Supreme Irony #2 - Mauna Loa and Hawaiian Temperatures

Supreme irony #1 was of course "Assessing Recent Warming" which I posted on the 7th. of this month, in which I pointed out that the temperature at Washington Airport, just across the Potomac river from the capital, home of NOAA and the then president "Halt climate change" Barack Obama, had shown no warming since 1974. This time I start with the Mauna Loa Observatory, home of the "Keeling Curve" of atmospheric CO2 concentration. Here's a superb topographical map of Hawai'i Island, known in the state of Hawai'i as "Big Island", for obvious reasons - its area is greater than all the other islands of the archipelago put together. If you want to save a copy, click on it and right-click "save image as" or whatever your browser uses:

The red circle marks Lo'ihi, a "sea-mount", an active undersea volcano which will eventually break the surface (in at least decades) as a new addition to the island chain. Mauna Loa is the big brown peak in the middle, and a dirt track leads eastward to the town of Hilo, where there's Hilo Airport, home to an atmospheric weather station. There they record temperature etc, and launch radiosondes to measure temperature, humidity and ozone to 30-35 km altitude:

Steve about to release a radiosonde. Source: NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory.

Check out the link to ESRL - well worth a read, and abstracts of papers on the role of ozone in climate included. The big "hill" in the background is dormant volcano Mauna Kea, at 4205 metres the highest point in the islands. Notice the grey volcanic soil - it took a great deal of work from the 1920s onwards to level the site for the airport, cutting away hard volcanic rock. Read about that here if you're interested - it's another good read. Happily, all the fixed surface instruments are on grass - I'd imagine that soil would get hotter than tarmac in the sun. OK - enough background stuff - cut to the chase, and the temperature record for Hilo Airport since 1950 - the reason for the start date will become clearer later.

Hilo Airport 1950-2016.  Source: GISS

I've circled 1966 in red - no warming since then until 2015-6. Global Warming delayed by a mere 50 years. Next temperature station to the NW is at Kahului Airport on Mau'i Island:

Kahului Airport, Mau'i.  Source: GISS

No warming at all since 1977 - I can't use a Loess filter because of the gap from 2005 to 2009, so I've plotted a linear trend 1977-2016. It's essentially flat. Skip an island or two with no current data, and we come to Honolulu, the capital city, and of course UHI - Urban Heat Island effect. Has that affected the temperature record? Almost certainly, however:

Honolulu Airport 1950-2016.   Source: GISS

I've circled 1984 - no warming since then. Notice there's no 2015-16 "spike" either, as seen at Hilo. I suspect something has happened there to cause it. I'm checking it out. Last but not least, further to the NW is Lihue, Kaua'i Island:

Lihue, Kaua'i, 1950-2016.   Source: GISS

No warming since 1970 (circled). So there we have it - an entire US state with a documented lack of "Global Warming" - it never was global, and there are many places all round the globe showing either a total lack of late-20C warming, or even cooling. If many Sceptics would stop their incessant and negative complaining about GHCN/GISS adjusted and "homogenised" temperature data, and actually use the extensive unadjusted database, there's an Aladdin's cave of debunking material to be extracted and put to good use.

Why did I start most of the charts at 1950? I found a real little gem from the EPA, "What Climate Change Means for Hawaii". It kicks off:

Hawaii’s climate is changing. In the last century, air temperatures have increased between one-half and one degree (F).

Not a very good start - even though my charts above start at 1950, it's clear there's been a rise of around 1°C (almost 2°F) since then, and on full plots as much as 2°C (3.6°F) over the last 100 years. There's even a graphic to illustrate their error:

It's clear that Honolulu (top, brown) has increased from below 76°F to well over 77°F. There's no mention of the fact that even on this confused and confusing spaghetti-chart, it's clear that Honolulu hasn't warmed since the mid-1980s; that Hilo hasn't warmed since the mid-1960s; that Lihue hasn't warmed since about 1970, and that Kahului (grey, barely visible) hasn't warmed since the late 70s.

After some waffle about ocean warming (they say about 1°F) around Hawaii damaging coral reefs, there's this:

Greenhouse gases are also changing the world’s oceans and ice cover. Carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid, so the oceans are becoming more acidic. The surface of the ocean has warmed about one degree during the last 80 years. Warming is causing snow to melt earlier in spring, and mountain glaciers are retreating. Even the great ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking. Thus the sea is rising at an increasing rate.

Errr - CO2 reacts with sea-water, but it doesn't form carbonic acid (H2CO3). The author's using kindergarten science. Even highly-carbonated soft drinks have only very tiny amounts of carbonic acid in them. Most of the CO2 remains as CO2 in solution. Look it up, as I did, whereas this author, in common with many alarmists and their camp-followers, never have. Sea-water is strongly buffered, and the addition of CO2 reduces the alkalinity (negative pH) only a little.  Saying that CO2 increases "acidity" is like saying that a reduction in your bank overdraft has "increased your bank balance".

Warmer air can certainly hasten snow-melt in spring, but it would take decades to centuries for slightly warmer air to have any effect on glaciers and ice-shelves. Air simply hasn't got the heat capacity and therefore content to do it over a few years, despite what glaciologists touchingly believe - they do have very vivid imaginations, and clearly know no relevant physics. A strong negative feedback is that melted surface ice (water!) evaporates, cooling the water. Latent heat of evaporation for water is an order of magnitude greater than latent heat of fusion for ice. Glaciologists also touchingly believe that surface melt-water can "permeate cracks in the ice" to reach the bottom of a glacier and "lubricate the base", so the glacier will advance faster. Ice-cold water can somehow permeate ice which is below freezing point to reach the base? Yeah, right - more "settled science".

Try heating your bath water using a fan-heater in the bathroom (don't try this at home!). In a well-insulated room, it would take weeks for the water to reach equilibrium with the hot air temperature. Topic for a future post here!

"Thus the sea is rising at an increasing rate." - well it's not. The "great ice sheet" on Greenland was shrinking, but that's slowed in recent years, not accelerated.  The only part of the "great ice sheet" on Antarctica to display any melting was at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula - the very tip is even outside the Antarctic circle. Several papers published recently show that the "increasing temperatures" on the peninsula flattened off after 1990, and have been decreasing over the last 10-15 years. Topic for another post!

Satellite data shows global sea-level to be increasing at about 3 mm/year since 1993, and despite what some Sceptics would have you believe, in general, satellite data agrees fairly well with tide-gauge data. However, a big factor in the 3 mm/year figure was due to surface warming in the western Pacific, that's PDO and ENSO related, and both indices are reversing trend. Also, the satellites sample a lot of sea surface where there are no tide-gauges, and so it's likely that previous estimates of global rise have been under-stating the case for many decades. In general, tide-gauges show no late 20th.C acceleration correlating with atmospheric warming at all. Dozens of mainstream papers document that. I'll finish this post soon, I promise, just one last quote:

Since 1960, sea level has risen between two and eight inches relative to Hawaii’s shoreline. Sea level rise can make Hawaii’s existing coastal hazards—such as waves, hurricanes, tsunamis, and extreme tides—even worse. Additionally, rising sea level has accelerated coastal erosion, which has resulted in wetland migration and cliff collapse. Chronic erosion has affected more than 70 percent of Kauai and Maui’s beaches over the last century.

"Between two and eight inches" is a pretty wide estimate. Eight inches is the accepted estimate for global rise from 1880. I'll go into that in a post (in preparation) about sea-levels around the archipelago. I accept that many beaches have suffered "Chronic erosion", but I contend that the main reason is steeply-shelving beaches, which are prone to "Chronic erosion" whether sea-level is rising or not. That's well-documented. Have a look at this from the same EPA document:

Firstly, that pale golden sand is not Hawaiian sand. The islands are composed of very dark basaltic rocks - they're the tops of very large volcanoes. The natural colour is the same as the soil in the "balloon" picture above. The islands are famous for their "black beaches". Secondly, it's easy to see that the bottom shelves steeply down from the beach. This is the flank of a volcano, after all. The beaches aren't threatened by "climate change" but by natural erosion and longshore currents and rip-tides off the beaches - they're well documented too. Currents dangerous for swimmers erode beaches. Rising sea-levels must play a small part, and a gradually increasing part, but these exaggerated claims are just the usual "blame everything bad on climate change" meme. "What Climate Change Means for Hawaii" is just the usual alarmist nonsense, permeated by a few truths. Par for the course,

"Bio-engineering" scientist hasn't a clue what he's talking about.

On the Green blog on the NY Times website , if you're interested, I just read Nature, Re-engineered to Meet Energy Needs.

Thousands of inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs gathered in a suburban Washington convention center on Monday for the annual three-day meeting of ARPA-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy. It wasn’t quite the Oscars. At the registration desk, attendees received a goody bag that included a report on clean energy from the Pew Charitable Trusts and a refrigerator magnet that showed the periodic table of the elements.

Judging by what follows in the article, the goody bags should have included copies of "Metal Refining for Dummies", "Photosynthesis for Dummies" and "Greenhouse Gas Absorption for Dummies", and you'll soon learn why.

But the breakout sessions held true to ARPA-E’s tradition: there were lots of swing-for-the-fence ideas. These included finding a high-efficiency, low-cost way to turn surplus natural gas into liquid fuel for cars and trucks, and identifying something to burn other than hydrocarbons so that carbon dioxide is not one of the byproducts.

One researcher proposed burning aluminum instead. One challenge is that the “ashes,” or oxidized metal, would be hard to recycle back into aluminum without big releases of carbon dioxide.

That's a great combo - use natural gas, a hydrocarbon, as fuel for vehicles (it's already being done and is being refined), while at the same time "identifying something to burn other than hydrocarbons". That's just priceless. Even more priceless is the idea of burning aluminium, which uses (in comparison with other metals) a vast amount of electricity in the refining process. Turning the oxide back into aluminium would likely use even more. All this to achieve what? Getting a bit of heat out of it, at a vastly lower efficiency than in the refining process. It'd be much cheaper (and easier) to burn the dollar bills and sequester the CO2, but I've just had a brilliant idea - use just a little of the electricity instead of burning the aluminium. I'm not just a pretty face, you know,

Talking of CO2, there's a scientist who doesn't appear to know much about its effects on plants. In fact he doesn't appear to know much at all.

One particularly ambitious idea presented on Monday was to re-engineer plants so that their leaves reflect rather than absorb more light. In an age of global climate change, with shifting rainfall patterns, changing reflectivity holds appeal. The technology would save water, which means saving energy because the water that the plants need often must be pumped. It could prove a way to help crops grow with less rainfall. 

Some of those crops can be used to produce energy as well. And increasing the amount of light that bounces back into space would help to limit global warming.

The notion is that crops will absorb light in the visible spectrum yet reflect some of the infrared and ultraviolet light, which heats the leaves. “Plants have a maximum efficiency of about 6 percent,’’ said Robert Conrado, an agency scientist. And plants regulate their temperature much the way people do, by giving off water, which cools as it evaporates. “All energy that is not able to be captured is dissipated as heat,’’ he said. “And that’s a lot of water.’’

In a hot climate, a cornfield can give off the equivalent of eight inches of rainfall in a month, he said, and agricultural irrigation accounts for 81 percent of water use in this country. The proportion is even higher in poorer places, which have fewer dishwashers and washing machines.

And some of that energy would radiate back into space, reducing global warming, Dr. Conrado said.Whether butterfly wings or fruits, he said, “nature has already evolved mechanisms for tailored light reflection.”

Re-engineer plants so that the leaves reflect some of the infrared and ultraviolet? Pull out the copy of "Photosynthesis for Dummies" and turn to the page which explains that plant leaves absorb UV in photosynthesis. As far as plants and UV are concerned, more UV is better. Remind yourself that a number of studies have shown conclusively that higher levels of CO2 reduce the time that plant stomata (pores) are open, thus reducing evapotranspiration, which means that plants loose less water to the atmosphere.

Pull out the copy of "Greenhouse Gas Absorption for Dummies" which explains that most of the shortwave infrared from the Sun is absorbed by water vapour in the atmosphere, and not much reaches the surface, so re-engineering plants to reflect some of that "not much" will have little effect. Remind yourself that most, if not all of that reflected infrared will be also absorbed by water vapour, and not that far above the surface either. Remind yourself that a short while ago, other scientists were pointing out that infrared absorbed by off-the-ground vegetation (trees to you and me) absorbed infrared and kept the ground below cool whereas grassland tended to reflect it and warm the atmosphere immediately above when it was absorbed by water vapour. Not a good thing as they saw it, just an interesting fact as I saw it.

Dr. Conrado should peruse both volumes and read a few more published  abstracts on topics he ought to know more about. For the final words, back to the article

So far the agency has invested $770 million in 285 projects, “and we’re proud of every single one of them,’’ said Cheryl Martin, the agency’s deputy director, in opening remarks to several thousand attendees. Although most will never be commercialized, the strikeouts are not as important as the home runs.

Most will never be commercialized because, judging on present evidence, most don't work, can't work, or if they do work, have negative cost benefits (if they actually have any benefits at all). Perhaps the "home runs" will also turn out to be "own goals". Crazy people with crazy ideas who can't see beyond the top row of their keyboards. Even idiots have the right ideas some of the time.

Democrat Senator wants to see the end of mankind?

From the Washington Examiner (h/t Tom Nelson), my bold

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said that his colleagues want to pass a carbon tax in order to fight global warming and provide extra revenue as lawmakers debate debt and spending issues.

“We’re looking for revenue sources that are positive that we could get bipartisan support [for] such as a carbon tax to help finance the next transportation bill,” Cardin said during a National Institutes of Health town hall meeting today. He was responding to an NIH employing [sic] who suggested Congress “increase public health by eliminating carbon in our atmosphere and then also raise needed revenues to help stabilize the budget” in a question after during the town hall.

“I agree with your point,” he said. His office explained that the carbon tax “is connected to the public health impacts of climate change,” adding that “reducing carbon in the air would reduce the pollutants that are typically emitted at the same time, also reducing health costs.”

Does this loon (and his loony questioner) not realise that we're "carbon-based life-forms"? Do they not understand that plants, including the weed they must be smoking, get all their carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide? That at the bottom of all food chains there are plants, whether it's grass for cattle or algae for fish or berries for birds?

There are certain things that need to be eliminated from this shining blue globe of ours, but carbon dioxide is most certainly not one of them. I have a short list of candidates however.

UNEP Report - Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost

Before I get down to the nitty-gritty of the contents of the UNEP report I thought I'd share with you (I hate that expression btw) a little gem from "Beyond Zero Emissions", whose website proclaims

In partnership with the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute we are undertaking the award-winning Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Project, which is putting together fully costed transition plans for getting Australia to zero emissions in ten years using commercially available technology.

In ten years - yeah right.

Prof Ian Simmonds on melting permafrost and the latest climate science.

Professor Ian Simmonds of the School of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne is an expert in climate science and atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane budgets. His recent research has focused on the dramatic record melting permafrost in the Arctic and extreme weather events relating to climate change. 

I'd say we've got the measure of the prof. right away, wouldn't you? What "dramatic record melting permafrost in the Arctic" exactly?

The permafrost has started warming at 50m depth by about 2 degrees. This is significant because the permafrost is very close to freezing and 2 degrees will start to thaw it and this increases the potential for chemical reactions and leakage of methane and carbon emissions from the frozen organic matter inside the permafrost. 

"Very close to freezing"? Very close to thawing, surely? If "2 degrees will start to thaw it" and it's already warmed by 2 degrees then it's at thawing point already innit? Except that at 50m depth it's not at -2 degrees and not close to thawing. If there's only "potential for chemical reactions and leakage of methane and carbon emissions" where's the "dramatic record melting permafrost" then?

Par for the course for this sort of article - the writer can't even see the built-in contradictions in what they write. Which brings me directly to a rather glaring contradiction in "Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost", in the executive summary right at the start.

Two global networks monitor permafrost status: the Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) network measures permafrost temperature at various depths in 860 boreholes, and the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) network measures the thickness of the active layer at 260 sites. The active layer thickness is the maximum surface thaw depth in summer . The TSP and CALM networks are the two components of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), under the auspices of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). The International Permafrost Association (IPA) currently coordinates international development and operation of the TSP and CALM networks for the GTN-P . TSP observations indicate that permafrost temperatures have risen over the past few decades. CALM observations are less conclusive due to the melting of ice layers and lenses in near surface permafrost, but show increases in active layer thickness at many sites. Overall, these observations indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may have already started.  

The "active layer" is the unfrozen (in summer) layer above the permafrost layer. Microbial decay of plant matter can only take place in that active layer when it's unfrozen. Temperature monitoring at depths well below the active layer says nothing about any actual increase in the depth of that layer, which is what indicates additional thawing and subsequent decay and release of (mostly) CO2. Yet the summary implies that warming at depth is a more conclusive indicator than CALM (active layer) observations which are "less conclusive"? This is clutching at straws big time. I hope those straws don't decay and release an element of objectivity and truth.

So "large-scale thawing of permafrost may have already started"? Here's the contradiction in the next-but-one paragraph (my bold);

Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane emissions from thawing permafrost could amplify warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This amplification is called the permafrost carbon feedback. Permafrost contains ~1700 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon in the form of frozen organic matter, almost twice as much carbon as currently in the atmosphere. If the permafrost thaws, the organic matter will thaw and decay, potentially releasing large amounts of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. This organic material was buried and frozen thousands of years ago and its release into the atmosphere is irreversible on human time scales. Thawing permafrost could emit 43 to 135 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2100 and 246 to 415 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2200. Uncertainties are large, but emissions from thawing permafrost could start within the next few decades and continue for several centuries, influencing both short-term climate (before 2100) and long-term climate (after 2100).

However that's the dumbed-down version in the Executive Summary. The main report section 2.4 "Current State of Permafrost", after discussing changes and trends in atmospheric and permafrost temperatures states

Trends in active layer thickness are less conclusive, with some sites showing increases, but others showing no trend at all. Active layer thickness has increased in the Russian European North, but not in West Siberia (Mazhitova 2008; Vasiliev et al. 2008). Increases in summer air temperature have increased the active layer thickness on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (Wu andZhang 2010; Zhao et al. 2010). Although active layer thickness has increased in the Alaskan and Canadian interior, there is no obvious trend near the Arctic coastline (Streletskiy et al. 2008; Shiklomanov et al. 2010; Smith et al. 2009; Burn and Kokelj, 2009; Smith et al. 2010). Melting of excess ground ice might explain the lack of consistent trends in active layer thickness even though permafrost temperatures show clear signs of warming. Year-to-year variability in active layer thickness due to variations in summer air temperature also makes it difficult to detect long-term trends (Smith et al. 2009; Popova and Shmakin 2009). However, radar measurements near Prudhoe Bay indicate the surface has subsided by several centimeters since 1992, even though nearby CALM sites showed no obvious increases in active layer thickness (Liu et al. 2010, 2012). The excess ground ice in near-surface permafrost, if present, melts slowly over several years, the water drains away and the ground surface settles, a process that is difficult to detect using mechanical probing at CALM sites.

So there's a "lack of consistent trends in active layer thickness", which is the only sign that permafrost is melting on a large scale. Note that "Although active layer thickness has increased in the Alaskan and Canadian interior, there is no obvious trend near the Arctic coastline". That's it then? There's no mention of monitoring CO2 and methane emissions on the ground, in the air, or by satellite. If emissions are the bottom line then it's emissions which should be monitored above all else, something that would appear to be essential to my mind. Wait - aren't CO2 and methane already monitored by satellite? Wouldn't increasing emissions over permafrost areas show up, and wouldn't this report show them? Yes, yes, and yes to those questions.

Something occurred to me while I was writing my previous post. Surely microbial digestion of plant matter would produce heat, and act as a feedback, accelerating the melt? No mention of it in the report, but I did manage to find a reference in Amount and timing of permafrost carbon release in response to climate warming (2011), lead author one Kevin Schaefer, who also happens to be the lead author of the UNEP report:

A regional model projection with permafrost carbon predicts a complete thaw of permafrost in eastern Siberia by 2300, fuelled by the heat of microbial decay (Khvorostyanov et al., 2008).

I'm not just a pretty face then, I have some insight.

There's a distinct lack of data in these 30 report pages, and the maps are dreadful - here's the first intended to show the various areas of permafrost types (actual size, extracted from the pdf)

... and here's how it appears in the pdf - a scientific report intended for international consumption.

Here's one i found from the same original source, the International Permafrost Association.

Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

Not difficult, is it?

So there we have it - an inconclusive report, despite what's being "spun" about it in the media and on the 'net. A big nothing.

How objective is the report's lead author, Kevin Schaefer? NBC News quotes him in "Melting permafrost being ignored at climate talks, experts warn"

"Permafrost has begun to thaw," lead author Kevin Schaefer, a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder, told a news conference in Doha.

You don't even deserve my bullshit button, Kev, you're putting politics above science. Your report doesn't say that - at best it's a gross over-simplification, at worst a lie, and you know it.

A game of Consequences; A question of scale (4)

Consequences, schmonsequences, all is consequences. We've been told, indeed we've had it proved to us by climate models (pause for snigger) that it's the atmosphere which drives climate. While I'm prepared, like the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland, to "believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast", it's now well after breakfast, and that notion is an impossible thing to believe. The atmosphere is a major component of climate; the atmosphere transports heat and fresh water around the globe, dumping them where they're needed, and sometimes where they're not wanted, or at least in quantities that aren't wanted, or not wanted just now.

Blaming changes in the atmosphere for causing changes in the atmosphere is a circular argument, and leads nowhere but back to square one, and delusion, and vast expenditure on research that's leading nowhere, and vast costs to cure a non-existent problem, or at least a problem that can't be solved by mankind. I'm of the opinion that everything that happens in the atmosphere is climate. Clouds are climate, rain is climate, temperature is climate, high and low pressure systems and the consequent winds and storms are climate, and the greenhouse effect is climate.

Many climate scientists, and meteorologists, and glaciologists, and marine biologists, appear to me to be particularly myopic. Every day, or at least every week, we see the results of another "study" published; studies which usually set out to "prove" something or other, and which therefore have an agenda up front. It's all too often that agenda (usually driven by funding sources) which dictates the conclusions drawn. If the conclusions are a bit thin, because the data is a bit thin, or murky, or both, then often models are used, and the output from those models is hailed as "evidence". In all such cases, the results are published with many caveats; X  "could", "may" "might" cause Y. In some cases, even with caveats included, the scientists "spin" the results by applying a liberal dose of their own beliefs and prejudices, either in their published conclusions, or in press releases, or both. That's not science, it's advocacy, and it's dangerous advocacy.

I introduced this topic because it's central to how the role of the atmosphere is perceived; warmer air, and/or long-wave radiation from that warmer air is said to be warming the ocean. Poppycock say I - it's the ocean (and to a lesser extend the land) which gave the atmosphere that temperature in the first place. Heat is transported into the atmosphere by conduction and convection, by evaporation, and by long-wave infrared radiation, a small proportion of the latter being absorbed by greenhouse gases, the most important of which is water vapour, which the ocean (and to a lesser extend the land) put there in the first place, complete with the additional heat energy that water vapour molecules have compared to water molecules in liquid water and ice.

it's not necessary to be a climate scientist, or a physicist to understand these basic principles. it's only necessary to have a basic grasp of the relative sizes of all these factors to have a grasp on the fundamentals of climate. I said earlier that only a small proportion of the infrared radiation emitted by land and water is absorbed by greenhouse gases, the rest escapes to space, and the emitted radiation is just a part of the heat lost by the Earth's surface. Only about half of the radiation absorbed by greenhouse gases is re-emitted back down towards the surface, and not all of that is absorbed by the surface; some is reflected. The overall picture is of a great deal of heat being lost by the surface, much of that escaping to space, and a small proportion of the emitted heat finding its way back to the surface. That small proportion is what the hullabaloo is all about. That's why I introduced the topic of myopic scientists.

Given that the proportion getting back to the surface is relatively small, and that the effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is small in relation to its bigger brother (sister, sibling, mustn't appear sexist) water vapour, and given that human-generated  CO2 emissions are tiny compared with those emitted by plants, animals, and yet again the ocean, it's not surprising that many wonder what the fuss is all about. It is surprising that many climate and other scientists haven't yet grasped this question of scale at all. I read recently that some scientists were surprised to discover that it wasn't slightly warmer air which melted sea-ice, but slightly warmer water. Not surprising to me, as I and more enlightened and informed others know full well that air, even moist air, has a heat capacity hundreds of times less than the same volume of water; even less if it's sea-water. See A Question of Scale (2).

Marine biologists examine a tiny part of the Great Barrier Reef, see what they interpret as problems, extrapolate that to the entire reef and declare it doomed. I don't believe it. Glaciologists examine the snouts (lower ends) of a few glaciers, see that they're melting, measure the rate of retreat of the snouts, and ignoring those rates and whether the glaciers may be accumulating mass at a greater rate far above in the mountains, declare that they'll all have melted by Christmas. I exaggerate, of course (sauce for the goose, etc.), it was Christmas 2035.

There are only about 300 glaciers studied in detail out of a conservative estimate of 160,000 worldwide. It's that question of scale again. Scale also crops up in relation to individual glaciers. A paper breathlessly announces an "alarming rate of retreat of the Gangotri glacier" of 22.5 metres/year, and mentions the totally misleading "fact" of how many people in Asia "depend on its meltwater" (it's a perpetuated myth), They don't do the simple arithmetic and disclose that even if their "alarming rate" doubled or tripled, the 35 km glacier would still be there in a thousand years. They don't mention that temperature drops with height, so any retreat will slow down in time. They don't study the accumulation zone at the top of the glacier which dictates what the thickness of ice will be at the snout in 2000-or-so years time; it's too cold up there and it would take time to do, and would likely utterly destroy their blinkered conclusions in any case. They're seemingly unaware that the ice they're studying was formed 2000 years ago, and it's the mass and thickness of that ice which largely dictates what's happening at the snout today. Remember, air has little heat capacity, and it's more likely that less cloud/more sun is the a factor (rarely mentioned in the literature). Perhaps the cooking stoves of gaggles of glaciologists is causing what they've come to measure! See a Cool Look at Glaciers

By now you may have grasped why I'm a sceptic. I'm anti-alarmist, not anti-warmist. The warmists can believe what they like - in my opinion they're looking through binoculars. Do just that, lower them and see how much of the scene before you is captured in their field of view. They and the sub-class of scientists I've discussed here are myopic, and the only correction is scepticism and an understanding of scale, and a sense of proportion.

Stop Blogging and Emailing - you're killing us!

Tempo has an important message for all who use email, edit blogs or forums, or who comment online.

Earth Hour dilemma: When the ‘Like’ button harms the planet 

Green groups around the world are turning to social networking to drive their campaign for Earth Hour tomorow, when lights are turned off for an hour to signal concern about global warming.

But here’s the irony. With every email, every tweet, every appeal watched on YouTube or “liked“ on Facebook, environmentalists are stoking the very problem they want to resolve.

Each time we network, we emit carbon dioxide through the fossil fuels that are burned to power our computers and the servers and databanks that store or relay our message. That poses a small dilemma for the Australian-led campaign for Saturday’s switch-off.

In 130 countries around the world, people are being urged to turn off the lights for one hour at 8:30 p.m. local time as a show of concern about climate change. In emails alone, the typical office worker is responsible for 13.6 tons of CO2 or its equivalent per year, a French government agency for energy efficiency, ADEME, calculated last year.

That figure is based on a French company of 100 people who work 220 days a year and each receive 58 mails a day and send 33 per day, with an average mail size of one megabyte.

That's 91 emails a day for 220 days =  20020 emails a year per person, and it's apparently responsible for a staggering 13.6 tons of CO2, or 679 grams of CO2 per email.

That seemed a lot of CO2 to send or receive a few dozen lines of text. 1 megabyte also seemed rather large for an average email, as I've rarely sent or received one larger than 100kb in size, but we'll let that pass, perhaps French office workers send lots of pictures as attachments.

How much electricity does 679 grams of CO2 represent? The EPA says that a gas-powered station produces 1135 lbs CO2 per MWh (megawatt-hour). One pound is 453.6  grams, so 1 MWh produces 514826.92 grams, therefore I calculate 0.758 KWh per email. That's around 3 desktop computers running for an hour, the equivalent of a one-bar electric fire for 45.5 minutes, to send or receive a one megabyte email?

Every time I come across this type of claim, the maths doesn't support the claim, not just a little bit out, but often whole orders of magnitude.

Feel free to comment, safe in the knowledge you're not fuelling irreversible climate change (but stop breathing out CO2, just in case).

Disconnects in Logic (4) - We don't do Physics

Ever come across the "space mirror"? If not (where were you, on Mars?), let me provide a little illumination. The mirror concept comes in several flavours, from the sublime to the ridiculous single large "sunshade" to trillions (I kid you not) of small sunshades, between the Earth and the life-giving deadly solar rays from our Sun. The intention is to reflect or filter or diffract a portion of the incoming insolation to offset "global warming" caused by life-giving deadly CO2 and other "pollutants" in Earth's atmosphere. Before I continue, I suggest you put down any drink, fragile artefact or large heavy object you might be holding, and swallow anything in your mouth - gum, toothbrushes, pens, thumbs and similar objects excepted - these should be removed. I fear for your safety, dear reader, should you laugh, chortle, guffaw or splutter while reading on.

One of the earliest ideas was for sunshades in orbit around Gaia, a simple and relatively inexpensive concept, one which could be phased over decades, and involve all those countries capable of putting such objects in orbit. International co-operation involving spending large sums is so easy to organise, as we all know. This would cost tens of billions of dollars per year over the coming decades. If you were paying attention, you might have noticed that I referred to this as "relatively inexpensive", which should give you a clue as to the cost of the other schemes. A major disadvantage is of course that roughly half of the orbiting parasols would be on the shady side of Earth at any given time, performing no useful function, and also spoiling things for astronomers beneath. Somewhat disconcertingly (and rather alarmingly) none of the articles I've read mention this problem. Logic disconnect number 1.

Because of the 50% redundancy and consequent additional cost involved, those engineers and scientists who had a well-thumbed copy of "101 things you didn't know about the Solar System" came up with a cunning wheeze to exploit something called a "Lagrange Point". Any object orbiting between the Earth and Sun would have a shorter orbit and greater speed, so would rapidly move away from the Earth, re-visiting in less than a year, if orbiting in contra-rotation (going the other way round) relative to Earth. Johannes Kepler (God rest his soul) discovered this and published his law  in 1619. If the orbiting object is not-too-far from Earth, gravity pulls it back a little, and if the distance is "just right" reduces the orbital speed to keep it stationary relative to the Earth.

Lagrange Points - Source: Montana State University, Department of Physics

L1 is the obviously useful one, the others being most useful if you want to remain a long way from your mother-in-law, though L3 is best to hide from the forces of loranorder. One concept is for a single, large (obviously) "wire mesh" disc at L1, to deflect 1% of the incoming sunlight. Lowell Wood and others have calculated that a screen made of one-millionth of an inch diameter aluminium wire forming a mesh of 1 thousandth spacing would act as a diffraction grating, and "bend" infra-red light away from Earth.

The flies in the ointment are that it must have an area of 1,600,000 sq. km (more than twice the area of Texas) with a diameter of 1427 km, and even with the too-thin-to see wire, with an estimated average mass of 1 gram/sq. metre including "ribs", weigh 1.6 million tons (I'll use the imperial ton,  tonnes are much the same). It's been estimated that using US launch vehicles, the cost of putting anything into Earth orbit is currently $44,000 per kilogram, or $440,000 per ton, and that doesn't include the cost of boosting mirror (parasol or sunshade) parts to the Lagrange point 1.5 m km. further out. Using the space shuttle would cost $175,000 per kilo just to Earth orbit. The mirror would weigh some 1,600,000,000 kilos. Assume the deployment costs reduce tenfold over time and do the sums yourself - I don't think my calculator display is big enough.

Don't employ these guys as fly-swatters because they've missed a few already, as I will show. First, all the diagrams I've seen show the parasol at 90° to the Sun-Earth axis, and the designers and most proponents seem to think it'll stay that way. I have news for them - without giving it a "twist" of one rotation per annum, the parasol would be parallel to the axis in 3 months, having no effect whatever. How it's possible to impart a rotation of exactly 360° per annum to a thinner-than a hair parasol 1427 km across I don't know. Someone suggested a steerable "hub", but hasn't heard of inertia. The parasol might have zero weight but it would have a mass of 1.6 million tons, and it would take some hefty steering jets to shift it. The "ribs" would have to be stiff enough not to flex unduly, adding considerably to the total weight to be lofted from Earth, perhaps doubling it. Brilliant idea, shame about the (lack of) physics. That faint sound is Newton turning in his grave.

There's more (of course there's more!) - the Lagrange points move. The system is not just Sun-Earth, but Sun-Earth-Moon. Objects in space orbit around their centre of mass, not their geometric centres. The centre of mass Sun-Earth is relatively very close to the centre of the sun, but the centre of mass of Earth-Moon (barycentre) is inside the Earth about 1,700 km. below the surface The Earth wobbles slightly therefore, changing the Sun-Earth distance, and also the Moon is either closer to, or further from the Lagrange point as the lunar month progresses. The important L1 and irrelevant L2 are most affected, oscillating by several km a month. In addition, the Earth's orbit ain't a circle but an ellipse, moving closer to, then further away from the parasol, compounding the problem. Our parasol now needs to be moved this way and that constantly to stay close to the elusive Lagrange point L1 and avoid us having to wave goodbye to it, and the trillions of dollars spent getting it up there. Then there's all the inevitable millions of tons of space junk orbiting the Earth at various distances, and the effect of all the CO2 and other gasses emitted during the construction of the parasol, the rockets or shuttles, their fuel, and the burning of that fuel in the atmosphere, none of the aforementioned even hinted at by the rose-tinted spectacle brigade. Unintended consequences, anyone?

The other scheme by astronomer Roger Angel involves 16,000,000,000,000 (16 trillion) pierced transparent 0.6 sq. metre 1-gram discs, forming a cylindrical cloud some 60,000 miles long orbiting in what he calls "L1 orbit". I see several difficulties, quite apart from the obvious, which you should be able to identify for yourselves. First, there's strictly no such thing as "L1 orbit", and even if there was, a 60,000-mile long cylinder oriented towards Earth would leave most of his "flyers" away from that orbit, meaning they'd drift Sunwards or Earthwards, speeding up or slowing down in orbit, and so spreading in all directions. At least he though of the effect of "radiation pressure" which would push the discs earthwards, and introduced a compensating mechanism. The "big parasol" team overlooked this, and also the Solar Wind of atomic particles, which Roger Angel seems to have ignored. Secondly he (Angel) says a 2% reduction in insolation over the entire surface would be "enough to balance the heating of a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere". A reduction of 2% averaged over the surface is around 7 W/m², or twice the IPCC AR4 estimate for a doubling of CO2. That 7 W/m² would be, from what I've absorbed from several years of surfing the net and absorbing concepts of radiative forcing like a solar parasol absorbs sunlight, enough to take the Earth into the next ice-age. Oops. Strong on ideas, short on physics and celestial mechanics, and should read more.

Here's my own "Cool It" plan

I reckon it'd be easier and cheaper just to deposit all that dosh in orbit. A dollar bill has an area of 103.4 sq. cm., and weighs a bit less than a gram, so a trillion of them would cover roughly 10,000,000,000 sq.metres or 10,000 sq. km. and weigh a million tons. Assuming each is oriented at 45° to the Sun on average, the effective area would be around 7071 sq. km. They wouldn't need complicated and expensive rockets, but could be blasted there in "super guns" - quite technically feasible (I know my history). The other advantage is that it doesn't actually cost 1$ to print a 1$ bill. Banknotes are paper and ink, and in some cases include a thin thread of metal (about as thin as the thread of logic in the other schemes). Banks wouldn't have to actually issue the notes as currency.

Each country could contribute a special "Cool It" note, with a picture of the incumbent political leader imprinted thereon. Just think - The US would have "Drill, baby, drill!" Obama waving his birth certificate, the UK would have "The NHS is safe with me" Cameron, Australia could have "No carbon tax" Gillard with a long nose, and Russia would have "It's me again!" Putin. I'm certain both democrats and republicans (though maybe not in equal numbers) would like to see Obama blasted into orbit, and citizens of other countries would be happy to contribute to see their beloved leaders actually doing something useful for a change. A side-advantage is that as the notes drift out of orbit they'd never fall fast enough to burn up, would float to the surface, and still be reflecting sunlight, increasing the albedo. Polar explorers would never run short of toilet paper... the list just goes on. Just think of all the thousands of "green-back" jobs Obama could point to as the election draws nigh. The Pentagon would be allocated funds to develop a "super gun" for the army, and the other services would be green with envy.

There's a Nobel Prize, or at least "Climate Crusader of the Year" in this for me, I'm sure. I may even get my handsome visage (He lies - Ed.) on a special edition banknote and join the political elite in orbit. I've changed my mind - geo-engineering is FUN!

Could Air Pollution Be Making Us Fat? - more "scientific" nonsense

Discovery News asks breathlessly (how appropriate!), and in all seriousness "Could Air Pollution Be Making Us Fat?" - read the original, it's hilarious.

A hypothesis proposes that rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere may be contributing to obesity.

Breathing in extra carbon dioxide makes our blood more acidic.

Lowered pH in the brain makes appetite-related neurons fire more frequently.

Obesity is not as simple as many people think.

If you think that's enough for a chuckle, read this

Steadily rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be affecting brain chemistry, increasing appetite and contributing to the obesity epidemic, according to a new hypothesis, which still awaits rigorous testing and inevitable debate.

The idea proposes that breathing in extra CO2 makes blood more acidic, which in turn causes neurons that regulate appetite, sleep and metabolism to fire more frequently. As a result, we might be eating more, sleeping less and gaining more weight, partly as a result of the air we breathe.

So "breathing in extra CO2 makes blood more acidic" does it? How does blood become "more acidic" when it's alkaline, with a typical pH of 7.41 for arterial blood (7.0 is "neutral, lower values are "acidic")? That "extra CO2" is of course included in the 0.039% or 390 parts-per-million of CO2 that's in the air we breathe.

Reality check: an adult male's lung capacity is between 4 and 6 litres, the greater the bigger and fitter the individual is. When breathing normally, that is when sitting or standing still, the amount of air left in the lungs, and not exhaled is between 1.8 and 3.4 litres, roughly a third to half of lung capacity. That remaining air contains about 4% CO2, or 100 times the concentration breathed in. We're being asked to accept that the tiny annual increment in the 0.039% of atmospheric CO2 is going to make blood more acidic, when each intake of breath starts with residual air in the lungs containing 4%? I have a mental list of adjectives for this kind of "research", but I'll keep them to myself, and stick with the moderate "bullshit". The Discovery News author wonders (as she might well do) -

It's still far from clear whether the amount of CO2 we are currently exposed to is enough to make a difference, or whether exposure at specific times in development make more or less of a difference.

No, it's definitely not "far from clear" - simple maths, a scientific education (or an inquiring and sceptical mind), and Google is all you need to show that it can't "make a difference". It's as valid an hypothesis as claiming that wearing wet socks will increase your chance of drowning, due to the "additional water" increasing the level of water in the swimming pool (or the ocean - even more ridiculous).

I might be "eating more, sleeping less and gaining more weight", partly as a result of the utter and total crap I find daily on the 'net. I do find I'm reading Discovery News less, and drinking more though, so there is an upside. Can someone develop a "bullshit filter" for the 'net? They'd make more money than Bill Gates made in his lifetime. I don't know of an app. for that, though I may be wrong, which is an acknowledgement of possible error many scientists won't make.

I refuse to even begin to skewer the nonsense about higher blood acidity making people eat more. I have my standards, you know. I also have a question of my own - could "rising levels of CO2 in the atmosphere" be making some of us stupid? Please note, Dear Reader, I don't include you and I in that "us" of course, but you get the idea.

Must remember to add "CO2 makes you fat" to the list.

Dr. Richard Lindzen at the House of Commons

His simple eloquence encapsulates much of my own thinking, so instead of struggling to write my own summary of the thin and one-sided so-called arguments of the "team" and their fawning supporters, I've chosen to quote from his presentation to a public meeting at the House of Commons on 22nd. February. A pdf of his slides is available on Watts Up With That. Here's his well-crafted introduction to his talk.

I wish to thank the Campaign to Repeal the Climate Change Act for the opportunity to present my views on the issue of climate change – or as it was once referred to: global warming. Stated briefly, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about.

It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is.

It is not about whether CO₂ is increasing: it clearly is.

It is not about whether the increase in CO₂ , by itself, will lead to some warming: it should.

The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO₂ can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO₂ will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest.

Then he presents with devastating lucidity, point by point, the "warmist" case, and his rebuttal of those points, details some of the background science and finishes with

Perhaps we should stop accepting the term, ‘skeptic.’ Skepticism implies doubts about a plausible proposition. Current global warming alarm hardly represents a plausible proposition. Twenty years of repetition and escalation of claims does not make it more plausible. Quite the contrary, the failure to improve the case over 20 years makes the case even less plausible as does the evidence from climategate and other instances of overt cheating.

In the meantime, while I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age. 

A two-part video of his presentation is available on Climate Realists - well worth taking the time to see the whole thing.

Bill McKibben - 100% wetter than he was forty years ago

I generally pay little attention to Bill McKibben's seemingly daily rants; however, he seems to have excelled himself in pseudo-facts and self-contradictory logic in the last couple of days. Mckibben was invited to testify before the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee in Vermont on Tuesday (7th. Feb. 2012). Among his many exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims outlined here was this gem:

From the beginning to the end of his testimony, McKibben voiced his frustration with the lack of action out of Washington DC, capital of the country that historically has contributed one third of the greenhouse gases now in the atmosphere.

Really? Silly me thought it was around one third of what was emitted into the atmosphere. Bill seems to have difficulty getting his (huge) head around even the basics. After his usual stuff about "climate deterioration"  and the wonderful "Everything frozen on earth is melting" (did you shut the freezer door dear?) comes this:

“Most remarkable, and certainly for Vermont most dangerous, are changes in hydrology. Warm air holds more water vapor than cold. What that means is that with this one-degree increase in temperature [that has occurred so far], the atmosphere is about 4% wetter than it was forty years ago. That is a staggeringly large change in a basic physical parameter, one that we assume has held basically steady for ten thousand years. What it does is load the dice for two things: drought and flood. We get more evaporation in arid areas. The flip side of this is that once that water vapor has evaporated into the atmosphere, it’s going to come down. This means that we load the dice again for deluge and downpour and flood, and we have seen it all over the world.”

Magic stuff, water - it can be in two places at once, both in the atmosphere as increased water vapour, and falling as rain. I really like that "one that we assume has held basically steady for ten thousand years" bit - who is "we", and how would "we" know that? "We get more evaporation in arid areas" - let's see, water vapour content in the air rises, which means that more evaporates from the ground in "arid" areas? I think he must mean less - it's "settled science", Bill.

"The flip side of this is that once that water vapor has evaporated into the atmosphere, it’s going to come down" - see? Two places at once - told you so. "This means that we load the dice again for deluge and downpour and flood, and we have seen it all over the world" - does that include your "arid areas" Bill? Of course that extra water vapour has to form clouds (which are water droplets, not vapour) before it becomes "deluge and downpour and flood", so it must be in three places at once. There must have been a significant corresponding increase in cloud, then, eh Bill? Even Wikipedia reckons that's where rain comes from. The only increase in cloudiness is in Bill's brain.

Just a mo - Bill also witters on elsewhere about feet or yards or metres (or was it tens of those units? I forget- I need to forget) of sea level rise "in the pipeline". The XL pipeline, is it Bill? (Sorry -couldn't resist that little dig. Bill is resisting the big dig). Where does that "4% wetter" come from - someone leave the tap on? (Note my kitchen theme today - I'm warming to it) I read somewhere once, could have been the back of a cereal packet (he won't leave the kitchen out of it - Ed.) that the oceans covered a bit more than two-thirds of the Earth's surface, and were the source of most of the water in the atmosphere. Oh - I forgot Bill's "arid areas". Must be a lot of water in them "arid areas" to affect rainfall in the "non-arid areas".

Sorry - I've lost the thread - I found myself thinking of a foaming pint in a cosy hostelry with a real "killer-coal" fire not ten minutes walk away. That barmaid, the one with the tight black skirt... I  never get a cloudy pint from her. Ahem! Back to the kitchen once more. Where was I - oh yes - the source of all that "extra" water must be the oceans (don't forget the "arid areas" - Ed.). So there must be less water in the oceans, right? No - on 350,org Bill says that "Sea levels have begun to rise, and scientists warn that they could go up as much as several meters this century". "Begun to rise" - I should do some research, and find out when that "begun" began. I could even make it my special subject - who knows - even start a blog with graphs and stuff!

UPDATE 8th Feb 2012 2310

Just in from the scientific literture, and not from the "Gospel according to Bill McKibben":

Surface Water Vapor Pressure and Temperature Trends in North America during 1948-2010
V. Isaac and W. A. van Wijngaarden
Journal of Climate 2012

Abstract:

Over 1/4 billion hourly values of temperature and relative humidity observed at 309 stations located across North America during 1948-2010 were studied. The water vapor pressure was determined and seasonal averages were computed. Data were first examined for inhomogeneities using a statistical test to determine whether the data was fit better to a straight line or a straight line plus an abrupt step which may arise from changes in instruments and/or procedure. Trends were then found for data not having discontinuities. Statistically significant warming trends affecting the Midwestern U.S., Canadian prairies and the western Arctic are evident in winter and to a lesser extent in spring while statistically significant increases in water vapor pressure occur primarily in summer for some stations in the eastern half of the U.S. The temperature (water vapor pressure) trends averaged over all stations were 0.30 (0.07), 0.24 (0.06), 0.13 (0.11), 0.11 (0.07) C/decade (hPa/decade) in the winter, spring, summer and autumn seasons, respectively. The averages of these seasonal trends are 0.20 C/decade and 0.07 hPa/decade which correspond to a specific humidity increase of 0.04 g/kg per decade and a relative humidity reduction of 0.5%/decade.

A "specific humidity increase of 0.04 g/kg per decade" - that's 40 milligrams per kilogram or 0.004% per decade. Those "arid areas" are sure giving up their water fast.

A Question of Scale

In considering physical systems I find it essential to have a concept of the relative size of things and quantities. For example, the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration I referred to in my last (and first) post is usually quoted in parts per million (ppm) - actually measured by volume, so more accurately ppmv. Strictly, ppm refers to concentration by weight. The currently accepted concentration is 390 ppmv, which sounds a lot, until it's expressed as a percentage; 0.039% or just under four-hundredths of one percent. As a fraction it's 1/2564.

However, the atmosphere is very large, and that 0.039% represents about 2,500 gigatonnes (billion tonnes) of CO2. That seems pretty big, until it's compared with CO2 dissolved in the world's oceans - about 50 times as much, carbon in the biosphere (all living things, including bacteria and plants) - several hundred times as much, and in carbonate rocks in the earth's crust - several thousand times as much. For comparison, the amount of CO2 emitted annually as a result of mankind's activities is estimated to be about 32 gigatonnes.

So is that 0.039% important, or at all significant? Of course it is - the question though, is how significant. Despite contrary assertions, there is strong disagreement about the relative importance of that (increasing) amount on Earth's climate and ecology. Someone once said "There's what we know about the climate, there's what we don't know about the climate, and there's what we don't know we don't know about the climate. Of these three, the last is by far the largest". I would suggest that applies to every area of scientific theory and research, though perhaps in different proportions.