An Expensive Urban Legend
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
About.com describes an “urban legend” as an apocryphal (of questionable authenticity), secondhand story, told as true and just plausible enough to be believed, about some horrific…series of events….it’s likely to be framed as a cautionary tale. Whether factual or not, an urban legend is meant to be believed. In lieu of evidence, however, the teller of an urban legend is apt to rely on skillful storytelling and reference to putatively trustworthy sources.
I contend that the belief in human-caused global warming as a dangerous event, either now or in the future, has most of the characteristics of an urban legend. Like other urban legends, it is based upon an element of truth. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, and since greenhouse gases warm the lower atmosphere, more CO2 can be expected, at least theoretically, to result in some level of warming.
But skillful storytelling has elevated the danger from a theoretical one to one of near-certainty. The actual scientific basis for the plausible hypothesis that humans could be responsible for most recent warming is contained in the cautious scientific language of many scientific papers. Unfortunately, most of the uncertainties and caveats are then minimized with artfully designed prose contained in the Summary for Policymakers (SP) portion of the report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This Summary was clearly meant to instill maximum alarm from a minimum amount of direct evidence.
Next, politicians seized upon the SP, further simplifying and extrapolating its claims to the level of a “climate crisis”. Other politicians embellished the tale even more by claiming they “saw” global warming in Greenland as if it was a sighting of Sasquatch, or that they felt it when they fly in airplanes.
Just as the tales of marauding colonies of alligators living in New York City sewers are based upon some kernel of truth, so too is the science behind anthropogenic global warming. But there is a big difference between reports of people finding pet alligators that have escaped their owners, versus city workers having their limbs torn off by roving colonies of subterranean monsters.
In the case of global warming, the “putatively trustworthy sources” would be the consensus of the world’s scientists. The scientific consensus, after all, says that global warming is…is what? Is happening? Is severe? Is manmade? Is going to burn the Earth up if we do not act? It turns out that those who claim consensus either do not explicitly state what that consensus is about, or they make up something that supports their preconceived notions.
If the consensus is that the presence of humans on Earth has some influence on the climate system, then I would have to even include myself in that consensus. After all, the same thing can be said of the presence of trees on Earth, and hopefully we have at least the same rights as trees do. But too often the consensus is some vague, fill-in-the-blank, implied assumption where the definition of “climate change” includes the phrase “humans are evil”.
It is a peculiar development that scientific truth is now decided through voting. A relatively recent survey of climate scientists who do climate research found that 97.4% agreed that humans have a “significant” effect on climate. But the way the survey question was phrased borders on meaninglessness. To a scientist, “significant” often means non-zero. The survey results would have been quite different if the question was, “Do you believe that natural cycles in the climate system have been sufficiently researched to exclude them as a potential cause of most of our recent warming?”
And it is also a good bet that 100% of those scientists surveyed were funded by the government only after they submitted research proposals which implicitly or explicitly stated they believed in anthropogenic global warming to begin with. If you submit a research proposal to look for alternative explanations for global warming (say, natural climate cycles), it is virtually guaranteed you will not get funded. Is it any wonder that scientists who are required to accept the current scientific orthodoxy in order to receive continued funding, then later agree with that orthodoxy when surveyed? Well, duh.
In my experience, the public has the mistaken impression that a lot of climate research has gone into the search for alternative explanations for warming. They are astounded when I tell them that virtually no research has been performed into the possibility that warming is just part of a natural cycle generated within the climate system itself.
Too often the consensus is implied to be that global warming is so serious that we must do something now in the form of public policy to avert global catastrophe. What? You don’t believe that there are alligators in New York City sewer system? How can you be so unconcerned about the welfare of city workers that have to risk their lives by going down there every day? What are you, some kind of Holocaust-denying, Neanderthal flat-Earther?
It makes complete sense that in this modern era of scientific advances and inventions that we would so readily embrace a compelling tale of global catastrophe resulting from our own excesses. It’s not a new genre of storytelling, of course, as there were many B-movies in the 1950s whose horror themes were influenced by scientists’ development of the atomic bomb.
Our modern equivalent is the 2004 movie, “Day After Tomorrow”, in which all kinds of physically impossible climatic events occur in a matter of days. In one scene, super-cold stratospheric air descends to the Earth’s surface, instantly freezing everything in its path. The meteorological truth, however, is just the opposite. If you were to bring stratospheric air down to the surface, heating by compression would make it warmer than the surrounding air, not colder.
I’m sure it is just coincidence that “Day After Tomorrow” was directed by Roland Emmerich, who also directed the 2006 movie “Independence Day,” in which an alien invasion nearly exterminates humanity. After all, what’s the difference? Aliens purposely killing off humans, or humans accidentally killing off humans? Either way, we all die.
But a global warming catastrophe is so much more believable. After all, climate change does happen, right? So why not claim that ALL climate change is now the result of human activity? And while we are at it, let’s re-write climate history so that we get rid of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice age, with a new ingenious hockey stick-shaped reconstruction of past temperatures that makes it look like climate never changed until the 20th Century? How cool would that be?
The IPCC thought it was way cool…until it was debunked, after which it was quietly downgraded in the IPCC reports from the poster child for anthropogenic global warming, to one possible interpretation of past climate.
And let’s even go further and suppose that the climate system is so precariously balanced that our injection of a little bit of that evil plant food, carbon dioxide, pushes our world over the edge, past all kinds of imaginary tipping points, with the Greenland ice sheet melting away, and swarms of earthquakes being the price of our indiscretions.
In December, hundreds of bureaucrats from around the world will once again assemble, this time in Copenhagen, in their attempts to forge a new international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. And as has been the case with every other UN meeting of its type, the participants simply assume that the urban legend is true. Indeed, these politicians and governmental representatives need it to be true. Their careers and political power now depend upon it.
And the fact that they hold their meetings in all of the best tourist destinations in the world, enjoying the finest exotic foods, suggests that they do not expect to ever have to be personally inconvenienced by whatever restrictions they try to impose on the rest of humanity.
If you present these people with evidence that the global warming crisis might well be a false alarm, you are rewarded with hostility and insults, rather than expressions of relief. The same can be said for most lay believers of the urban legend. I say “most” because I once encountered a true believer who said he hoped my research into the possibility that climate change is mostly natural will eventually be proved correct.
Unfortunately, just as we are irresistibly drawn to disasters – either real ones on the evening news, or ones we pay to watch in movie theaters – the urban legend of a climate crisis will persist, being believed by those whose politics and worldviews depend upon it. Only when they finally realize what a new treaty will cost them in loss of freedoms and standard of living will those who oppose our continuing use of carbon-based energy begin to lose their religion.
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You can go further than that. Several oceanic/atmospheric cycles went from cold to warm phase between 1976 and 2001. (PDO, AMO, SO, IPO, NAO, AO, AAO) Since that point they were all in warm (or neutral) phase. Now the PDO and perhaps others are starting to turn cool.
That correlates fairly well with what we have been seeing.
I am not saying CO2 has no effect, merely that it appears to be a minor fingerprint, not a prime mover.
Bear in mind when there is a correlation in one direction only, it is less significant than if there is something that correlates up, then down again.
Well, Joel, I’m about 40 and I’ve never owned a car, I work locally, I haven’t flown anywhere in ten years, and I don’t have kids. And yet, even my lifestyle is a far cry from what some prominent environmentalists have been calling for. There have been prominent voices saying that the developing world should not industrialise. Would you go that far? If not, why not? What evidence do you have that it is OK to industrialise?
Stefan,
Jenny Wade’s summary of the “concept of other” in Green / Affiliative Consciousness and the concept or other in the next level (beginning of second tier), Authentic Consciousness, is insightful. Color names for levels are not consistent between authors (I think Yellow and Teal are both used for this level) so I like Wade’s more descriptive labels.
So here is her take on “concept of other” from these perspectives:
Affiliative Consciousness
People are similar in kind to subject, but possess own point of view and interior life of varigated emotions
Sharing information about one’s inner life with others will lead to a consensus-based community
Differences are superficial, everyone is fundamentally equal
Differences and conflict are threatening
People need to be helped by being in close relationships
Authentic Consciousness
Very little ego-based distortion
True empathy
Respect for personal agency, diversity, and autonomy of others
Relatively free of enculturation and conformity to social expectations
Impatient with people who impede subject’s personal progress
And this level is not the end of the road, either. But, as you have mentioned, one can respect the values of other levels from this perspective without believing other values (and those who hold them) are right or are wrong in all situations. It is a viewpoint that can make for better understanding among scientists.
Gene Nemetz:
“Would you please enumerate the areas of climate and the dollar amounts allotted to each of them so we can see the data that has led you to this conclusion?”
You’re asking the wrong question. Simply get familiar with the scientific literature, and you can see what people are studying. Your ignorance of the literature is causing you to draw false conclusions.
“We all know that billions have gone in to co2. So will you show us how much has gone in to these other areas you speak of?”
Do “we all” know that? From where, exactly? If you want to demand specific but irrelevant facts from people, you should first of all provide evidence for your vague claims.
Joel Shore (10:28:13) :
How much will it cost to get the MUG tattoo removed?
If where you live is anything like the UK, no-one actually knows how much power is produced by wind because they don’t use bi-directional metering.
In case you didn’t know. When there is no wind, the turbines are often driven from the grid. I’ve seen wind turbines driven for days on end from the grid, using power, not generating!
There is no record of how much power is really generated, so how can they realistically charge anyone
DaveE.
Stefan says:
Who has said that? I imagine you might be able to find a few people at the extreme, but I doubt it has been considered as a serious possibility. There are people who are saying that the developing world should not make the same mistakes that we did when we industrialized, but that is a different story. And, there are indeed examples of the developing world jumping technologies. For example, places have gone from no phones to cell phones, bypassing the telephone wire technology that we had.
Joel Shore (10:28:13) :
I won’t claim that I am a saint but I have done various things to try to reduce my carbon footprint. I own a Prius. I live in a neighborhood where a lot of services that I need are available within walking or biking distance and I use foot or bicycle for a significant fraction of my trips; when I do use my car, I try to combine trips to places that are in the same vicinity rather than making separate trips. I own a small house and I pay a surcharge on my utility bill in order to have the utility add a certain quantity of wind energy to the electricity grid. I have installed CFLs in most fixtures and installed a low-flow shower head. I also try to keep the thermostat down during heating season (although I get a little pushback from my girlfriend on that one). Our house does have an air conditioning unit but we hardly use that at all. I try to buy at least some of our produce at a local farmer’s market (that I almost always get to by bike).
I respect that…practicing what you preach. Thanks.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Joel Shore (16:52:43) :
Radiosonde measurements from thousands of weather balloons show that specific humidity in the upper troposphere has been falling over the last 60 years, especially in the 300 and 400 mbar pressure range. These are direct measurements.
You suggest that the humidity trends of the radiosonde data are not believable because they conflict with satellite data, which according to a paper Soden et al 2005, show increasing humidity in the upper troposphere.
We have confidence in the temperature measurements from satellite data because they are verified by radiosonde measurements. The satellite temperature measurements are calibrated by comparing individual satellite pixel readings to corresponding radiosonde readings.
Satellites do not measure humidity, they measure radiation emissions. The Soden paper relies on data from the High Resolution Infrared Radiometer Sounder (HIRS) which measures emissions from the 6.7 um absorption band, channel T12, and the Microwave Sounding Unit T2 channel, which is sensitive to temperature from oxygen atom emissions. The paper claims the T12 signal is sensitive to relative humidity because it response to both temperature and water vapour content. The paper only assumes that T12 varies with relative humidity, but the relative contribution of temperature and water content to the T12 signal is unknown.
The paper assumes the T12 signal is proportional to relative humidity only because this signal has not changed much since 1982, and climate models project constant relative humidity. This is circular reasoning. The T12 signal needs to be calibrated to radiosonde measurements to determine what it is measuring. Since radiosonde measurements show falling relative humidity in the upper troposphere, the T12 signal is not a relative humidity indicator.
So the paper makes the false assumption of no change in relative humidity based on little change in T12, and with increasing temperatures to 2002 (temperatures have been falling since then), the paper concludes that specific humidity is increasing.
The North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) is a high quality dataset with a large number of radiosonde. It does not have data problem expressed with respect to the global reanalysis. This data confirms that relative humidity is falling as discussed here.
http://climatesci.org/2007/12/18/climate-metric-reality-check-3-evidence-for-a-lack-of-water-vapor-feedback-on-the-regional-scale/
save the sharks says:
Thanks. I do try to practice what I preach.
Ken Gregory,
Thanks for your reply. You say:
The Soden paper does not use T12 alone. It also looks at T2. By looking at T12-T2 it is able to at least approximately subtract out the effect of changing temperature and just get a measure of the changing absolute humidity. Dessler and co-workers (list of papers here: http://atmo.tamu.edu/profile/sub/239 ) have also independently looked at humidity as measured by satellites; I haven’t looked in much detail at their method of doing it but it uses different satellite measurements and they get similar results to Soden.
As for the radiosonde data, as Soden et al explain: “Although an international network of weather balloons has carried water vapor sensors for more than half a century, changes in instrumentation and poor calibration make such sensors unsuitable for detecting trends in upper tropospheric water vapor (27). Similarly, global reanalysis products also suffer from spurious variability and trends related to changes in data quality and data coverage (24).” [I couldn’t find Ref. (27) but Ref. (24) is this paper: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Staff/Fasullo/refs/Trenberth2005FasulloSmith.pdf ]
You also haven’t addressed the other reasons that I mentioned for the radiosonde data not being believable including the amount of negative radiative forcing it would imply (if your estimate of the strength of water vapor relative to CO2 is correct, which I admittedly don’t believe either) and the idea that the specific humidity is well-correlated with temperature fluctuations on the annual timescales but then fails to be correlated on the longer timescales.
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah. In reading the postings on this site. The bias and political agenda is obvious and more suspect than those you attempt to impugn.
[REPLY – OTOH, we don’t delete opposing points of view like on nearly all pro-AGW blogs. Consider that. ~ Evan]
Is there anyone out there who can point to a rigorous treatment , in the form of a peer reviewed paper , that can justify Soden’s suposition that … ” changes in Instrumentation and poor calibration make such sensors unsuitable for detecting trends in upper tropospheric water vapor …” . Maybe it’s just me , but I’m having a bit of a difficulty admissing to the idea that a 17 percent drop in WV levels can be so lightly dismissed on account of percieved ” Calibration ” deficiencies and changes in instrumentation . Granted , analog instrumentation of the immediate post WW II era was not as accurate as the electronically based digital instruments of today , but 17 percent ? That just seems a bit over the edge. For one thing , if Mid – 20th Century instrumentation was deemed inadequate for measuring WV levels [ according to Soden ], how was this conclusion determined : i.e. was this based on some sort of compelling evidence or is this just “his ” opinion . Secondly , at what point on the part of Soden , or the scientific community in general , was it determined that instrumentation was sufficient to the task of accurately measuring WV levels ; the advent of satellite monitoring ? Do satellites measure humidity and water vapor levels directly ? If not , then what makes them so much better than tools which take direct measurements ? Thirdly , since I am given of the opinion that instrumentation technology presently is more advanced than that which existed in 1948 ; why shouldn’t I subscribe to the possibilty that the preservation in the continuity of data trends [with regards to WV levels] was observationally maintained through 60 years of continuous improvement in instrumentation technology ? Somebody help me with this .
Joel Shore (16:52:43) Oct 16 says:
” “A 3% increase in water vapour has the same effect as a 100% increase in CO2.”
Really? So, if your radiosonde data is to be believed and is representative of the drop in water vapor at the atmospheric levels important for the greenhouse effect, that would imply that we have had changes in water vapor between 1948 and 2008 that would be the equivalent of something like 5 or 6 halvings of the CO2 levels (e.g., dropping the CO2 levels by something like a factor of 50.)”
The statement “A 3% increase in water vapour has the same effect (on optical depth) as a 100% increase in CO2” was determined by HARTCODE line-by-line (LBL) code. Accurate LBL codes are widely available for flux density and optical depth computations. A 3% increase in water vapour means we increase the water vapour content at all levels of the atmosphere by 3%.
In this calculation it is necessary to have the correct water vapour profile. You can not use the USST-76 standard atmosphere, which is inputted into the MODTRAN source code. The USST-76 has far too small H2O amount compared with the global average from TIGR, or the NOAA ESRR databases. Here is a comparison of USST-76 with the TIGR and NOAA water vapour profiles. You can see that the TIGR and NOAA profiles from 300 mbar to surface are almost identical, but the USST-76 profile has much less water vapour.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS Essay/NOAA GAT USST76.jpg
You suggest that this somehow conflicts with the fact according to radiosonde data, water vapour specific humidity has declined 17% from 1948 to 2008 at the 400 mb level. You can’t compare a total atmosphere calculation with a water vapour decline at one level in the atmosphere. Specific humidity has increased through most of this period at the 950 mbar level, and from 1970 to 2008, specific humidity hasn’t changed much from 600 mbar 850 mbar levels. You have to compute the total atmosphere optical depth, as we have done and shown in the optical depth graph I previously presented and shown here:
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Optical%20Depth2008.jpg
This shows that the decline in water vapour content in the 300 to 400 mbar levels offsets most of the warming effects of increasing CO2 and increasing water vapour at lower levels. This is not at all like “5 or 6 halvings of the CO2 levels”.
The early data may not be reliable. If you ignore the early data, the declining upper troposphere water vapour may still offset a significant portion of the CO2 effect. Nevertheless, it is clear that the declining water vapour during the last few decades has caused a negative feedback to CO2 emissions, contrary to computer models. You should also note that a change in optical depth is not proportional to a change in out-going long-wave radiation.
Of course I know that Soden looks at the T12-T2 difference, but we don’t know if this cancels the temperature effect because we don’t know the relative contribution of water vapour and temperature to the T12 signal.
Nature has many ways to reduce specific humidity. In the tropics, every time the air temperature increases, thunderstorm clouds form and more SW light is reflected, the OLR increases, and rain increases, until the maximum air temperature is passed. See “the thermostat hypothesis”:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/14/the-thermostat-hypothesis/
Ken Gregory says:
Okay…The new parenthetical statement you have added changes the meaning considerably. I had thought you meant that the radiative effect (radiative forcing) due to a 3% increase in water vapor is the same as that due to a 100% increase in CO2. However, as you note, “a change in optical depth is not proportional to a change in out-going long-wave radiation”, so this 3% vs 100% claim is really irrelevant to their effects on the global temperature.
I don’t understand what you are saying here. The changes in T2 should reflect the part of the change in T12 that is due to temperature, because T2 is sensitive only to temperature and not water vapor. This is why Soden subtracts one from the other in order to remove the effect of the change in temperature. (In reality, the T2 and T12 don’t have exactly the same weighting over the various atmospheric levels but they are quite close so the cancellation of the temperature variation part of T12 should be quite good.)
And, as I noted, Dessler uses different satellite data to look at the changes in water vapor.
But it seems to me that such a hypothetical mechanism would not explain how there is a positive water vapor feedback for temperature fluctuations on, say, approximately annual timescales (where I believe that both the satellite and radiosonde data show it to be operating) but somehow does not occur on the longer multidecadal timescales.
Ken,
By the way, I realized that I am a little confused about what those optical depth measurements even represent. Are they for a given wavelength of radiation or some sort of weighted average over a range of wavelengths?
Joel Shore:
Sorry for the delayed response. I have been busy. The Miskolczi & Mlynczak says on page 34 of the PDF at:
http://met.hu/idojaras/IDOJARAS_vol108_No4_01.pdf
“An increase of 0.08 prcm in the global average w would result in the same
temperature rise – or a decrease by the same amount could completely hide the greenhouse effect of the CO2 doubling.” The atmosphere water content is 2.62 prcm in these calculations, so 0.08/2.62 = 3.0%.
A 0.08 prcm change in water vapour, with the same percentage (3%) change throughout the atmosphere, or a doubling of CO2 from 366 ppm, would increase the optical depth by 1.29%.
The temperature change is a direct function of optical depth, (but not a linear function), so either a 3% increase in water vapour or a doubling of CO2 would cause the same temperature increase. Using the global average TIGR radiosonde archive, this temperature increase is 0.48 C assuming no change in outgoing longwave radiation. This is the long term equilibrium condition, as for a stable climate, the incoming radiation must equal the outgoing radiation.
You say “I am a little confused about what those optical depth measurements even represent. Are they for a given wavelength of radiation or some sort of weighted average over a range of wavelengths?”
HARTCODE calculates the spectral radiation fluxes using in a spherical refractive environment using 9 streams, 150 vertical layers, 11 greenhouse gases to a 1 cm^-1 spectral resolution. The total flux optical depths are computed as the negative natural logarithms of the atmospheric transmittance, being the ratio of the transmitted flux to the upward surface radiation flux. This is integrated over the full spectral range 1 – 3000 cm^-1 and integrated over the solid angles.
I previously remarked “This graph shows that changing the water vapour content at the 300 – 400 mb level has 41 times the effect on out-going radiation as the same change near the surface. So only water vapour changes in the upper atmosphere matter.”
You thought “that would imply that we have had changes in water vapor between 1948 and 2008 that would be the equivalent of something like 5 or 6 halvings of the CO2 levels”
But you forget that the absolute amount of water vapour, specific humidity, at 300 mbar is only 2.25% of that at the surface. In the layer 300 – 400 mbar, over the last 60 years the water vapour content decreased by 55 g/m^2, but in the layer 850 mbar to surface the water vapour content increased by 165 g/m^2, according to the radiosonde data.
Concerning the Soden 2005 paper, the assumption of the T12 response to increased water vapour is contradictory. T12 is the radiation measurement at the water molecule 6.3 um band. An increase in water vapour would reduce the radiation measured at constant temperature, and a temperature increase would increase the T12 signal at constant water vapour mass.
But the paper says at the top of page 843, “As the atmosphere moistens, the emission level for T12 increases as a result of the increasing opacity of water vapor along the satellite line of sight.” Huh!! This must be a typo. This should say “emission level for T12 decreases…”
Soden assumes without any justification that the temperature effect on T2 is the same as the temperature effect on T12. This doesn’t make sense. T2 signal comes from the oxygen molecule in the upper atmosphere. The T12 temperature signal is radiation from the surface and non-water vapour molecules in the atmosphere that isn’t absorbed by water vapour. This is a completely different type of temperature signal, and the signals come from different regions of the surface-atmosphere system. The T2 is an emission signal, while the T12 is an attenuation signal. The T2 – T12 calculation makes no sense. There is no justification for assuming T12 is a relative humidity indicator. It is likely wrong because it disagrees with direct measurements.