Deal with climate reality as it unfolds
Special to Financial Post May 23, 2012
By Dr. Bob Carter
Over the last 18 months, policymakers in Canada, the U.S. and Japan have quietly abandoned the illusory goal of preventing global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, an alternative view has emerged regarding the most cost-effective way in which to deal with the undoubted hazards of climate change.
This view points toward setting a policy of preparation for, and adaptation to, climatic events and change as they occur, which is distinctly different from the former emphasis given by most Western parliaments to the mitigation of global warming by curbing carbon dioxide emissions.
Ultimately, the rationale for choosing between policies of mitigation or adaptation must lie with an analysis of the underlying scientific evidence about climate change. Yet the vigorous public debate over possibly dangerous human-caused global warming is bedeviled by two things.
First, an inadequacy of the historical temperature measurements that are used to reconstruct the average global temperature statistic.
And, second, fueled by lobbyists and media interests, an unfortunate tribal emotionalism that has arisen between groups of persons who are depicted as either climate “alarmists” or climate “deniers.”
In reality, the great majority of working scientists fit into neither category. All competent scientists accept, first, that global climate has always changed, and always will; second, that human activities (not just carbon dioxide emissions) definitely affect local climate, and have the potential, summed, to measurably affect global climate; and, third, that carbon dioxide is a mild greenhouse gas.
The true scientific debate, then, is about none of these issues, but rather about the sign and magnitude of any global human effect and its likely significance when considered in the context of natural climate change.
For many different reasons, which include various types of bias, error and unaccounted-for artifacts, the thermometer record provides only an indicative history of average global temperature over the last 150 years.
The 1979-2011 satellite MSU (Microwave Sounding Units) record is our only acceptably accurate estimate of average global temperature, yet being but 32 years in length it represents just one climate data point. The second most reliable estimate of global temperature, collected by radiosondes on weather balloons, extends back to 1958, and the portion that overlaps with the MSU record matches it well.
Taken together, these two temperature records indicate that no significant warming trend has occurred since 1958, though both exhibit a 0.2C step increase in average global temperature across the strong 1998 El Niño.
In addition, the recently quiet Sun, and the lack of warming over at least the last 15 years — and that despite a 10% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide level, which represents 34% of all post-industrial emissions — indicates that the alarmist global warming hypothesis is wrong and that cooling may be the greatest climate hazard over coming decades.
Climate change takes place over geological time scales of thousands through millions of years, but unfortunately the relevant geological data sets do not provide direct measurements, least of all of average global temperature.
Instead, they comprise local or regional proxy records of climate change of varying quality. Nonetheless, numerous high-quality paleoclimate records, and especially those from ice cores and deep-sea mud cores, demonstrate that no unusual or untoward changes in climate occurred in the 20th and early 21st century.
Despite an estimated spend of well over $100-billion since 1990 looking for a human global temperature signal, assessed against geological reality no compelling empirical evidence yet exists for a measurable, let alone worrisome, human impact on global temperature.
Nonetheless, a key issue on which all scientists agree is that natural climate-related events and change are real, and exact very real human and environmental costs. These hazards include storms, floods, blizzards, droughts and bushfires, as well as both local and global temperature steps and longer term cooling or warming trends.
It is certain that these natural climate-related events and change will continue, and that from time to time human and environmental damage will be wrought.
Extreme weather events (and their consequences) are natural disasters of similar character to earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions, in that in our present state of knowledge they can neither be predicted far ahead nor prevented once underway. The matter of dealing with future climate change, therefore, is primarily one of risk appraisal and minimization, and that for natural risks that vary from place to place around the globe.
Dealing with climate reality as it unfolds clearly represents the most prudent, practical and cost-effective solution to the climate change issue. Importantly, a policy of adaptation is also strongly precautionary against any (possibly dangerous) human-caused climate trends that might emerge in the future.
From the Financial Post via Dr. Carter in email correspondence
Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist at James Cook University, Australia, and a chief science advisor for the International Climate Science Coalition, is in Canada on a 10-day tour. He speaks at Carleton University in Ottawa on Friday.
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richardscourtney says:
May 25, 2012 at 10:36 am
Fair enough, Richard. But, surely you should modify that to say: “…but it is possible that the rise may have a significant contribution from the anthropogenic emission.” You cannot possibly look at the graph to which I have been linking and believe that temperature does not play a major role (I would say, the major role).
That’s not the only one. Even the liberal media can’t keep reports out of the news about discoveries of new and huge reserves of oil and natural gas. They also can’t hide the ever increasing cost of energy. When it starts hitting them in the wallet – hard – even the most die-hard leftist begins to question their beliefs and voting priorities. Especially when you know the only thing getting in the way of cheap and abundant gas is the government.
Bart,
I didn’t know we were arguing, and my apologies if I came across as rude. Also, in case I wasn’t clear, by spurious relationship I did not mean to imply that the correlation was invalid… the technical definition of that term is that two variables correlate but have no direct causal relationship (as in both could be driven by some other unaccounted for variable).
Regarding econometrics, I’ve never put confidence in it for predictive value (i.e. economic systems are too complex to predict, and I personally feel GCMs fall into that same category 🙂 but I’ll just put it this way… what passes for statistics in Climate Science isn’t, shall we say, always top shelf… and I’ve never seen better statistical methods for analyzing historical data in multivariate systems than those in econometrics.
BTW – I found the VS thread – http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/global-average-temperature-increase-giss-hadcru-and-ncdc-compared/ – different Bart confirmed (apparently the one I was thinking of is definitely not a skeptic).
Temperature changes preceding CO2 changes is definitely not a stretch. Don’t forget, that “inconvenient” Vostok record ; ) But I don’t recall what methods have been proposed – if any – by which temperature would drive CO2.
Gary Hladik says:
May 24, 2012 at 4:40 pm
Even when talking that really really tiny group… I’m not even sure you can call them extremists for it. They present an argument which while the very very tiny minority view maybe correct. Our general understanding of the physics that take place in many of those regions of atmosphere is limited. Which is of course why overall their is no way to prove much of anything until near after the fact.
NickB says:
“…I don’t recall what methods have been proposed – if any – by which temperature would drive CO2.”
It’s the same method that outgases CO2 from a warming Coke.
In reference to the MSU time series, Dr. Carter astutely points out that”…being but 32 years in length it represents just one climate data point.” More precisely, the count of observed climatological events of the canonical 30 years’ duraton is either zero or one.. In either case, this count is far too low for the generality to be reached from this time series that the Earth has warmed.
“…a key issue on which all scientists agree is that natural climate-related events and change are real, and exact very real human and environmental costs. These hazards include storms, floods, blizzards, droughts and bushfires, as well as both local and global temperature steps and longer term cooling or warming trends.”
This has everything to do with weather prediction and very little to do with “climate change”.
“Dealing with climate reality as it unfolds…”
Yeah again – weather. This guy is just trying to wrap weather prediction in the garb of “climate change”. The fact that he is unwilling to acknowledge that he is simply talking about weather prediction makes me very wary of trusting anything he says.
Bart:
Thanks for your post to me 25, 2012 at 10:47 am that says;
Obviously, I have not been clear, and I apologise for that. I will now try to do better.
Firstly, in my opinion, the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration has been caused by the rise in global temperature from the Little Ice Age (LIA). But that is merely my opinion. The overwhelming balance of available evidence supports that opinion.
However, the available evidence allows the possibility of other causes. As you know from the previous thread, one of our 2005 papers demonstrates that almost any cause can be fitted to the data. And one of those possible causes is the anthropogenic emission.
Secondly, the data shows beyond any doubt that the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration cannot be accumulation of the anthropogenic emission (as is often asserted by e.g. the IPCC).
Thirdly, a relationship between global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentration is suggested by the correlation you cite (and is also observed by others with I think Calder being the first). And, importantly, the coherence between these two parameters is that the CO2 follows the temperature at all time scales.
The correlation implies there is a significant causal relationship between these two parameters.
And the coherence indicates that if there is a significant causal relationship between these two parameters then the temperature drives the CO2.
However, those facts only suggest that the rise in global temperature since 1958 caused the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration observed at Mauna since 1958. The correlation may be indicating a short-term effect which is not significantly involved in the rise since 1958. The response of atmospheric CO2 concentration to ENSO events implies that such short-term effects have duration of ~3 years.
If the correlation is indicating a short-term effect, then it is not relevant to the overall rise since 1958. Personally, (as I said above) I think you are right. But for me, the data rules, and the data does not say if you are right or wrong.
I hope this clarifies the difference between our views.
Richard
How much of the increase CO2 in the atmosphere is due to fertilization that promotes the growth and metabolism of the many species of soil oganisms such as bacteria, fungi, nemotodes, worms, insect larvae, etc? Probably a lot.
I know of no new data that would be reason for any of us to have changed our view since then.
Not at all. I’m making precisely the same argument that you are. The point then, and now, is that CO_2 levels are highly multivariate, that without doubt we are producing a significant amount of CO_2, but because that CO_2 is only a part of a massive dynamical carbon cycle it is difficult to say with any degree of certainty that the rising CO_2 is connected strictly to the increase. It might well be the result of a shifting equilibrium in e.g. the oceans in post-LIA warming. Or, it might not. It might be many things.
All that I said to Bart is that I didn’t find the correlation between highly rescaled temperature fluctuations and even more highly rescaled time derivatives of CO_2 concentration to be smoking gun evidence that increasing temperature IS the cause of the increased CO_2 concentration. I explained why. I used simple pictures. I didn’t say that I completely rejected his assertion — note well. I said that I wasn’t convinced. That’s the same as saying “maybe”, which is pretty much the conclusion of the previous discussion, as you point out. It certainly wasn’t by itself sufficient evidence that that previous conclusion was mistaken.
rgb
richardscourtney says:
May 25, 2012 at 1:11 pm
“However, those facts only suggest that the rise in global temperature since 1958 caused the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration observed at Mauna since 1958. The correlation may be indicating a short-term effect which is not significantly involved in the rise since 1958.”
Richard, the correlation holds up continuously since 1958. That’s 54 years.
I must admit I am not following your logic. I’m wondering if what you are suggesting is that a short term event might have independently launched both the temperature and the CO2 on their current (since 1958) trajectories, without the one actually causing the other. That seems rather a stretch to me, when you consider that temperature would be expected to have an effect on CO2. Indeed, I do not think anyone denies the short term effect. The plot shows that there is also a long term effect.
Here is the integrated result to consider. There’s room for maybe 4-6 ppm from anthropogenic inputs. And, that is roughly what you would expect if the sinks are fairly active, given the estimates that we are currently pumping something like 3% of the natural flux into the system. If we had been pumping that much in for the last century, we should expect a 3% rise in concentration. That would be 9ppm. But, since we’ve been ramping up to that level, the rise should be about 1/2 that, or 4.5 ppm.
rgbatduke says:
May 25, 2012 at 4:43 pm
“It certainly wasn’t by itself sufficient evidence that that previous conclusion was mistaken.”
I have done battle with people claiming that showing a superficial agreement between the scaled and offset accumulation of emissions and the measurements was insufficient to prove that humans were responsible for the rise, so I think I do see, a bit, where you are coming from.
But, the main thing I would point out to them is that the two series, no matter how superficially they appeared similar, did not match in the fine detail. In particular, I pointed out that the derivatives did not look anything like each other.
That is what is different here. There is a match in both the coarse and the fine detail. It’s as good as a fingerprint. Temperature is guilty as charged beyond a reasonable doubt. The humans are innocent.
When there’s a major error of fact in the very first sentence, that doesn’t provide great trust for the rest of it. Canada did not “quietly abandon” greenhouse gas targets. It did so very noisily and publicly.
First, it stated outright that it had no intention of meeting its Kyoto Protocol commitment of a reduction of 6 per cent by 2008-12. That was the bombshell at Copenhagen. Then at Durban two years later it publicly stated that it had no intention of signing on to any form of a Kyoto Protocol extension agreement.
If this constitutes “quiet” then I’d not like to see Bob’s definition of “loud”.
Bart: Let me see if I can explain my issue with your graph. I’m going to use some equations for simplified graphs to illustrate the point.
Suppose CO2 evolves by the equation
CO2 = a t + b sin(t)
so it is going up in a basically linear fashion (slope a) , but also wriggling around a bit as it goes.
And suppose temperature evolves according to the equation
T = K + m cos(t)
so it is oscillating up and down but staying fairly steady
OK – lets do your analysis. You differentiate CO2 and you get
d CO2/dt = b cos(t ) + a
then you adjust units (multiply by m/b) and scale it (shift up or down by a constant) and “Eureka” it matches the temperature graph perfectly!
“Ahah” – says Bart. Temperature completely explains everything about CO2.
“Not so” say rgbatduke and Ian H. “It only explains the oscillatory bit – the b sin(t) part. The linear component (the a.t term ) has been completely ignored by the process of differentiating and rescaling. Temperature does not explain this term. It is this fairly steady growth that people are concerned about. You haven’t explained it. You’ve completely ignored it.
rgbatduke and myself tend to think this growth term is the result of human activity. While offering no explanation of your own, you object that human output of CO2 has been increasing faster than linear. I’ve explained to you that since the CO2 absorption rate depends on CO2 level this is quite possible. Your objection therefore has no force. And you STILL have not offered an explanation of your own for the linear growth term.
Ian H says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:57 pm
Ian, it is more like this:
T = K1 + K2*t + m1*cos(w1*t+phi1) + m2*cos(w2*t+phi2) + …
CO2 = a + alpha*((K1-T0)*t + 0.5*K2*t^2 + (m1/w1)*sin(w1*t+phi1) + (m2/w2)*sin(w2*t+phi2) + …)
dCO2/dt = alpha*(T – T0)
for a constant alpha and offset T0. The temperature series is quite complicated, and the CO2 derivative matches virtually all of it one-to-one with just a scale factor and offset. And, the offset is hardly eyebrow raising when the temperature series is itself an anomalistic term with respect to an arbitrary baseline.
So, basically, you’re bugging me because of “a” and “T0”. But, at most, these account for a linear term in the CO2, while the integrated emissions are most decidedly an upward series with pronounced curvature (i.e., at least quadratic and arguably higher powers). As I have been saying, there is no place to fit them in to any significant degree, once you have incorporated the temperature dependency into the CO2 rate to match the slope and other fine detail.
Ian – This may help. I collected emissions data from, I think, the CDIAC site back in ’06. If that is the case, they do not appear to be carrying the data anymore. I do not know where you can go to get the emissions data today, but here is a plot. I do not recall the units, or if I scaled them in any way before saving the data to my hard drive.
But, this is the shape we are looking to fit in somehow to the total CO2 without losing the very good correlation of the temperature with the fine detail in the CO2 derivative. The emissions rate, as you can see, is linear. But, in recreating the fine detail using the temperature data, we find we have already already accounted for almost all of any trend in the dCO2/dt series. There’s no room for much of anything but a constant, and the emissions rate is not constant.
Ian H says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:57 pm
“I’ve explained to you that since the CO2 absorption rate depends on CO2 level this is quite possible.”
You’ve asserted it. You have not explained it. You would be hard pressed to, since it would require some very fancy feedback (basically double integral feedback – very difficult to stabilize robustly and hardly a dynamic likely to be found in a naturally evolved system). This is worse than epicylic. It is really grasping at straws.
No, if humans are affecting CO2 levels to any appreciable degree, it has to show up as a marked quadratic or better term in the absolute level. There is no room for it – that particular morphology is already accounted for by the influence of temperature.
Bart says:
May 24, 2012 at 11:57 pm
Would it be too much to ask you to pay attention to the variables which have been plotted for comparison???
Sorry about that!
However if you want to plot the change in CO2 versus temperature, I would have thought the sea surface temperature would have been the most relevant thing to plot and not the air temperature since it is a warmer ocean that wants to get rid of its CO2, is it not? But over the last 11 years, sea surface temperatures went down but the derivative of the CO2 was flat.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:2001/derivative/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/from:2001/normalise/derivative/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/trend
Challenge accepted. Lets be clear about this. You claim that it is impossible to obtain a linear
increase in CO2 in a situation where human input is “ramping up”. I claim this is quite possible in the case where the rate of CO2 absorption depends on CO2 concentration to which you reply that this require “double integral feedback” and wouldn’t be stable.
OK – here is a very simple model for the rate of change of CO2
dC/dt = H(t) -kC
Where C is the CO2 concentration and H(t) is the rate of human input into the system. This is obviously an extreme simplification but it has all the features we are interested in. As you can see the rate of change of CO2 in this model depends on the amount of CO2 present. With no human input the solution to this differential equation would be exponential decay of CO2 concentration to zero.
Now lets assume that we observe CO2 increasing linearly and see what human input H(t) would be needed to cause that.
Let C(t) = at + b . Then dC/dt = a and we have
a = H(t) – k(at + b) => H(t) = ka t + (kb+a)
Human input needs to increase linearly. Let me stress that H(t) is the RATE of input. The rate of input is “ramping up” – exactly what you said couldn’t happen without “double integral feedback”.
Bart says:
May 25, 2012 at 9:52 pm
Ian H says:
May 25, 2012 at 7:57 pm
“…basically double integral feedback…”
Actually, that’s not the only way. But, you’d need wide bandwidth, which would drive your output into the negligible range, which is my whole point – the bandwidth is wider than believed, and as a result, the anthropogenic inputs are rapidly sequestered and do not contribute significantly.
Werner Brozek says:
May 25, 2012 at 10:23 pm
“I would have thought the sea surface temperature would have been the most relevant thing to plot and not the air temperature since it is a warmer ocean that wants to get rid of its CO2, is it not?”
You appear to be on to something there.
You need to remember to average the CO2 over an integer number of months to suppress the seasonal variation.
Ian H says:
May 25, 2012 at 11:23 pm
Looks like we crossed paths where I already explained this above, saying: “But, you’d need wide bandwidth, which would drive your output into the negligible range, which is my whole point.”
You have solved for a steady state. You don’t reach steady state in any reasonable length of time unless you have wide bandwidth, i.e., in your equation, k is large. What happens if k is large? you say
H(t) = ka t + (kb+a)
Well, H is bounded to a not so very large value, so ka has some not so very large value. If k is large, and ka is not so very large, then a = ka/k is small. The contribution to C is negligible. Thank you for illustrating my point.
Bart says:
May 26, 2012 at 12:19 am
Werner Brozek says:
May 25, 2012 at 10:23 pm
Of course, I meant “You need to remember to average the CO2 over an integer number of years to suppress the seasonal variation.”
LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Importantly, a policy of adaptation is also strongly precautionary against any (possibly dangerous) human-caused climate trends that might emerge in the future.
————
But there is a massive contradiction here. The whole climate skeptic thing is driven by the conservative fear of change…..
________________________
Fear of Change?
And what if you and the others are incorrect? There is more solid evidence that we are at the end of the Holocene and headed into a gradually decline in temperatures. Even people like Joe Romm understand that. He stated over at Climate Progress”
“Absent human emissions, we’d probably be in a slow long-term cooling trend due primarily by changes in the Earth’s orbit …” http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/16/hockey-stick-paper-mcshane-and-wyner-statisticians/#more-31767
An Arctic study, Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic states:
“..Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages,…”
A second study, Lesson from the past: present insolation minimum holds potential for glacial inception (2007) states:
“Because the intensities of the 397 ka BP and present insolation minima are very similar, we conclude that under natural boundary conditions the present insolation minimum holds the potential to terminate the Holocene interglacial….”
And even Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution gives a clear warning:
Abrupt Climate Change: Should We Be Worried?
The earth has already seen a 1-3° C above 20th century averages during the Holocene. CO2 makes plants grow faster with less water. Given the earth is near the end of the Holocene and headed toward the next Ice age thanks to the Milancovitch cycle, I really doubt warming is an issue at present even if CO2 has an effect. TSI may only vary 0.1% in the short term but the earth has already dropped 9% in solar energy from the Holecene maximum.
The only “Magic” CO2 could possibly preform at this late date in the Milancovitch cycle is slow the slide into the next Ice Age. Even so cooling and crop failures are more of a threat than Sea Level rise.
It is extremely frustrating to see politicians not only ignore the possibility of a cooling earth but do everything possible to make sure the deaths (and PROFITS) from cold and famine are as high as possible by jacking up energy costs and regulating family farms into bankruptcy while the wealthy corporations, individuals and even universities grab farmland. ~ So much for “Socialists” caring about anything but their bank accounts.
I suggest you take a good hard look at the newest info on the Milancovitch cycle BTW: http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/07/in-defense-of-milankovitch-by-gerard.html
rgbatduke:
Thankyou for the clarification you provide at May 25, 2012 at 4:43 pm.
And I apologise for any offence my misunderstanding may have caused.
Richard
LazyTeenager says:
May 24, 2012 at 3:38 pm
But there is a massive contradiction here. The whole climate skeptic thing is driven by the conservative fear of change…..
How do you manage to keep a straight face while you’re writing that stuff?
Atmospheric CO2 has been increasing — who panics? Warmies.
The world has been warming since the LIA — who panics? Warmies.
Some glaciers are in retreat while others are advancing — who panics? Warmies.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
The only fear generated by the climate doing what the climate has been doing for billions of years is entirely on the *Left* side of the fence, and it’s being generated (loudly and shrilly) in hopes of greasing the skids for global wealth redistribution — aka, Agenda 21.