in ol’ Doc Brown’s data plot:
http://i32.tinypic.com/28h3dqh.jpg
> In addition to natural cycles, remember also that there are
> a mix of positive and negative feedbacks. You mention
> the “diminishing returns” which we expect as the
> atmosphere becomes saturated with CO2, but this is
> just a portion of the picture. There is much
> interesting research into whether warming is
> causing certain cloud trends which might inhibit
> warming, and this is a key example of some of
> the other possible reasons why the temperature
> signal and CO2 signal aren’t shaped exactly the same.
Right, I’m aware of those studies. Understanding what goes on inside clouds is a big gap in the science.
But remember there are also studies showing that RH isn’t rising w/ altitude as had been modeled, that the atmosphere isn’t saturating w/ WV as expected, and clouds are taking up extra slack from the increased, simple warming from CO2.
IOW, the system may have heat exchange functions that seem able to keep up with the load.
> I don’t want to sound like I’m excusing the apparent
> mismatch in Hansen’s trends and your calculated one,
> but it’s still well within the error bars at this point in time.
Well, I say Hansen, that’s Hansen/IPCC. But the discontinuity between current observed trend vs. some latent & truly exponential trend brings us to an interesting question: How long do we wait before a super-duper warming trend becomes utterly improbable?
Remember Mann’s hockey stick? He *USED* the ’98 el Nino as part of the blade. Now we should throw the el Nino out. How… ironic.
> The reconstruction reference is a good read, but it’s
> logic in the argument here is flawed. For starters,
> it would be more convincing to publish peer-reviewed
> research, or work from someone widely known such as
> McIntyre.
Well that’s where you could fill the gap. I’m shorter on time for this fun….
> The big deal is that it addresses a strawman: The
> argument is not that CO2 is driving climate change.
> It’s that CO2 and implicit feedbacks are driving the
> climate. The feedbacks are where the bulk of the
> warming will come, but the CO2 is necessary to
> instigate those feedbacks.
Right. But aren’t those feedbacks implicitly in the air, other than the OHC (which has risen, but AFAIK isn’t an active feedback yet … or is it?). And if those feedbacks are only atmospheric then Janssen’s deconstruction is valid. Janssen’s keeps showing the “unknown” category at the top of the stacked bar lines. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s aerosols, maybe that’s WV feedback, maybe that’s God’s magnifying glass.
If OTOH Janssen’s dominant AO variable entailed latent emissivity from the seas due to GHGs, then previous forcings would be in feedback already.
But then that would mean:
1) That CO2’s role is lower since up until 2000 CO2’s sesquicentennial portion of AGW was only 45 percent (and that’s a quote from Hansen).
2) The OHC heat bucket feedback scare is again, overblown (and again see the Aqua data, K. Trenberth, the errant data and what the parrot saw….)
> It’s that CO2 and implicit feedbacks are driving the
> climate. The feedbacks are where the bulk of the
> warming will come, but the CO2 is necessary to
> instigate those feedbacks
The fact that the average global temperature is not around 60 degrees C – which it theoretically would be due to the absorption of IR by water vapor at current concentrations without any feedback – strongly suggests that any feedback mechanisms are strongly negative.
counters:
Exponential? You mean it could run away until everything breaks? Physical systems rarely do that — mostly because of energy issues. Explosives can do that because of exothermic energy release. I can’t imagine blankets doing that.
If you think about it, the effect of CO2 must be logarithmic. At some extreme point, it would become an effective 100% blanket with subsequent addition having no effect. The 100% line is approached asymptotically.
Now it’s possible that the CO2 response curve is a sigmoid, like the arctangent or logistic functions, which appear exponential at the low limit.
Ah, but since counters has told us that Hansen’s ideas aren’t mainstream, we can safely ignore him.
UPDATE FWIW, here’s a May only plot of the UAH data. For fun, I wanted to see what happens if 1998 is completely ignored. The result is the unexpected green dashed line. The blue solid line includes 1998.