Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Last month (April 2010), the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put out a study called “Climate Change Indicators in the United States” (13 Mb PDF). I read through it … depressingly bad science.
To start with, they parrot the findings of the IPCC as their “evidence” that everything we see in the climate record is human-caused. They say:
The buildup of green- house gases in the atmosphere is very likely the cause of most of the recent observed increase in average temperatures, and contributes to other climate changes. (IPCC 2007)
Despite the “very likely” certainty of the IPCC, I see the current level of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate a bit differently, as shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1. Graph showing our understanding of the climate. Image is the painting by J. M. W. Turner, “Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway”.
Having asserted that all changes are due to humans, they then list a bunch of changes, and consider their case as being established. Here’s how they put it:
The indicators in this report present clear evidence that the composition of the atmosphere is being altered as a result of human activities and that the climate is changing. They also illustrate a number of effects on society and ecosystems related to these changes.
Now, that particular statement is very carefully crafted. It is very painstakingly worded so that no one can say that they claimed the changes in climate are caused by the changes in the “composition of the atmosphere” … but heck, if you mistakenly were to assume that, the EPA won’t get in your way.
In other words, CO2 is rising and climate is changing … stunning news.
But that’s just the start. The individual parts of the report are marked by plain old bad science.
Here’s one example among many. This is the record of “heat waves”, which they define as follows:
While there is no universal definition of a heat wave, this indicator defines a heat wave as a four-day period with an average temperature that would only be expected to occur once every 10 years, based on the historical record.
This indicator reviews trends in the U.S. Annual Heat Wave Index between 1895 and 2008. This index tracks the frequency of heat waves across the lower 48 states, but not the intensity of these episodes. The index uses daily maximum temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which keeps records from weather stations throughout the nation. Approximately 300 to 400 stations reported data from 1895 to 1910; over the last 100 years, the number of stations has risen to 700 or more.
The index value for a given year could mean several different things. For example, an index value of 0.2 in any given year could mean that 20 percent of the recording stations experienced one heat wave; 10 percent of stations experienced two heat waves; or some other combination of stations and episodes resulted in this value.
Sadly, although they say they use NOAA data, they don’t say where the data that they used is located. Well, no, actually that’s not quite true. They say:
The data for this indicator are based on measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Network. These weather station data are available online at: www.nws.noaa.gov/os/coop/what-is-coop.html.
Unfortunately, when you go to that URL, there’s no data. There’s just a description of the Cooperative Station Program entitled “What is the Coop Program?” … but I digress …
Regarding heat waves, they say:
The frequency of heat waves in the United States decreased in the 1960s and 1970s, but has risen steadily since then. The percentage of the United States experiencing heat waves has also increased. The most severe heat waves in U.S. history remain those that occurred during the “Dust Bowl” in the 1930s, although average temperatures have increased since then.
Having said that, Figure 2 shows their data for the Heat Wave Index, the linear trend over the entire period, and the change in atmospheric CO2 during the period.
Figure 2. “Heat Wave Index” (yellow line) and CO2 level (red line, right scale). Orange line is the linear trend for the entire period.
You’d think that the only reasonable conclusions from this chart would be that heat waves and CO2 are not related in the slightest, that there is no overall change in the US Heat Wave Index, and that there appears to have been a step change in the data in 1980 … but this being the EPA, you’d be wrong. This is all part of the ‘CO2 is rising and climate is changing’ mantra.
And you would also think that they would give us drought information to go with this. For example, I showed the change (or rather the lack of change) in the Palmer Drought Severity Index from 1895 to 2009 in my post “Come Rain or Come Shine“.
But strangely, rather than report that drought is no more common now than a hundred years ago, they say:
During the 20th century, many indices were created to measure drought severity by looking at trends in precipitation, soil moisture, stream flow, vegetation health, and other variables. This indicator is based on the U.S. Drought Monitor, which integrates several of these indices.
Why is the U.S. Drought Monitor a strange choice for their analysis? Well, because that particular drought indicator only contains data that goes all the way back to … 2000. Not even one decade of data. And of course, their conclusion is:
Because data from the U.S. Drought Monitor are only available for the most recent decade, there is no clear long-term trend in this indicator.
Well, duh … the USHCN maintains several long-term drought indicators which cover the period 1895 – present, so the EPA chose to only report on an indicator with a nine-year record, and then explains that the record is too short to show a trend.
I could give you many more examples, but my stomach won’t take it. This is the US EPA, however, so I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. My tax dollars at work …
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Like I commented on the Sensenbremmer post on May 6:
EPA has recently published a report “Climate Change Indicators in the United States”.
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/indicators/pdfs/ClimateIndicators_full.pdf
It is clear from this that their whole case for man being responsible for ‘dangerous climate change’ is based on the IPCC assessment reports. So their proposed regulation of CO2 is based on these ‘dodgy dossiers’, and surely stands or falls with them.
The EPA report states “Warming of the climate system is well documented, evident from increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. The buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is very likely the cause of most of the recent observed increase in average temperatures, and contributes to other climate changes.” The reference in the endnote is given as “IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2007. Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate change 2007: The physical science basis (Fourth Assessment Report). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.”
Also: “Before the industrial era began around 1780, carbon dioxide concentrations measured approximately 270–290 ppm. Concentrations have risen steadily since then, reaching 387 ppm in 2009—a 38 percent increase. Almost all of this increase is due to human activities.” The reference in the endnote is given as “IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2007. Climate change 2007: The physical science basis (Fourth Assessment Report). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.”
Also: “Since 1905, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has roughly doubled. It is very likely that this increase is predominantly due to agriculture and fossil fuel use.” The reference in the endnote is given as “IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2007. Climate change 2007: Synthesis report (Fourth Assessment Report). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.”
For the persistence of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere, EPA uses the 50-200 year figure from the SAR. They state:
“Data source: EPA uses atmospheric lifetimes and global warming potentials from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Second Assessment Report, as countries have agreed to do under current international treaties within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).” Endnote gives “IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 1995. Climate change 1995: The science of climate change (Second Assessment Report). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.”
Very telling, however, is that there is NO reference given for the alleged ‘heat trapping’ effect of the ‘greenhouse gasses’, just bald assertions.
Willis
there are 9 references to CO2 and none of those in the main text!
There is not even any mantion that man mdae warming caused the droughts from the document you referenced:
Key Points
• Heat waves occurred with high frequency in the 1930s, and these remain the most severe heat waves in the U.S. historical record (see Figure 1). Many years of intense drought (the “Dust Bowl”) contributed to these heat waves by depleting soil moisture and reducing the moderating effects of evaporation.7
• There is no clear trend over the entire period tracked by the index. Although it is hard to see in Figure 1 (because of the extreme events of the 1930s), heat wave frequency decreased in the 1960s and 1970s but has risen since then (see Figure 1).
• Like the heat wave index, the percentage of the United States affected by heat waves has also risen steadily since the 1970s (see Figures 2 and 3). The recent period of increasing heat is distinguished by a rise in extremely high nighttime temperatures
\harry
Phil M. says:
This is NOT the assertion of EPA or IPCC. The assertion as that an anthropogenic signal is embedded in the otherwise highly variable climate system.
You mean a bit like road kill that gets deeply embedded in the highly variable surface of a highway.
Harry Lu says:
May 8, 2010 at 2:33 pm
In which data sets does the nightime temp rise to extremely high levels?
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/WhatGlobalWarming.htm
In Winnemucca, NV; Ashland, OR; Red Bluff, CA; Grants Pass, OR; Sitka, AK; Redding, CA; Livermore, CA; Sacramento, CA;
Roseburg, OR ??
Is it GISS?
Is it CRU 91, 94 or 99?
Is it MET Office?
Which one is it?
Harry Lu says:
May 8, 2010 at 2:33 pm
In which data sets does the nightime temp rise to extremely high levels?
http://www.robertb.darkhorizons.org/WhatGlobalWarming.htm
In Winnemucca, NV; Ashland, OR; Red Bluff, CA; Grants Pass, OR; Sitka, AK; Redding, CA; Livermore, CA; Sacramento, CA;
Roseburg, OR ??
Is it GISS, or is it CRU 91, 94 or 99?
Is it MET Office?
Which one is it?
Harry Lu says:
May 8, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Yes … and there are over 100 references to “greenhouse gases”, and all but three of them are in the main text. So? (or perhaps I should say “So!”)
I think you mean “heat waves” rather than “droughts”, per your following quotes which are all about heat waves.
What they do say about GHGs and heat waves is:
and
Seems pretty clear to me, surely you can connect the dots.
Okay children lets all have a time out. The fact is the EPA like all government organizations are run by politics. It can be no other way, the heads and on down the line, at least two more levels, are political appointees. Rule number one in any bureaucracy is, Never Embarrass Your Boss. It is not the fault of the bureaucrats that work for these organizations. Over the years, all of these groups have been completely politicized. It is the same in Canada and the UK. That does not mean they don’t usually do good and useful work. Nor does it mean critics should not throw a few stones when warranted. The second most important role any of these groups have is delivering the propaganda the politicians require. If you are engaging in propaganda then you are fair game for propaganda rocks from the opposition. That is my model and I sticking to it.
Phil, you don’t need another coffee, you need a dose of reality. The EPA has a fine mission and has accomplished marvelous things; none of this excuses the sheer idiocy of classifying the most important nutrient of the biosphere as a “dangerous pollutant”. Your attempts at slander fall flat if you’re looking for anti-environment wackos look somewhere else, you won’t find many crash-and-burners on this site.
One of the most important reasons to oppose the EPA’s rulings is precisely because — assuming it has a hope in Hades of actually affecting CO2 levels (it doesn’t!) it would only do harm. There is no evidence that elevated CO2 levels is harmful in any way. There is precious little evidence that CO2 has a detectable warming signal; simple physics indicates that the CO2 increase should provide a very small fraction of the warming that has actually been reported.
Because the CO2 greenhouse effect acts logarithmically one can expect very mild warming if the CO2 levels double or even quadruple. At what point does CO2 become a toxin? Mild negative effects on animals are detectable in the laboratory around 1500 ppm; serious ones at around twice that amount. But in previous eras the CO2 levels have been above 5000 ppm and fossil records indicate that at those levels both plants and animals thrived; the earth was downright Edenic compared to the relatively barren biosphere of today.
The agricultural revolution that averted starvation of the increasing human population in the latter part of the 20th century was enabled by three things: improved agricultural practices enabled by modern technology, including the use of farm machinery that burn fossil fuels; a mild warming during that period; and the increase in atmospheric CO2 by about 30%. Today the world is considerably lusher than in 1970 because of the mild warming and increased CO2. Clear evidence shows that this effect will continue up to about four times the current levels, assuming that the climate stays warm.
If the temperature drops again, as it did 1940-1970, the presence of higher levels of CO2 may help to alleviate the starvation of billions. It is well established in the laboratory that the benefits of increased CO2 in terms of plant growth and harvest are valid in a fairly broad temperature band. CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere is one of the few things we can do to forestall worldwide disaster in case of another climate minimum or mini ice age.
If you have a shred of interest in the welfare of the biosphere, consider these things carefully and evaluate the EPA’s actions on this basis. The EPA is not sacrosanct, their encyclicals are not divinely inspired. They are fallible. They have failed before, but this is probably their biggest and most disastrous failure. Anyone who cares about the environment ought to be seriously concerned about it.
Dennis Nikols says:
May 8, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Nonsense. For many, many years NASA did little but what its name implies, the “National Aeronautic and Space Administration”. They did science. They put men on the moon. They developed the Space Shuttle.
Then came James Hansen, and now it is one of the most politicized parts of the government.
The idea that it is all hopeless, that all government agencies perforce must be totally politicized, is pessimism at its worst. If you just throw up your hands and say it’s all too hard because government organizations will always be political, you’ll certainly get your self-fulfilling prophecy.
Me, I’m more into “Rage, rage against the passing of the light.” I might not get there, but I’ll fight in any case.
Finally, a Protip™ for you. If you want to get traction in a discussion, opening with “Okay children lets all have a time out” is very, very poor tactics. All that does is piss people off and give yourself the image of a sanctimonious prig. No one likes being called a child, and they like the person doing the calling even less.
mb says:
May 8, 2010 at 11:43 am
“I don’t see a nearly perfect correlation between the heat wave index and PDO…”
“I don’t know that the data does not support a link between global warming and heat waves in the US. I agree that the graph we are discussing is NOT conclusive evidence. But it could be that the EPA has more up its sleeve.”
I don’t mind spelling it out for you, MB. First of all, the PDO is like a heat pump on a house: it can warm or cool depending on which phase it is in. When it switches to its cool phase, it starts to slowly cool the planet. The cooling trend peaks just as it switches back to its warm phase, or even a little after the switch. Likewise, the warming trend associated with warm phase of the PDO will generally peak as it switches to its cool phase, or a little while after.
The switch from one phase to another, however, may not be all that abrupt, possibly taking 5 to 10 years, and then several more years to know for sure that it actually happened. Additionally, the PDO can go briefly positive during cool phases and briefly negative during warm phases, but the brief departures from the predominating phase don’t seem to have a significant impact on observable climate. In other words, it is the persistence of the phase that matters, not the fluctuations inside the phase.
Also, there are other factors effecting climate besides the PDO, likely including solar activity, other ocean cycles, increasing CO2 and things that we have not recognized as yet. The PDO, however, seems to be dominant, because it swamps all the other factors.
Alright, based on the graph you linked to, the PDO appears to have been in a weak warm phase at the beginning of the 20th Century which increased into a more substantial warm phase during the 20s and 30s, abruptly ending around 1944. The cool phase dominated until about 1977, with another warm phase continuing until recently. The PDO may be shifting to its cool phase now, but it is too soon to tell. Certainly…it is due for a shift to the cool phase and it is showing signs of doing just that.
If my assertion of correlation is correct, we would expect to find US heat waves to be a little above the median in the early 20th Century, increasing into the 1930s, then dropping off in the 1940s. Heat waves would reach a low point in the 1970s, before slowly increasing again into the 21st Century.
If US heat waves are allegedly correlated to increasing CO2, we would expect to find a relatively steady increase in heat waves from the beginning of the 20th Century to the present.
The graph at the top of this article shows almost exactly what one would expect if the PDO was dominating US climate. On the other hand, there is a strong anti-correlation to increasing CO2 during the 50s, 60s and 70s. One can argue that the anti-correlation was caused by sulfate aerosols from pollution, but the anti-correlation is as obvious in the Southern Hemisphere, where the pollution was not significant, as it is in the Northern Hemisphere. That alone eliminates aerosol pollution as the primary reason for the observed cooling and the reduction of heat waves, but there are other good arguments against the aerosol excuse for the cooling that I won’t get into here.
The bottom line is that the data fits the PDO cycle very well and increasing CO2 not at all, except when the increasing CO2 corresponds to the warm phase of the PDO. That is called ‘curve fitting’ and does not argue for any causality from CO2.
If the EPA has more up its sleeves, then why not present it? If we are facing a global crisis and the very survival of the human race as we know it depends on getting the cooperation of all of humanity, why try to convince us with shoddy, ill-founded arguments, unless that is all they have? If it is so important, would it not be criminal to hold back the strong evidence? You bet it would!
It is quite obvious that they do not have anything up their sleeves. This is their best stuff. This is all they can come up with after 10s of billions of dollars has been spent searching for something more convincing, but to no avail. For 20 years, climate scientists have been searching for better arguments, but their arguments today or nearly identical to 20 years ago. They are just as weak and irrational now as they were then. No new evidence has been found for an impending AGW crisis, but the evidence that natural climate variability is dominant continues to grow.
The EPA does not want to tell you about natural climate variability. It cannot regulate that. In order for the EPA to regulate humans, it must find them to be the cause of a problem, even if one does not exist.
Don’t worry about climate change. It is the EPA that you need to fear!
If you want to understand the EPA, check out Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom”, cartoon edition:
http://mises.org/books/trts/
You will find the EPA in slide #16.
Oh dear. So, James believes the nonsensical assertion made by Willis Eschenbach that the IPCC claim that “everything we see in the climate record is human-caused”.
Right, it’s actually only the bad things we see in the recent climate record that the ipcc attributes to AGW. But then again, according to the ipcc’s “science” that’s just about the only kind there are.
Josualdo says:
May 8, 2010 at 2:57 am
Heat waves are very dear, I love heat waves. Got 48 ºC in the shade around here in the 2003 one. It wasn’t like Iraq at noon, usually 51 ºC they say.
My brother in law was there for a year. It was 135F, (57C) a lot of days. And he had full gear on all the time.
starzmom says:
May 8, 2010 at 5:00 am
Most people’s electric bills are substantially higher. Good science has not been among EPA’s many talents for a long time.
I believe the EPA was Nixon’s idea. I wish a president would come along that had the idea of getting rid of the EPA.
You’ve picked my favourite painting of all time for your background.
Turner in his later work was an Impressionist well before the movement really started, and the actual painting (in the National Gallery if memory serves) has recently been cleaned, to reveal original details such as the hare running in front of the loco. I’ve spent an hour or three in front of it….
The GWR is of course the creation of another Victorian giant: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. For epitaph, he aligned the Box Hill tunnel (just out of Bristol) so that the sun shines through it on his birthday. Well, almost, he forgot about refraction at low Sun angles (an unknown unknown, then?), and the end-to-end Sun is a little late.
Quite made my day, seeing this old friend again.
Jim Clarke > Thanks for long diskussion.
I think that what the EPA is trying to tell us is that there is a chain of causations and effects, going like
CO2 emissions -> higher global temperature -> higher local US temperature -> more heat waves in the US.
One should argue separately for each arrow. Lets leave the first arrow out of the discussion, or we will never get anywhere. Fortunately, I think (hope) we agree on that
global tempertatures have been rising in this period, so it is not really relevant to the present question, which is : is there an increase of heat waves in US due to higher global temperatures?
I believe that your suggestion is that the chain is as follows:
changes in PDO -> changes in temperature in US -> more (or less) heat waves.
I might be misrepresenting your point of view, please correct me if I am.
‘
To get a handle on this we could look at the record for all four: We have a chart of the heat wave index in the original posting on this site, charts of PDO and global temperature plotted on the same diagram at the site I linked to earlier . There are diagrams comparing the global temperature record and the US temperature record for instance here (beware that the vertical scale of the graphs of US and global temperature in those two graphs are not the same).
Bringing these diagrams up on the screen in different windows, it seems to me that the graph for the US temperature record is the best fit we have seen yet to the record of heat wave index, so we reach the rather unsurprising conclusion that if the US temperature increases, so does the number of heat waves.
Now, I would assume (this is an assumption, but I believe it is rather plausible) that we do have a cause and effect relationship here. The rise in US temperature is the cause, and the rise in the heat wave index is the effect thereof.
Believing this, we are down to the question: What influences the US temperature? Is it the global temperature (as EPA suggests) or is it the PDO? Well, my guess would be “probably both of them”. The graphs do suggest a general similarity between global temperatures and US temperatures, but they are certainly not identical. The US temperature grows slightly as the global temperature falls slightly at the beginning of the 20th Century. Then, the US temperature soars in the 30s, while global temperature does not vary much. After around 1940, this reverses. The global temperature is constant or slowly decreasing, the US temperature decreases more rapidly. This US cooling dominates until around 1980, followed by another phase where the US temperature increases faster than global temperature.
This description of the difference between the global and the US temperature fits pretty well with your description of the PDO, so maybe it could be taken as evidence for that the US temperature is influenced by both the cyclically varying PDO, and the global temperature.
Environmental Prognostication Agency
I thought their job was to keep our rivers, streams and air clean, not to enter into the realm of soothsayer!? “Good evening my name is EPA … for $20 I also read IPCC leaves.”
@Phil M
The link you refer to only shows a map of the US with current weather conditions for a handful of cities participating in the COOP program. Please explain how this equates to a detailed 100+ year historical temperature data record for every station in the COOP network (as would be required to reproduce the EPA results). In fact, the archived historical COOP data is not available on the COOP web page but it can be purchased elsewhere on the NOAA site, for example, here:
http://cdo.ncdc.noaa.gov/pls/plclimprod/poemain.accessrouter?datasetabbv=SOD
You mean the document entitled A Review of Twentieth-Century Drought Indices Used in the United States? Where is the document referred to as a study? As mentioned on page 1, this is a “review”. Do you know the difference between a review and a study?
You mean like when the EPA mandated in 1993 that MTBE must be blended into gasoline as an additive in order to reduce Carbon Monoxide emissions in major US cities? Do you consider carcinogenic, mutagenic, turpentine-like drinking water to be “safe” for human consumption? Apparently the EPA did. Yes, the massive MTBE groundwater contamination debacle is part of the EPA’s stellar legacy of environmental stewardship, see here:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/9851/EPA_Ignored_Its_Own_Scientists_on_MTBE.html
…and for Carol M. Browner’s take on the safety of MTBE, see here:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/18/business/new-gas-arouses-grass-roots-ire.html?pagewanted=2
R. Craigen,
CO2 may be even less harmful than you suppose,
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/14925799/Exposure-to-Carbon-Dioxide-%28CO2%29/
“Conclusions CO2 is a naturally occurring atmospheric gas that is considered safe at levels below 0.5% according to OSHA standards (CCOHS 2005)”
That is not a misprint. that is 5000ppm. US Submarines run at that average level for 90 days and only trigger an alarm at 8000ppm, and have lower sickness during those periods than surface mariners, according to a paper I read recently.
Slioch says:
May 8, 2010 at 12:17 pm
Phil M. says:
May 8, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Yeh, ok, as Willis points out, almost everything. Personally, I don’t fall for the safety weasel dance used in the verbiage of the EPA nor the IPCC in the form of disclaimers. But if one were to employ even remedial deconstruction skills of the message, one can sum up their statements to what Willis previously stated. Or he could have changed it his statement to fit your worlds, “All bad climate change is caused by human activity.” All the proposed fixes for this imaginary problem required a decrease in human activity. No, no way are they blaming climate change on humans. You know, I really wish that were true. But, I know it isn’t the case, Willis knows it isn’t the case, the whole damned world knows it isn’t the case, but you guys would prefer to argue the semantics of their findings. Beautiful.
Mr. Eschenbach:
I just spent some time perusing the EPA report and noticed that, while your slide copy of the “U.S. Annual Heat Wave Index, 1895–2008” graph features both a CO2 overlay (red) and a linear trendline (orange), the EPA slide does not.
Also, your slide copy has said graph labeled as “Figure 2”. The EPA report has it as “Figure 1”.
Did you, hopefully, happen to take a screen-shot of the EPA report page at the time you were reading it and preparing your commentary?
ps: Love the “What we know, …” pie chart. Nicely done.
MB,
Thank you for your thoughts.
I believe that it is pretty obvious that the EPA is trying to communicate that we have an impending crisis with rising levels of atmospheric CO2. Otherwise, why would the EPA even be involved? The evidence they put forth for this impending crisis is the same today as it was 20 years ago: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is increasing and global temperatures have warmed. Of course, all of that is true, but the debate has NEVER been about that. The debate has ALWAYS been about the magnitude of the CO2 impact, or in other words, the climate sensitivity to increasing CO2.
The warming over the 20th century has been about 0.6 degrees C. At the same time, atmospheric CO2 is about 40% of the way to doubling the pre-industrial level. Given the logarithmic nature of CO2 forcing, we should have already realized more than half of the warming we are going to get from a doubling of CO2. (Granted, there is likely to be some delay in the warming as the oceans absorb heat from the atmosphere, but I do not believe this so-called ‘heat in the pipeline’ effect is as large as AGW proponents want to think. The greenhouse effect begins in the atmosphere, generating more kinetic energy (heat) in the molecules that make up the air. Most of the energy is transfered through collisions to other molecules and is not mysteriously radiated into the worlds oceans. The AGW crowd appears to be arguing that your stove can not get very hot until the pot of water sitting on it begins to boil, and that is ridiculous.)
Now, if you concede that the PDO has some impact on global (and US) temperatures, then you have to factor that into 20th Century warming. Early 20th Century warming must have been mostly natural (the PDO) as CO2 was increasing very slowly. Mid 20th Century cooling must have been natural (the PDO), overwhelming the warming effect of rapidly increasing CO2. Late 20th Century warming was a combination of both the warm phase of the PDO and rapidly increasing CO2. While a complete PDO cycle should be temperature neutral, any duration that includes half of a cycle will have a temperature impact, which appears to be around 0.3 degrees C. based on historical records. Since the 20th Century had two warm phases and only one cool phase of the PDO, about half of the observed warming can be attributed to the natural PDO cycle.
That only leaves 0.3 degrees warming attributable to an active sun and increasing CO2. Let’s forget the sun and give it all to CO2, just for the sake of argument (although we still may find the suns influence much larger than is currently thought). That means that a doubling of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere will lead to 0.6 degrees of warming plus whatever may be ‘in the pipeline’, which can not be very much (because the burner is hot long before the pot of water boils). Amazingly, this is exactly what lab experiments predict. A doubling of CO2 should warm a perfectly clear atmosphere about 1.0 degree C. Throw in the reflectivity of clouds and the number drops to less than a degree.
If all fits. The lab experiments, the global observations and the continued dominance of natural climate variability. The AGW theory doesn’t fit at all. It is like trying to put the proverbial square peg into the round whole. There is simply no way to get 3 or 4 degrees of warming from a doubling of CO2. If it was possible, it would already be much hotter than it is and the global cooling of the mid 20th century, along with the lack of any temperature change over the last 10 years, would be impossible.
If one accepts the significant influence of the PDO, one must reject the AGW crisis theory. If one rejects the influence of the PDO, then one is rejecting overwhelming empirical evidence and is engaged in cognitive dissonance. I use to think that it would be impossible for a scientific community to be collectively involved in cognitive dissonance, but a study of the history of science shows that it is not only possible, but is often the norm. What is happening in mainstream atmospheric sciences today is not unusual, it is just wrong.
Willis, I have no formal education to speak of (although our household growing up provided a better education than any university) . I am an average person who is interested in many varying subjects (AGW does not even scratch the surface). All are fascinating to me. After reading many of your articles, it gves me confidence to know that I am on the correct path in my line of thinking, as it parallel yours. I have many friends who are educated up the wazoo and I can hold my own in any conversation with them. For those youthful readers out there, rebellion only hurts the person who is rebelling. Go the distance with your education, as it is much easier to effect change from the inside of the “system” than the outside. Take my word for that. Thank you again Willis for your posts and the discussions that ensue.
akacg says:
May 9, 2010 at 8:42 am
As is my custom, akacg, I used their data and made my own chart. Theirs is … well … too boring, and as you point out, it doesn’t show the CO2. They’d rather we not notice that heat waves have nothing to do with CO2. Sorry for the confusion. The data is theirs … the graph is mine.
Jim Clarke> Thanks for answer!
I agree with you that EPA has a message they want to bring to us. I don’t want to go into a general discussion about whether the observed global warming is due to CO2 emissions right here and now, since that would probably lead very far.
It seems to me that we more or less agree on that it seems likely that the US temperature is influenced by rising global temperature and by the PDO. Even without comparing the graphs, it sounds very plausible that the temperature in the North Pacific has a strong influence on the temperature in North America.
I’m also prepared to believe that PDO has an influence on global temperature, but I don’t see how it can be cumulative. If the PDO is in a warm phase, it will push the global temperature up a little up, I can understand that. But when the PDO falls back to negative, I imagine that the contribution to the global temperature would immediately go negative.
For this reason, I don’t see how the fact that PDO has been positive for 2/3 of the century could give a net contribution to global temperature. If you compare the global temperature at the beginning of the 19th century with the global temperature now, I don’t believe that the effect of PDO matters much, since PDO is in approximately the same positive state now as it was then. I can’t see why it would influence anything that it has been more positive than negative in between those times.
About the sun – as far as I know, it is not very active at the moment, so it probably doesn’t contribute much to the warming.