What it would take to persuade me that current climate policy makes sense
Guest post by Matt Ridley
I have written about climate change and energy policy for more than 25 years. I have come to the conclusion that current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself. This is not the same as arguing that climate has not changed or that mankind is not partly responsible. That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept. What I do not accept is that the change is or will be damaging, or that current policy would prevent it.
For the benefit of supporters of climate change policy who feel frustrated by the reluctance of people like me to accept their assurances, here is what they would need to do to change my mind.
1. I need persuading that the urban heat island effect has been fully purged from the surface temperature record. Satellites are showing less warming than the surface thermometers, and there is evidence that local warming of growing cities, and poor siting of thermometers, is still contaminating the global record. I also need to be convinced that the adjustments made by those who compile the global temperature records are justified. Since 2008 alone, NASA has added about 0.1C of warming to the trend by unexplained “adjustments” to old records. It is not reassuring that one of the main surface temperature records is produced by an extremist prepared to get himself arrested (James Hansen).
2. Despite these two contaminating factors, the temperature trend remains modest: not much more than 0.1 C per decade since 1979. So I would need persuading that water vapour will amplify CO2’s effect threefold in the future but has not done so yet. This is what the models assume despite evidence that clouds formed from water vapour are more likely to moderate than amplify any warming.
3. Nor am I convinced that sulphate aerosols and ocean heat uptake can explain the gap between model predictions and actual observations over the last 34 years. Both are now well understood and provide insufficient excuse for such an underperformance. Negative cloud feedback, leading to total feedbacks being modest, is the more plausible explanation.
4. The one trend that has been worse than expected – Arctic sea ice – is plausibly explained by black carbon (soot), not carbon dioxide. Soot from dirty diesel engines and coal-fired power stations is now reckoned to be a far greater factor in climate change than before; it is a short-lived pollutant, easily dealt with by local rather than global action. So you would need to persuade me that this finding, by explaining some recent climate change, does not further reduce the likely sensitivity of the atmosphere to carbon dioxide. Certainly, it “buys time”.
5. Even the Met Office admits that the failure of the models to predict the temperature standstill of the last 16 years is evidence that natural factors can match man-made ones. We now know there is nothing unprecedented about the level and rate of change of temperature today compared with Medieval, Roman, Holocene Optimum and other post-glacial periods, when carbon dioxide levels did not change significantly, but temperatures did. I would need persuading that natural factors cannot continue to match man-made ones.
6. Given that we know that the warming so far has increased global vegetation cover, increased precipitation, lengthened growing seasons, cause minimal ecological change and had no impact on extreme weather events, I need persuading that future warming will be fast enough and large enough to do net harm rather than net good. Unless water-vapour-supercharged, the models suggest a high probability of temperatures changing less than 2C, which almost everybody agrees will do net good.
7. Nor is it clear that ecosystems and people will fail to adapt, for there is clear evidence that adaptation has already vastly reduced damage from the existing climate – there has been a 98% reduction in the probability of death from drought, flood or storm since the 1920s, for example, and malaria retreated rapidly even as the temperature rose during the twentieth century.
8. So I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation, any more than people in 1900 should have borne sacrifices to make people today slightly richer. Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich who receive
subsidies for wind farms, which produce less than 0.5% of the country’s energy.
9. Indeed I will need persuading that dashing to renewables can cut emissions rather than make them worse; this is by no means certain given that the increased use of bioenergy, such as wood or corn ethanol, driven by climate policies, is indeed making them worse.11 Meanwhile shale gas use in the USA has led to a far greater cut in emissions than
any other technology, yet it is opposed every step of the way by climate alarmists.
10. Finally, you might make the argument that even a very small probability of a very large and dangerous change in the climate justifies drastic action. But I would reply that a very small probability of a very large and dangerous effect from the adoption of large-scale
renewable energy, reduced economic growth through carbon taxes or geo-engineering also justifies extreme caution. Pascal’s wager cuts both ways.
At the moment, it seems highly likely that the cure is worse than disease.
We are taking chemotherapy for a cold.
Full paper with graphs and references here
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“I have come to the conclusion that current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself. The tax bite is always worse than the bark.
rgbatduke: The really funny thing is that temperatures have been flat across pretty much the entire post-Mann era, after the 1997-1998 Super-ENSO event. That is, across the entire functional lifetime of the IPCC.
Yeh. The Climate Catastrophists repeatedly tell us that a lot of years are needed to detect a change in climte (17 – 30 years), but we have now had more years of non-warming than there were years of warming when Hansen started to sound the alarm. If they had any self-awareness at all they would at least blush.
It is an invitation to a debate. Any takers out there to debate Matt Ridley? Doubt it.
Thanks Matt for a bit of common sense in the world full of nonsense.
Matt Ridley says:
January 28, 2013 at 12:42 pm
“Thanks for the comments. I don’t (yet!) question the greenhouse properties of CO2, because I convinced myself a few years ago that the physics is sound, but of course I’ll retain an open mind.”
Negative forcings can overcome the effects of CO2. Demand a physical science of forcings before you accept Lukewarmism.
I would not even attempt to put together a list of specific showings that would convince me. I don’t know enough about the field to know what that might be. What will not convince me is hiding data and techniques, making repeated unexplained “adjustments” to data, using statistical techniques made up on the spot and not evaluated by statisticians, ad hom attacks, or stifled, one sided, discussion.
What will convince me is a knock-down, no holds or positions barred discussion with everything published, evaluated, and freely available to all. I don’t know enough to evaluate every paper in detail, but I do know enough to evaluate an exchange of papers and know who got the better of the argument. If only one side is presented its a big sign to be very suspicious.
If at any time the global anomoly is negative, then by defintion hasn’t there been a net loss of heat from the starting point of the anomoly measurements to the current point? which to a lay man coudlbe interpreted as ‘cooling’
I quote:
‘4. The one trend that has been worse than expected – Arctic sea ice – is plausibly explained by black carbon (soot), not carbon dioxide. Soot from dirty diesel engines and coal-fired power stations is now reckoned to be a far greater factor in climate change than before; it is a short-lived pollutant, easily dealt with by local rather than global action. So you would need to persuade me that this finding, by explaining some recent climate change, does not further reduce the likely sensitivity of the atmosphere to carbon dioxide. Certainly, it “buys time”.’
Your speculation about black carbon is dead wrong. Arctic warming is caused by North Atlantic currents carrying warm water of the Gulf stream into the Arctic Ocean. That is the reason why the Arctic is the only part of the world that is still warming. It started at the turn of the twentieth century as a result of a reorganization of the North Atlantic current system. There was nothing before it except two thousand years of slow cooling. It paused in mid-century for thirty years, then resumed, and is still going strong. The temperature of the warm currents reaching the Arctic Ocean today exceeds anything seen within the last two thousand years. For full details see Energy & Environment 22(8):1069-1083 (2011).
This is not the same as arguing that climate has not changed or that mankind is not partly responsible. That the climate has changed because of man-made carbon dioxide I fully accept.
What Mr. Ridley still funds acceptable is quite unacceptable to me because it is unscientific to the max.. Thanks for a half snowflake.
Only actual warming and consequent disasters will convince you, and even then I suspect you’ll still have doubts.
jim Steele says, January 28, 2013 at 4:35 pm: “In the winter I can always tell a cloudy night will be warmer than a clear night due to the greenhouse effect.”
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Yes, about that. I am sorry to disappoint you, but the actual measurements does not support this idea.
Please, look at this: http://english.wunderground.com/history/airport/KNYC/2012/7/28/DailyHistory.html . They measure the temperature a few times an hour and also report conditions. You can see, the temperature goes sometimes down despite increase in cloudiness.
I guess the “greenhouse effect” works part-time. A lazy one.
Many here insist on NO effect from added CO2. I know I won’t change minds here. What I will do is defend Matt Ridley’s assessment based on orders of magnitude differences. There may well be some CO2 warming, but whatever it is isn’t worrisome, absent synergy from water vapor. Policies prescribing “chemotherapy for a [minor] cold” is wildly inappropriate, as “Gaia” biologist James Lovelock would agree.
Hi Matt,
1 – BEST. Wasn’t the whole point to scrub UHI, et al.? Guess what, we really are warming.
2. – Any rise in temperature will raise the amount of water held in the atmosphere. That is basic physics. Since CO2 increases will raise the temperature, and water is a more powerful GHG than CO2, there will be amplification. That other forcings also exist is a red herring.
3. – So you _do_ understand the idea of multiple forcings pulling different directions! Had me going in #2 for a second. Isn’t it great that models are improving?
4. – Laying the entire blame for Arctic sea ice decline on black soot is ludicrous. Sea ice is falling faster than all predictions.
5. – The point is not that natural forcings can’t equal man-made ones, it is that you don’t get to pick your natural forcings. Your argument is along the lines of “I’ve been alive every day of my life, so I will never die!” When the worm turns, and the natural forcings reinforce the man-made ones, you won’t be so happy.
6. – Given that we don’t ‘know’ any of these things, you should be easy to convince.
7. – You are deliberately confusing two senses of ‘adapt’, since ecosystems and societies adapt in very different ways. In any case, the question is the cost of the adaptation. Building a dike around Florida is a non-starter.
8. – Matt, it is called the time value of money, aka the miracle of compound interest. I would expect that even someone involved in a failed bank would get this. Yes, people in 1900 sacrificed for us. That is why we are rich! Do you really begrudge this of your grandchildren?
9. – I agree. Lets debate the policy implications without sticking your head in the sand about basic physics and chemistry.
10. – I agree again. Specific policies need open debate. However, your analogy is wrong. We are not treating a cold with chemotherapy. We’re still spending less on GW mitigation than on potato chips, or certainly cigarettes. A better analogy would be to protecting yourself during sex by thinking about condoms.
LKMiller says:
January 28, 2013 at 4:10 pm
…..Forest management has been stopped on federal forests in the west (National Forests and BLM) which, depending on the state can be more than half of the total forested land. This is a crime, and amounts to mal-practice and theft of the people’s natural resources. If you live in the east, imagine what it would be like to have half or more of the ground controlled by interests 2-3000 miles away.
However, forest management and timber harvesting continues on private timber lands, and also on those managed by the states.
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I was thinking of the minor variation of a common bird, the spotted owl and tree spiking idiots who have put a major crimp in the forest industry.
Don’t tell me anyone actually manages to make it through all the hoops in California and actually gets to cut a tree… Unless he is a personal friend of Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer or Governor Moonbeam that is. current timber growth potential is lower than would be expected due to past harvesting and wildfire suppression efforts…. At the peak in 1988, 2 billion board feet of timber was harvested from public land; by 2002, the public timberland harvest had dropped to less than 200 million board feet. Private land harvest levels have been somewhat more stable, with a recent peak of approximately 2.8 billion board feet in 1990 down to about 1.5 billion board feet in 2002.
In the state of Washington the harvest is also about half what it was in 1987 link
on the east coast our forests have actually grown back. you can see the old stone walls meandering through woods that were at one time farm land. My property has been reforested.
Oh, follow the money, awready. We are NOT funded by Big Oil. Shell Oil appeared in the Climategate I papers.
The Big Nobel Prize winner Al Gore ran for President, remember? His Dad was a Congressman. POLITICIAN. He is used to wealth and wants more and all his life money has come from the government. The gov gets it from taxes. This whole thing is a scheme to promote carbon taxes one way or another.
Catch is–the people are tapped out. There is no more money to be obtained from them. Politicians can certainly try, oh yes. And then the economy collapses and there is LESS revenue, not more.
In response to Mosh’s blovia: The arctic cover is the regulator on the pressure cooker. Less ice exposes more ocean to direct to space radiation of ocean heat and to redistribution of sea surface heat by contact with wind. The spectacular recovery of ice cover this year after the record low extent over the arctic melt season demonstrates the dynamic range of this regulator and the effectiveness of of this system. I have greater fear of human suffering from loss of our food crops to biofuel because of unjustified fear of climate change than to climate change. We already have evidence this is a problem but half of us choose to ignore it just as we have evidence that global warming has paused far longer than it existed when the alarmists began sounding the alarm in the 1980’s.
Konrad, and others, I’ve actually researched the CO2 effect a bit. Let CO2* be a CO2 molecule that has absorbed a ~15 micron photon, and is vibrationally excited.
At 1 atm pressure of nitrogen, the collisional deactivation time of CO2* is about 10^5 times faster than radiational decay — ~0.4 sec., vs about 10 microsec. So, until the atmosphere thins to about 10^-4 of sea level pressure (~35 km), CO2 re-radiation will not contribute anything significant to the equation.
The IR absorption spectrum of CO2 indicates that at 290 ppmv CO2, 99% of any 15 micron IR radiated up from the surface will be absorbed in the first ~64 meters of atmosphere above the surface. At 390 ppmv, the distance reduces to about 47 m, and at 600 ppmv it’s about 38 m.
Any absorbed 15 micron radiant energy from the surface into CO2* will be collisionally dumped into the surrounding nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere. This process will marginally increase the kinetic energy of these molecules, i.e.,
CO2 + 15 micron hv –> CO2*
CO2* + N2/O2 –> CO2 + (N2/O2)K.E.,
which in turns means an increase in sensible heat (molecular K.E. = heat). Any 15 micron black body radiation isotropically released by the warmer air, will be re-absorbed above and below by CO2. This re-absorbed radiation is again collisionally dumped into the surrounding atmosphere.
This process provides the mechanism for CO2 warming. However, how the extra K.E. is partitioned is anyone’s guess. It may disappear into a more vigorous hydrology, or cause increased cloudiness through enhanced evaporation and convection, or whatever.
Notice that there’s no increase in upward radiation with increased CO2. It’s that the number of layers in the atmosphere, where 15-micron reabsorption/collisional dumping = enhanced K.E. occurs, increases with increasing CO2.
When CO2 is present in the atmosphere, its vibrational excitation turns out to be a kind of latent heat. CO2 is a kind of transducer, turning IR radiant energy into kinetic energy.
JamesS says:
January 28, 2013 at 4:41 pm
Since we only have the Mauna Loa CO2 records going back to the 1950′s, how can we possibly know the percentage of the rise since then that is man-made….
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Actually there were plenty of tests for CO2 before Mauna Loa.
See:http://www.warwickhughes.com/icecore/
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Scientific/CO2-ice-HS.htm
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2007/06/on_why_co2_is_known_not_to_hav.html#more
DvunK, “Any rise in temperature will raise the amount of water held in the atmosphere. That is basic physics.”
That is an assumption of climate modeling, and is not at all a basic of climate physical theory.
Matt Ridley wrote;
“because I convinced myself a few years ago that the physics is sound, but of course I’ll retain an open mind.”
With respect, the basic physics is indeed sound, as far as it goes. However in many complex systems it is very easy to understand the basis physics and still get the wrong answer.
For those with an open mind consider these observations;
1) Any explanation of the “Greenhouse Effect” that invokes the terms “Extra Energy”, “Net Energy Gain” or the like violate the laws of thermodynamics. Engineers have long used “predictions” of energy gain in our analyses as a RED FLAG to tell us we screwed up the calculations and we need to start over.
2) A thermal insulator performs its function by slowing the velocity at which heat energy flows through a system. The insulation in the walls of your house does nothing else but slow the velocity of the expensive heat from your furnace as it travels through it. This causes your expensive heat to “runaway” more slowly, thus delaying the eventual moment when you need to buy more (ie your furnace turns on).
3) For a material to act as a thermal insulator in a system it must cause the heat energy to flow more slowly than the other materials in the system. The material in the system with the slowest speed of heat acts as an insulator, all the other materials are just there, they are not acting as an insulator.
4) The “Greenhouse Effect” causes some energy to make multiple passes through the system (via reemission back towards the surface), however this energy (IR light) flows at the speed of light, quite a bit faster than heat flows via conduction or convection (by many many orders of magnitude). Since the IR energy is flowing at the speed of light and the other heat energy is flowing more slowly through the oceans and atmosphere via conduction and convection the “Greenhouse Gases” are not acting as a thermal insulator (or “blanket”).
5) Travelling though a system multiple times at a very high velocity is not the same as traveling through the system once at a much lower speed.
6) The “Greenhouse Effect” simply delays the flow of energy through the Sun/Earth Surface/Atmosphere/Universe system by a few tens of milliseconds, since there are approximately 86 million milliseconds in each day the “Greenhouse Effect” has no impact on the average temperature of the Earth.
I guess I’m pretty far from a “lukewarmer” am I not ?
We are treating a predicted future sneeze with arsenic today.
Cheers, Kevin.
jim Steele says:
January 28, 2013 at 4:35 pm
“So why challenge CO2′s ability to redirect infrared?”
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Jim,
Nice Strawman, well stabbed!. Phillip Bratby is not challenging CO2s ability to redirect IR. Read again –
“Perhaps by colliding with N and O molecules, CO2 can take some of their energy and radiate it to space?”
– this is clearly commenting on CO2s ability to radiate energy to space that was NOT acquired from IR radiation from the surface. CO2 can radiate to space energy from the atmosphere that was acquired by conductive contact with the surface and the release of latent heat.
Running back to the AGW position of only considering the interaction between outgoing surface IR and CO2 in the atmosphere will not work. Almost all the energy in the atmosphere was acquired from sources other than surface IR. Almost all the energy entering the atmosphere is radiated to space by radiative gases at altitude. This is critical to continued convective circulation below the tropopause and critical to cooling the atmosphere. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce its radiative cooling ability.
There is no merit in the “lukewarmer” position. The AGW hoax is a political vampire that is sucking the life blood of science. A little lukewarmer garlic will not work. “negative feedbacks”, “natural variation” and all the rest simply allow this hideous un-dead monster to flee and return in a new guise. It must be staked through its black heart. The failure to model the true role of radiative gases in convective circulation is just the stake needed.
The pseudo scientists did not just get the magnitude of the effect of added CO2 wrong. They got the sign of its effect wrong. The lukewarmer position is no service to science, only politics.
John Brookes says:
January 28, 2013 at 5:36 pm
Only actual warming and consequent disasters will convince you, and even then I suspect you’ll still have doubts.
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Only a change in the funding to promote the sun/ocean/cosmic rays or whatever and no funding for CAGW will ever convince johnny boy to switch sides. (We know empirical data certainly has not) But of course he knows which side of the debate funds his pension just like Hansen does.
Pat Frank says:
January 28, 2013 at 6:17 pm
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Pat,
few would question that CO2 is a radiative gas and that it can absorb IR emitted from the surface. However despite the ludicrous values given in Trenberthian energy budget cartoons, most of the energy in our atmosphere was not acquired from surface IR. What the AGW supporters would like ignored is that CO2 like other radiative gases, cools our atmosphere by radiating energy as IR to space.
The ability of radiative gases such as H2O and CO2 to radiately cool the upper troposphere is critical to continued convective circulation. If convective circulation stalls, our atmosphere heats.
Adding radiative gases to our atmosphere will not reduce its radiative cooling ability.
11. There is absolutely no evidence of a “radiative greenhouse effect,” SO all this moronic speculation has no physical basis.
Robert Woods in 1909 proved that the “greenhouse effect” in greenhouses is due only to stopping convection. HE ALSO PROVED that there is no “radiative greenhouse effect,” if you read the results of the experiment closely: SURELY, if there is no effect from “backradiation” in the glass greenhouse from the glass, THEN there cannot be any effect from any “atmospheric back-radiation.”
Face it, consensus skeptics, the “Slayers” are correct. There is no real physics with imaginary “shell diagrams” or “planets with no greenhouse gases,” OR any of the other hypothetical CRAP that we are witnessing in this weirdo-scientific period!
The fact that temperatures are not increasing, despite exponential increases in OCO and all the urban heat effects certainly does not help the “consensus,” either. Empirical evidence is everything, as Einstein emphasized.
QED and LOL!
I would also ask that if CO2 has historically failed to impact global temperatures, why should it now, whether natural or man-made. I would suggest Occam’s Razor provides the answer,I.e. that its the simplest answer that is right, that it can’t.
Would be interesting to know what nowadays a “lukwarmer” differentiates from a “sceptic”,
A climate sensitivity not only below IPCC’s “very likely” range (2K-4.5K), but even within the “very unlikely” range (< 1.5K) appears to have been sceptic territory, and would mean that transitional sensitivity and temperature increase in 2100 would be even below 1K.
And that's what you get if you only correct sensitivity for errors in application of the Bayes' theorem, correct for reduced aerosol cooling and correct for increased black carbon warming.
There is a tendency to overlook merits of sceptical scientists just to appease mainstream.