Education or Muddled Disinformation and Propoganda?

From Cardiff University, where I spent some time in the 1960s:

A new bilingual educational resource developed by academics from the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences to help Welsh secondary schools deliver stimulating lessons about climate change has been launched by the Chair of Climate Change Commission for Wales.

The "pack" entitled Adapting to Climate Change in Wales is intended both for teachers, and for children at "key stage 4", that is between the ages of 14 and 16. The CU "Learning about climate change" news page continues

The Climate Change Educational Resource Pack for Key Stage 4 explains the scientific basis of climate change and explores how changes in climate could impact citizens of Wales. In particular it looks at how citizens could adapt to living in a different climate.

Aimed at pupils and teachers, the multidisciplinary pack is tailored to meet the requirements of the Welsh national curriculum. It will be distributed to at least 100 secondary schools in Wales to help teachers deliver high quality, balanced information and inspire young people to adapt their behaviour to ensure their future sustainability. Although the focus is on Wales, this packs draws on examples from all over the world and covers everyday issues such as how food supply, settlement, transport and health may be affected.

In the second paragraph, note "high quality, balanced information". How does the "pack" meet that description? Not too well, it seems. Right at the beginning of "Theme 1: The Global Climate Perspective" we find

Key learning outcomes

1. To understand key components of the greenhouse effect

2. To understand the influence of humans on climate

3. To understand predicted global climate changes

... and on the following page (page 7) is this, relating to item 1 of the "Key learning outcomes"

Principle of the “Greenhouse Effect”

The sun shines down on the surface of the earth. About half the heat naturally reflects back out into space. When greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are released into our atmosphere, they trap heat and stop it reflecting back out into space. This causes additional warming of the earth surface, ocean and atmosphere… just like a greenhouse!

That would seem to encompass and explain precisely none of the "key components of the greenhouse effect", in my opinion. A greenhouse doesn't trap reflected heat. The glass transmits incoming solar radiation and traps the warmed air. Greenhouse gases don't trap reflected heat. The phrasing implies that they do that only when "released into our atmosphere" and not otherwise. It isn't difficult to briefly describe the essential components of the "greenhouse effect" for all 14-16 year-olds in a similarly short paragraph, though since this is intended as the scientific basis for the entire "pack", surely it deserves a longer (and accurate) description?

Sea Level in Australia - the Inexorable Rise in Alarmism

Is the sea-level around the Australian coast rising at an alarming rate? The Australian Climate Commission would have citizens and policy-makers in Australia and elsewhere believe that it is. In their 2011 report "The Critical Decade - Climate science, risks and responses" the following map is shown (mm per year)

Figure 8. Local sea-level rise (mm/year) around Australia from the early 1990s to 2008

Looks scary, doesn't it? In the southwest, somewhere near Perth, 8.1 mm/year, implying a rise of 81 cm in a century. In the north, somewhere near Darwin, a slightly lower value. Are these figures correct? As quoted "from the early 1990s to 2008" they are, but they are also very misleading - at most of the (as yet) unidentified monitoring stations shown on that map, there has been no significant sea-level rise after 1998. I can also show that most, if not all of the rise around Australia in the second half of the 20th century occurred during 1997 and 1998. during what's been called "one of the most severe ENSO events in history". ENSO is short for "El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation"  for those not familiar with the mnemonic.This is not what the Climate Commission, the CSIRO, nor the Australian government want known.

Here's my version, based on the same data, but starting from 1999, at the end of the late 90s ENSO "ramp" which grossly distorts the "early 1990s to 2008" rates shown above.

Local sea-level rise (mm/year) around Australia from 1999 to 2010

Looks rather less scary, doesn't it? Let's see where the CC got their data, and why there's such a massive difference between those two maps.

Kiribati, "where rising sea levels are a very real threat"

From the Sydney Morning Herald - Ban Ki-moon challenges climate sceptics:

Speaking at the University of Sydney, he talked of the need for world leaders to address global challenges including climate change, pandemics, and issues involving food, energy and waste.

Regarding climate change, he urged sceptics to visit the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, where rising sea levels are a very real threat.

The impoverished nation was facing a bill of $947 million just to protect infrastructure from the effects of climate change, and had yet to come up with viable ways to relocate some of the population.

Mr Ban added the country was running out of time and hoped Australia would lead the way "for your own good as well as well as that of the planet".

I for one don't need to visit Kiribati to see "rising sea levels" there. Latest data from the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project run at the BOM (to end of July 2011) which I've just graphed -

Betio, Kiribati – trend from Jan 2002 to July 2011 -5.48 mm/year

An ounce of data is worth a ton of hot air.

Pole Position

They made it! The intrepid 5-man "Old Pulteney Row To The Pole" team managed to drag their boat "Old Pulteney" the final few miles over the ice to the.... To the what? To the North Pole, stupid! Or is where they ended up the north Pole? Since that spot is on an island, and since the North Pole is not, then what was their objective? Aaaah - it was to the magnetic north pole - that's all right then. But wait, on their website, they say

The Magnetic North Pole is continually moving. It was originally reached by James Clark Ross in 1831. At the time it was located on the Boothia Peninsula, Canada.

More recently the Canadian government made attempts to measure it and show its movement northwestward.

This was eventually successfully achieved in 1996 when an expedition certified its location by magnetometer and theodolite. This was the first time it has been accurately measured. The expedition was led by David Hempelman-Adams and included Jock Wishart.

The measurements were accepted by the Canadian government and it became a recognised and certified position at;

The position is 78°35.7N 104°11.9W / 78.595°N 104.1983°W.

So it was at that position in 1996, and as they say, "The Magnetic North Pole is continually moving". so where is it now?

The speed of movement of the Pole began to increase significantly in a northwesterly direction about 1998, and now averages about 37 miles each year and so It is currently projected to be in a position in Siberia by the end of the century. 

Let's get this straight, they weren't rowing to the North Pole, as many newspapers and TV news reports stated. They weren't even rowing to the Magnetic North Pole, they were rowing to where the Magnetic North Pole was in 1996! So where is it now? Google maps knows:

Using the scale at bottom left, and using Mark One eyeball, that position would seem to be about 500km NW of their finishing point, marked by the red arrow. That red arrow is pointing at a spot only 78°N - some 12° south of the North Pole, and a long way away. What does this expedition prove? That the Arctic ice is in a bad way, and will be gone soon, and this proved by an exhausting row to nowhere-in-particular, with days spent marooned on land because of that "vanished" ice, and a final 3-day drag-your-boat over the "vanished ice". Or something

Slaying Your Own Argument

In a post entitled "CO2 as a radiation valve contravenes the laws of thermodynamics" our old friend and "Dragon Slayer" Alan Siddons analogises the atmosphere as a "radiation" valve. He imagines such a valve letting in solar radiation, but preventing any escaping to space. Of course, in such a system, the Earth's surface would continue to heat up because there's no exit for the heat generated in the surface. He claims that this disproves the "greenhouse effect" because "back-radiation" from the "valve" (the atmosphere) is somehow magnified and therefore causes a "runaway" heating cascade. But with no path for the heat to escape, such an effect is inevitable anyway, "greenhouse effect" or not. It's nosensical, of course, and proves nothing.

The second part of the post describes a "valve" which actually lets some radiation to escape, so is worth examining. However, in summary this is another example of a poorly labelled diagram, which in this case seems to have confused the author himself;

I urge you to notice that the valve's efficiency doesn't actually matter, either, because physical laws are violated even in a modest case. In some sense, in fact, the crimes get worse. For instance, let's install a 20% valve, so that 80% of the infrared escapes and 20% back-radiates. 

In this case, 0.8 exits while 0.2 is "retained" by the surface. But 0.2 also radiates back to the surface, so it gains 0.4 in total (again, as a minimum: further back-radiation effects must arbitrarily be halted). In other words, even when the oft-mentioned "net flow" favors the outward movement of thermal energy (a modeling effort to satisfy the Second Law), the alleged heating effect still contradicts the First Law because you're getting more energy than you put in. Any furnace manufacturer would eagerly exploit such a loophole in the law if it existed. 

"In this case, 0.8 exits while 0.2 is 'retained' by the surface" - yet the upward red arrow at the top reads 0.8, meaning that the red arrow below it must represent 1 unit in order for the "valve" to have absorbed 0.2 units. Not a good start, since if the surface "retains" 0.2 it can only radiate 0.8 with a corresponding 0.64 exiting the "valve". The 0.8 shown escaping plus the 0.2 "retained " by the surface plus the 0.2 absorbed by the valve add up to 1.2 and not 1. Earlier in his post he said "You can't obtain more energy than you put in", yet he's just done it! Apart from this fundamental error, if the surface retains a net anything the system can never reach equilibrium - it has built-in positive feedback from the word go. He says earlier "for every unit of sunlight going in", so if for every unit going in 0.2 is "retained" the surface will continue to heat up, and thus far in the process the the "valve" has played no part in any "feedback". So the diagram doesn't actually represent what the description says it does. In reality the surface never does actually radiate 1 unit, as implied in the diagram, unless the"valve" is initially set to allow all radiation through, and then activated. All that's needed (once again, as in "A Simpe Solution") is to consider the energy actually lost from the system to get a properly thought-out analogy or "model".

At equilibrium, 1 unit escapes through the valve, which means that the surface is radiating 1/0.8 = 1.25, and the "valve" is absorbing and re-radiating 0.25 downwards. But where does that "extra" energy come from? It comes of course from energy absorbed during the equilibrium process. initially the surface acquires 1 unit, absorbs that energy and heats up until it radiates 1 unit. The "valve" absorbs 0.2 of that, and it heats up until it radiates the same down. The process continues with diminishing increments - the 0.2 is absorbed by the surface, increasing its heat content until it radiates 1.2 units, with 0.96 escaping and a total of 0.24 absorbed by the "valve" and so on. Of course, the process doesn't actually have discrete steps - it's smooth and continuous. The heat content of surface and valve increase until radiation in and out of the system balances and equilibrium is obtained. No physical laws are violated, and "furnace maufacturers" are well aware that it takes time for their products to heat up to operating temperature when turned on.

There's the nub of the matter - the "Slayer's" misunderstanding of the difference between heat flow amd heat content. The surface of the Earth and the atmosphere don't radiate because they are absorbing radiation, they radiate because they contain heat. Radiation from the sun merely tops up the heat content. At night there is no radiation from the sun, yet of course the Earth/atmosphere system cotinues to radiate heat to space, slowly cooling. It's surely a simple concept to grasp, yet it appears to elude some.