It's the Sun stupid – The minor significance of CO2

Guest post by Dr. Norman Page

1 The IPCC’s Core Problem

The IPCC  – Al Gore based  Anthropogenic Global Warming scare has driven global  Governments’ Climate and Energy Policies since the turn of the century. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been wasted on uneconomic renewable energy  and CO2 emission control schemes based on the notions  that it is both necessary and possible to control global temperatures by reducing CO2 emissions. All this vast investment is based on the simple idea that as stated in the IPCC AR4 report:

“we conclude that the global mean equilibrium warming for doubling CO2, or ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, is likely to lie in the range 2°C to 4.5°C, with a most likely value of about 3°C. Equilibrium climate sensitivity is very likely larger than 1.5°C.”

These values  can only be reached by adopting two completely unfounded and indeed illogical assumptions and procedures:

1. CO2 is simply assumed to be the main climate forcing .This is clearly illogical  because at all time scales CO2 changes follow temperature changes.

2.  Positive feedback  from the other GHGs – notably water vapour and methane is then added on to the effects of CO2 and attributed to it. Obviously, in nature,  the increase in  CO2 and  Humidity  are  both caused by rising temperatures. It is also impossible to have a net positive feedback because systems with total positive feed back are not stable and simply run away to disaster. We wouldn’t be here to tell the tale if it were true.

From its inception the IPCCs remit was to measure Anthropogenic  Climate Change and indeed Climate Change was defined as Anthropogenic until the 2011 SREX report when the definition was changed.The climate science community simply designed their models to satisfy the political  requirements of their funding agencies. – Publications, academic positions,peer approval , institutional advancement and grants were unlikely to be forthcoming unless appropriate forecasts of catastrophic warming were dutifully produced. The climate models have egregious structural errors and ,what is worse, in their estimates of  uncertainty the IPCC reports for Policymakers simply ignored this structural uncertainty and gave policy makers and the general public a totally false impression of the likely accuracy  of their temperature forecasts.It is this aspect of the AGW meme which is especially unconscionable.

The inadequacy, not to say inanity, of the climate models can be seen by simple inspection of the following Figure 2-20  from the AR4 WG1 report.

Figure 1 from IPCC AR4

The only natural forcing is TSI and everything else is anthropogenic. For example under natural should come such things as eg Milankovitch Orbital Cycles,Lunar related tidal effects on ocean currents,Earths geomagnetic field strength and all the Solar Activity data time series – eg Solar  Magnetic Sield strength, TSI ,SSNs ,GCRs ,( effect on aerosols,clouds and albedo) CHs, MCEs, EUV variations, and associated ozone variations and Forbush events. Unless the range and causes of natural variation are known within reasonably narrow limits it is simply not possible to calculate the effect of anthropogenic CO2 on climate.

The results of this gross error of scientific judgement is seen in the growing discrepancy between global temperature trends and the model projections. The  NOAA  SSTs show that with CO2 up 8% there has been no net warming since 1997, that ,the warming trend peaked in 2003 and that there has been a cooling trend since that time.

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat

The gap between projections and observations  is seen  below

Fig 2 ( From Prof. Jan-Erik Solheim (Oslo) )

2, The Real Climate Drivers.

Earths climate is the result of resonances between various quasicyclic processes of varying wavelengths. The long wave Milankovich eccentricity,obliquity and precessional cycles are modulated by solar “activity” cycles with millennial centennial and decadal time scales .These in turn interact with lunar cycles and endogenous earth changes in Geomagnetic Field strength ,volcanic activity and at really long time scales plate tectonic movements of the land masses.The combination of all these drivers is mediated through the great oceanic current and atmospheric pressure systems to produce the earths climate and weather.

To help forecast decadal  and annual changes we can look at eg the ENSO  PDO, AMO NAO indices and based on past patterns make reasonable forecasts for varying future periods. Currently the PDO suggests we may expect 20 – 30 years of cooling in the immediate future.Similarly for multidecadal, centennial and millennial predictions we need to know where we are relative to the appropriate solar cycles.The best proxies for solar “activity”are currently ,the Ap index, and the GCR produced neutron count. The solar indices are particularly important  for their past history these can be retrieved from the 10 Be data.

In a previous post on   http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com  on  1/22/13 – Global Cooling – Timing and Amount(NH) I have made suggestions of possible future cooling based on a repetition of the solar millennial cycle. Here I point out for the modellers the value of using the Ap index as a proxy measure of solar activity. Compare the Northern Hemisphere HADSST3 Temperature anomaly since 1910 with the AP index since 1900 . Because of the thermal inertia and slow change in the enthalpy of the oceans there is a 10 – 12 year delay between the driver proxy  and the temperature.

Fig 3 – From Hadley Center

Fig 4  From  http://www.leif.org/research/Ap-1844-now.png

There are some good correlations .The 1900 and 1965 Ap lows correspond to the NH  temperature minima at 1910 and 1975 respectively . The 1992 Ap peak ( Solar Cycle 22)  corresponds to the 2003 temperature high and trend roll over- and as shown in the previous post referred to above might well represent  the roll over of the millennial solar cycle which brought the Medieval and Roman warming peaks. The NH is used because it is more sensitive to forcing changes and its greater variability makes correlation more obvious.

As a simple conceptual model the Ap index can be thought of as simple proxy for hours of sunshine especially when mentally integrated over a 10 -12 year period.  See Wang et al

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/9581/2012/acp-12-9581-2012.pdf

As far as the future is concerned the Solar Cycle  23/24 Ap minimum in end 2009 is as low as the 1900 minimum and would suggest both a secular change in solar activity in about 2006 and a coming temperature minimum at about 2019/20. This change is also documented for TSI by  Adbussamatov  2012 http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/apr/article/view/14754

As a final example for this post  the following figure from Steinhilber et al http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/30/1118965109.full.pdf

shows the close correlation of successive Little Ice Age Minima with cosmic Ray intensity.

CONCLUSION :    

It is now clear that the Ap/GCR/10Be data are the best proxy measures of the Earth’s temperature driver over millennial centennial and decadal time scales. The best way of forecasting the future is to predict future solar cycles at these wavelengths keeping in mind the Earth’s magnetic field strength and obliquity trends over longer time periods.

3. The Response of the Modellers, IPCC and Political Alarmists.

The modelling community and the IPCC have both recognized that they have a problem. For example both Hansen and Trenberth have been looking for the missing heat and generating epicycle type theories to preserve their models.Hansen thinks it might have something to do with aerosols and Trenberth first wanted to hide it down the deep ocean black hole. Death Train Hansen is a lost cause as far as objective science is concerned but Trenberth has always been a more objective and judicious scientist and has recently made excellent  progress in discovering a real negative feedback in the system. see

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/outreach/proceedings/cdw31_proceedings/S6_05_Kevin_Trenberth_NCAR.ppt

He says:

This is an encouraging start and its inclusion would improve models significantly. Clearly it would reduce very substantially the currently IPCC calculated temperature sensitivity to CO2 . He now also needs to add into the models the iris effect of the GCR modulation  of the global incoming radiation flux via clouds ,possibly related natural aerosols, and resulting  albedo changes on global temperatures.When this is done the sensitivity to doubling  CO2 will be 1 degree or less similar to  separate calculations by Lindzen, Spencer and Bjornbom:

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/01/new-paper-confirms-findings-of-lindzen.html

The IPCC ‘s response to the lack of warming is seen in the SREX  2011 report. they say

“Uncertainty in the sign of projected changes in climate extremes over the coming two to three decades is relatively large because climate change signals are expected to be relatively small compared to natural climate variability”.

In other words they realized  that they could no longer scaremonger on the basis of the trend and so in that report and in the forthcoming AR5 they have chosen to concentrate on “extreme” events to promote their scaremongering anti CO2 policy agenda  while keeping unchanged their climate sensitivity calculations. The core alarmists  Hansen, Mann, McKibben and Romm and their MSM ,Celebrity and Political  acolytes including Obama are simply following the IPCC script with their ever more hysterical predictions of future extreme disasters as the current earth obstinately refuses to warm up.

The AR5 Summary for Policymakers is currently in draft form.Obviously Trenberth and his associated modellers cannot restructure the models in time to change the science section but perhaps they could at least insist that the final report makes proper allowance for the structural uncertainty in the model outcomes .

CONCLUSION:

Trenberth’s latest work implies that when it is incorporated into the climate models the entire CAGW  scare will collapse.

The only effect of increasing CO2 will be to ameliorate slightly the coming cold  temperature trend and to help world food production by its fertilizing effect on crops.