Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
In yet another futile attempt to explain away what I see as the reasonable and justified skeptical American reaction to the unending stream of nonsense being peddled as climate science these days, we have an article by a Special Correspondent to the Associated Press. I don’t know what makes the correspondent so special, but I suppose “Slightly Confused Correspondent” doesn’t have that same ring to it. The article is called “The American ‘allergy’ to global warming: Why?“.
Inter alia, the report talks about a 1975 study by Dr. Wally Broecker published in Science magazine. I love finding new papers I haven’t read, particularly early ones. The study was titled “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?“. The AP report says:
In the paper, Columbia University geoscientist Wally Broecker calculated how much carbon dioxide would accumulate in the atmosphere in the coming 35 years, and how temperatures consequently would rise. His numbers have proven almost dead-on correct.
In other words, the Special Correspondent’s claim is that we Americans are idiots not to believe in global warming, since Wally figured it all out thirty-five years ago, duh.
Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. His numbers were passable, not “dead-on correct”. But the interesting part is how he got the numbers. Here’s his graph:
ORIGINAL CAPTION: Fig. 1. Curves for the global temperature change due to chemical fuel CO2, natural climatic cycles, and the sum of the two effects. The measured temperature anomaly for successive 5-year means from meteorological records over the last century is given for comparison.
Dr. Broecker claims the temperature will follow a combination of the CO2 effect plus the Camp Century cycles. So … what are these gloriously named “Camp Century cycles” when they are not out working overtime for the good Doctor?
It turns out that Dr. Broecker is utilizing an analysis of the “Camp Century” ice cores from Greenland. The data is held at the NOAA Paleoclimatology World Databank. Broecker says that there is an underlying regular cyclic temperature variation in the ice core data. He is using the change in the relative amount of an oxygen isotope (∂O18) as a proxy for the temperature. It is not clear whether he used the exact data as is currently archived at NOAA.
Broecker says that there are two strong cycles in the data, at 80 and 180 years. He then derives the smoothed sinusoidal curve of the superposition of those putative 80 and 180 year underlying cycles. This is the curve called “Camp Century cycles” in his Figure 1.
To the Camp Century cycle he then adds the CO2 effect, and says that the result shows the future evolution of the global surface air temperature. TA DA!
So what’s not to like in his analysis?
Well, first, when I analyze the Camp Century ∂O18 data I find no strong 80 or 180 year cycles. As I mentioned, this may be because he used other data. But the dataset available at NOAA doesn’t show much in the way of regular cycles at all. In addition, Dr. Scafetta has assured us that the cycles are not 80 and 180 years … they are 60 and 20 years. I’ll let him settle that with Dr. Broecker.
Second, his temperature data (shown in Figure 1 by the heavy solid black line) doesn’t agree with the modern (HadCRUT3 or GISS) data. This is not surprising, as he is using temperatures given in a reference called “J. M. Mitchell, Arid Zone Monograph 20 (UNESCO, Paris, 1963), pp. 161-181″. In Figure 2 I have overlaid his data with the actual HadCRUT data.
Figure 2. Broecker’s Figure 1, overlaid with the actual HadCRUT3 temperature data in red. I have aligned them at the 1900 mark.
My first comment is that the HadCRUT3 temperature (red line) follows the “CO2 effect” line (solid line with round black dots) much more strongly than it follows “CO2 effect plus the Camp Century cycles” (heavy dashed line). However, his combination of Camp Century cycles and CO2 does a better job of explaining the drop in temperatures from about 1945 to 1970. Overall, his results not a very good fit to either line. Are they “almost dead-on correct” as the Special Correspondent claims? Hardly.
The main issue, however, is not how poor the fit is. It is that he has gotten these results using a method which I have not seen used much, a combination of CO2 plus some presumed underlying cycles. Mainstream climate scientists don’t do that much.
So we are left with a few possibilities:
1. Broecker got it right all the way down the line, and modern climate science just hasn’t caught up with his cyclical brilliance.
2. Broecker got it kinda right, but it could just as easily be by chance.
3. Broecker didn’t get it right at all.
So this 35 year old study is thrown in my face as a reason I shouldn’t be “allergic” to global warming?? I find the title of the article risible. I have many opinions on the global warming hypothesis, but I’m not allergic to any part of it.
I am, however, allergic to claims like those of Dr. Broecker being used as a reason I should swear fealty to the gods of warming. Part of the reason Americans are “allergic” to global warming are the ridiculous claims of useful idiots like the Special Correspondent, who actually seems to believe that Dr. Broecker settled all of these questions long ago.
My regards to all, and please don’t take this as an attack on Dr. Broecker’s work. He did his best with the data and information he had at the time.
w.
(I never did figure out what was so special about the Correspondent … perhaps in addition to believing that Broecker’sresults are “almost dead-on correct”, he can believe six impossible things before breakfast.)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Steven Mosher says:
“Go rip into Monkton. just a few posts ago he proved that you get 1C per doubling. How come I didnt see you rip Monkton a new one??”
Maybe because, as I’ve said before, that my view is in alignment with Lord Monckton’s? You keep trying to paint me into a corner. Why do you continue to dig that hole deeper? You just look foolish when you’re corrected.
I’ve tried to get you to understand the difference between verifiable evidence per the scientific method and my own [evidence-free] acceptance that 2xCO2 = 1°C
± 0.5°C warming. But your reading comprehension has still not improved. I’m beginning to think you’re just a self-promoter who doesn’t understand simple concepts [and I always repond to your attacks; I’m never the instigator].
But it’s what stampeded the herd. We have the urge to act like rational beings; trouble is, we aren’t.
================
Smokey, you and I are low-end lukewarmers. Me, I’m a lukewarming cooler. I don’t think CO2 is strong enough to help much in the coming grander solar minimum. We’re greening, yup, but not warming.
For how long even kim doesn’t know.
===========
Mosher, I suspect that Monckton was using THEIR OWN DATA to show that alarmism is misguided at best. The capitulation that Co2 causes some warming has been a BIG mistake on the skeptics side. Co2 causing any warming is not based in fact.
From the AP article:
…In the 1980s, as scientists studied Greenland’s buried ice for clues to past climate, upgraded their computer models peering into the future, and improved global temperature analyses, the fossil-fuel industries were mobilizing for a campaign to question the science.
Maurcie Strong, who started the IPCC is an oil man. The purpose of the carbon tax is not to stop oil, it is to make coal more expensive in comparison to oil, and thus make oil more profitable.
The reason this works is that coal is cheap in comparison to oil, but it releases more CO2 per unit of energy (because coal is carbon, while oil is a hydro carbon). So if you tax the carbon, the hydro in hydro carbon becomes more profitable due to increased demand (reduced supply of carbon).
Now, if the oil industry could just figure out a way to get paid to inject CO2 into the ground, which is how they increase oil recovery, they would have it made.
David Ball says:
The capitulation that Co2 causes some warming has been a BIG mistake on the skeptics side. Co2 causing any warming is not based in fact.
************
I too am skeptical of CAGW but denying basic science isn’t going to convince anyone.
If you have 2 glass bottles one with 100 % CO2 and the other with only air and pass sunlight through them the CO2 one will get slightly warmer. Denying this fact is not wise.
Scaling this simple test up to a planet size the British Royal Society claims that a doubling of CO2 would cause only .4 ° C temperature rise by itself , any other warming may be caused by feedbacks which may be positive or negative on balance.
They think the feedbacks are massively positive [about 8 X ] but that appears from history to be wrong. In fact several peer reviewed papers show that the feedback is negative so the actual warming would be less than .4 ° C . That shoots down CAGW fairly effectively.
Science seems to be saying the warming effect is real the feedbacks aren’t.
Steven Mosher says:
“Go rip into Monkton. just a few posts ago he proved that you get 1C per doubling. How come I didnt see you rip Monkton a new one??”
I didn’t see Monkton prove anything of the sort. He showed that the literature supported a wider range of possibilities, including negative feedback. In contrast, the mainstream (IPCC) interpretation only considers positive feedback.
None of the IPCC climate models for example consider what might happen to future climate if the feedback is negative. This is a gaping hole when it comes to deciding public policy, because no one has yet proved that feedback must be positive.
One a question such as feedback, until it is proven that feedback is positive (or negative) the models cannot make any claim of accuracy if they assume it is positive. Thus the IPCC now calls the model forecasts “projections” rather than “predictions”.
The models are based on assumptions that have not yet be proven to be true. One of the largest of these is the question of whether or not cloud feedback is negative or positive. As we would see on courtroom TV – objection your Honor, assumes facts that are not in evidence.
David Ball says: @ur momisugly September 27, 2011 at 6:51 am
“Mosher, I suspect that Monckton was using THEIR OWN DATA to show that alarmism is misguided at best. The capitulation that Co2 causes some warming has been a BIG mistake on the skeptics side. Co2 causing any warming is not based in fact.”
CO2 may cause a wee bit of warming under laboratory conditions however causing warming that is measurable in the real world is an entirely different matter.
Anyone who is an engineer or scientist working outside the Ivory Tower has run smack dab into the real world where complex interaction between many factors is the rule and not the exception. Also if there is positive feedback loops you get an explosion ASAP. (As a chemist I have seen more than one.)
We KNOW climate fits into the complex interaction category and therefore the whole idea of computer models that can predict the future 100 yrs out when they can not predict next month is completely laughable.
Heck we have not even completed the first phase, identifying all the factors affecting climate!
The positive feedback loop for CO2 (and why is it CO2 and not something else like water vapor??) is also proved untrue by geologic history. If the CO2 feedback loop was true then earth would have been stuck with a Venus like temp and no life would have formed.
Of course now it is claimed the dinosaurs died out because of a temperature drop from a change in CO2….. Well actually a shut down of the gulf stream but of course CO2 has to be named too. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1268305/Dinosaurs-killed-sudden-drop-temperature.html
Interesting how the dailmail plays up CO2…. A better article in Physorg.com: http://www.physorg.com/news191527326.html
Note the average ocean temp is now 3.9C and the article mentions “over a period of a few hundred or a few thousand years, ocean temperatures fell from an average of 13 degrees centigrade to between eight and four degrees.” and we still have the gulf stream at 3.9C……
This is another interesting article at Physorg.com
Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages — may also help predict future
“Researchers have largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years – they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth’s rotation and axis.
In a publication to be released Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions conclude that the known wobbles in Earth’s rotation caused global ice levels to reach their peak about 26,000 years ago, stabilize for 7,000 years and then begin melting 19,000 years ago, eventually bringing to an end the last ice age.
The melting was first caused by more solar radiation, not changes in carbon dioxide levels or ocean temperatures, as some scientists have suggested in recent years….. “
Fred, it’s all the hydrocarbon bond, someday to be valued more for structure than for the energy released upon breaking it. You are right, though, that CO2 release varies according to the structure of the molecule.
===========
ferd berple says: @ur momisugly September 27, 2011 at 7:32 am
“…Maurcie Strong, who started the IPCC is an oil man. The purpose of the carbon tax is not to stop oil, it is to make coal more expensive in comparison to oil, and thus make oil more profitable….
Not to mention that Maurice Strong had also jumped on the Nuclear Energy industry train.
Remarks by Maurice Strong, Chairman, Ontario Hydro and Chairman, The Earth Council, to the Uranium Institute, London.
David Ball
Denying that CO2 causes any warming is a losing argument. Why make it ?
Arrhenius showed that it does long ago and he was correct, and his experiments can and have been duplicated with minimal equipment. Why fight losing battles.?
The real disagreement is how does this scale up to a planet, and what are the feedbacks.
The basic warming is between .4 and 1° C per doubling.[A surprisingly large spread]!
The feedbacks range from negative 2 to positive 8 and this is where the bodies are buried.
ferd berple says:
September 27, 2011 at 7:32 am
“Maurcie Strong, who started the IPCC is an oil man. The purpose of the carbon tax is not to stop oil, it is to make coal more expensive in comparison to oil, and thus make oil more profitable.”
Re Maurice Strong being an oil man. Strong was a civil servant who got appointed CEO of the government-owned (at the time) PetroCanada. HQ’d in Calgary in a prominent red brick building with the plaza outdoors all red brick, it was known as “Red Square” by other petroleum companies in Calgary. My boss at the time also had an office in Red Square and he met the “Great” man in his office. He reported that Maury had a gold-plated telephone and other expensive appointments in his impressive office suite. He doesn’t like oil or coal but there is no question he is an elitist who is not planning to join us in our caves soon.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 26, 2011 at 6:09 pm
Willis, most of your point taken. I guess my estimation of the man is that here is a fellow in the midst of a consensus on an iminent ice age who predicts the reverse happening – a brave sceptic for my money. He ostensibly relies on apparently unfounded cycles and an over estimation of CO2’s affect but I suspect that his main mover was an inner contrary scepticism, a loathing of bandwagon consensus (I switch from sceptic to skeptic – which is right?). If we can get the sign right on what ultimately happens, that is about as good as one can expect.
ferd berple says:
September 27, 2011 at 7:32 am
The reason this works is that coal is cheap in comparison to oil, but it releases more CO2 per unit of energy (because coal is carbon, while oil is a hydro carbon). So if you tax the carbon, the hydro in hydro carbon becomes more profitable due to increased demand (reduced supply of carbon).
Coal is also a hydrocarbon not carbon, composition ~(CH)n whereas oil is more like (CH2)n.
The more ad hoc and ridiculous attempts there are to prop up, reinvent, and otherwise extend AGW the more they will undermine the foundation and ultimate credibility. Think Soviet propaganda line versus Chernobyl reality at this point or Taliban social order versus societal progress.
I wonder if Maurice Strong is in China advising them or being advised of his rights.
================
kim says:
September 27, 2011 at 11:07 am
I wonder if Maurice Strong is in China advising them or being advised of his rights.
____________________________________________________________________
Strong is in China as an Advisor because he got caught and is “wanted” in the USA and Canada. (The UN food for oil scam)
Among other references:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,250789,00.html
(I cringe at using Fox as a source)
I’m a bit late to the party and I hope I didn’t hack up the code. Sorry if I did.
Willis:
I love finding new papers I haven’t read, particularly early ones.
I think that’s the biggest surprise for me in this thread. I know you are a huge fan of RC, but you apparently somehow missed their birthday celebration last July. They claimed Broecker’s paper appeared to be “the first use of the term ‘global warming’ in the scientific literature.”
As is so often the case, they were wrong, the great irony of which being that I took RC’s claim at face value in subsequent dealings with someone who repeatedly claims that the term “climate change” was invented by Frank Luntz in 2004 (the year she uses is wrong too, but anyway). I have since asked her many times if she knew what IPCC stands for and how old the IPCC is, but she’s addicted to her talking point and still trots it out frequently. For the record, the term celebrated at least it’s 40th birthday this past December, and I’m guessing if someone did a thorough search (I didn’t) the date would be pushed back even further (“climate/climatic change” goes back to at least 1912 and likely even earlier).
Back to Broecker. Willis, you might be interested to read the proceedings publication for the 1975 (it was a banner year for AGW if you delve a bit) NIH sponsored conference “The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering.” The conference took place from October 26-29 and Broecker presented the findings of this very paper. That in itself is not exactly all that interesting I admit, but what is of interest, at least to me, is what the scope of the conference itself was. It was organized by Margaret Mead and William W. Kellogg, and some of our other old friends also participated: Stephen Schneider, John Holdren, James Lovelock. Mead made some rather poignant and now oh-so-familiar comments in her opening remarks:
What we need from scientists are estimates, presented with sufficient conservatism and plausibility but at the same time as free as possible from internal disagreements that can be exploited by political interests, that will allow us to start building a system of artificial but effective warnings….At the center of this problem lie the relationships between scientists, technologists, human scientists, and political decisionmakers. Inevitably, different political interests will seize upon disagreements among scientists to buttress their own interests and to discredit scientific advice….It is therefore the statement of major possibilities of danger which may overtake humankind – or all life on the planet – within the lifespan of those who are already born on which it is important to concentrate attention. The old instinct to deny danger…persists in the attitudes of the peoples of the world and in their leaders who seek support, compliance, and reelection. If irresponsible scientific controversies provide encouragement for these impulses, there is little hope of providing the future protection that is needed….What we need to invent – as responsible scientists – are ways in which farsightedness can become a habit of the citizenry of the diverse peoples of this planet. This, of course, poses a set of technical problems for social scientists, but they are helpless without a highly articulate and responsible expression of position on the part of natural scientists. Only if natural scientists can develop ways of making their statements on the present state of danger credible to each other can we hope to make them credible (and understandable) to social scientists, politicians, and the citizenry.
I suggest you pick up a copy and read the whole thing. Lots of good stuff in it and IMO twas the cauldron for the manufactured consensus. I think it will probably be a collector’s item some day as people become more interested in the roots of the AGW movement now that is has exposed its true colors. I wonder if Mead’s words inspired Schneider to offer the infamous Discover quote 14 years later:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
I’ll leave you with a few excerpts of the comments and discussion that followed Broecker’s presentation as reported by the rapporteur:
During the discussion if the paleoclimatic record and changes in global temperature, skepticism was expressed concerning how representative temperature data from a single geographical area are for the globe as a whole.
A handful of participants expressed concern about local climatic changes introduced by direct thermal pollution as produced by large power parks and cities. While it was noted that global effects of direct heating are only a small fraction of the effect produced by atmospheric CO2 increases, it was acknowledged that local direct heating provided a dramatic example of man’s ability to alter the climate of his immediate environment.
The question of rising sea levels produced by global warming of the ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic was mentioned by the participants. It generally was agreed that sea-level rises would be more an expensive annoyance than a catastrophe. The large amount of energy required to melt ice implies that sea-level rises if only a few centimeters per year (at most) could be expected under a 2.5 degree C warming.
Actually, I can’t resist one more. This is from the comments/discussion following the presentation by Lovelock about his mistress Gaia, perhaps my favorite, and most telling, passage from the book:
A crucial exchange, perhaps the fundamental problem confronted by the Conference, occurred when a participant suggested that we should convey to the public the conclusion that “we don’t know enough, we are trying to learn more, let’s hang on tight while we can.” Immediately came the response, “No, let’s hedge against the worst.”
It looks like the science was “settled” at that very moment. Sorry for the long post. Tis my MO I’m afraid. Cheers!
galileonardo says:
September 27, 2011 at 9:43 pm
“Willis, you might be interested to read the proceedings publication for the 1975 (it was a banner year for AGW if you delve a bit) NIH sponsored conference “The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering.” The conference took place from October 26-29 and Broecker presented the findings of this very paper. That in itself is not exactly all that interesting I admit, but what is of interest, at least to me, is what the scope of the conference itself was. It was organized by Margaret Mead and William W. Kellogg, and some of our other old friends also participated: Stephen Schneider, John Holdren, James Lovelock.”
See
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/highlights/Fall_2007.html
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GWHoaxBorn.pdf
http://inthesenewtimes.com/2009/11/29/1975-endangered-atmosphere-conference-where-the-global-warming-hoax-was-born/
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2010/03/aha.html
http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com/2010/04/global-warming-origin-of-crime.html
Galileonardo @ur momisugly 9:43
That link of yours to Tuatara 1970(this past December) is amazing. They understood the millenial variations in climate better than climate scientists do now, including isotope evidence of the sun’s effect on the Little Ice Age. What a crime the hockey stick is.
================
Willis
I have been a fan of your posts for several years. Long may they continue.
As you are on the subject of CO2, I have a question.
Have you ever commented on Gerlich and Tscheuschner’s 2009 paper: ”Falsification of the Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse effects within the frame of physics” in the International J. of Modern Physics? It seems plausible science to me, so I find it strange that so many people, of what might be called the Lindzen/Spencer tendency, still refer to CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Is this just habit or convenience?
Michael
Michael Oxenham says:
September 29, 2011 at 11:45 am
I haven’t written about it, but I think it is totally incorrect. I read it a while ago, and I don’t recall much about it except laughing and throwing it in the circular bit-file. Hang on … OK, there’s a peer-reviewed rebuttal of their arguments here (PDF) by (among others) Joel Shore, who comments occasionally here on WUWT. The short answer is that G&T don’t know what they’re talking about.
w.
Willis
Thanks. Michael