I’ve received a few bits and pieces on global warming from readers of this blog:
Cathy sent me a link to an article explaining that the European Commission is set to roll out the first phase of a major pan-European marketing campaign to raise awareness of climate change:
http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=ViewNewsArticle&newsID=595977
Luke recommends http://www.theozonehole.com/climate.htm for everyone still wondering about the connection between ozone and global warming following the note from Helen Mahr, in particular:
"Ozone’s impact on climate consists primarily of changes in temperature. The more ozone in a given parcel of air, the more heat it retains. Ozone generates heat in the stratosphere, both by absorbing the sun’s ultraviolet radiation and by absorbing upwelling infrared radiation from the lower atmosphere (troposphere). Consequently, decreased ozone in the stratosphere results in lower temperatures. Observations show that over recent decades, the mid to upper stratosphere (from 30 to 50 km above the Earth’s surface) has cooled by 1° to 6° C (2° to 11° F). This stratospheric cooling has taken place at the same time that greenhouse gas amounts in the lower atmosphere (troposphere) have risen."
Warwick Hughes wrote: I have been very impressed with the breaking work of E-G Beck drawing attention to many published refs to high CO2 levels since 1820 and notably in WWII years. I have a Blog post on that at:
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=64#more-64
There is a 10 page summary pdf file there. It will be fascinating to see if further support can be found for Beck's conclusions. Beck's detailing of the depth and quality of work which found these early high CO2 numbers supports the conclusions of Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski in his ice core research where he draws attention to the suppression of inconvenient high readings to fit the IPCC line.
George McCallum has sent me a beautiful picture of sunset over mountains and glacier in Isfjorden, Spitzbergen, with the note that Spitsbergen or Svalbard as it is also known, recorded one of the warmest summers on record this year. Isfjorden is just 900km from the North pole.
For beautiful pictures visit www.whalephoto.com
Jen, how can you say we have an ongoing trend of warming when the mean Earth temperature has not changed since 1998 (the warmest year of this present warming cycle). A study of the past century will show you that the late 1920's and early 1930's were significantly warmer than today- A period that was followed by a real cooling trend in the 40's.
We are still not at the average gloal temperature of the last 3000 yrs. (not my opinion but actual data).
To say that 85% of Autstrailians are convinced that GW is more important than Iraq is virtually meanngless since the media brainwashing has been going on for 15 years. I would wager that 85% of the climatologists do not hold the same opinion.
As a Paleoclimatologist, I contend that the temperature of the Earth has always been forced by activities of the Sun, and I suspect it will continue to be the primary driver of temperature.
Do not forget that the effect of CO2 in the atmosphere is logarithmic, not aritmatic, and acording to atmospheric experts, a doubling of CO2 (to nearly 600ppm) would only raise the mean earth temp between .06, and .o8 degrees C (depending on cloud cover and other factors)
Thank you for this blog...it has a wide range of opinion which is always good for the understanding of science.
BTW the southern hemishere is presently having the coldest winter in 100 yrs with snow in Buenos Aries. (a nearly unheard of event.)
Toby:
"...He also points out that the AGW advocates are happy to accept statistaical averaging with sea levels but not with temp in the atmosphere..."
I have no idea what you are going on about here. If AGW people discount statistical averaging then what's with the graphs showing the increases global mean surface temperatures?
Toby:
Your quote:
The overall trend discerned from the tide gauge data, according to Wolfgang Scherer, Director of Australia's National Tidal Facility, remains flat. "One definitive statement we can make," states Scherer, "is that there is no indication based on observations that sea level rise is accelerating."
But what about the context:
Dr Scherer said the NTF results fitted broadly with those produced by other studies around the world. And he said he was confident that the latest global climate assessment from the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due for release next year, would reflect these findings.
Dr Scherer said although there was mounting evidence that the oceans were getting warmer down to a considerable depth, it did not necessarily mean that any rise in sea levels that resulted from expanding waters had to accelerate. The rise could be just linear in nature.
So, in 2000, Scherer said that he found that sea levels were rising and were in line with IPCC predictions. He just said the rise was linear and not accelerating.
Regarding rising sea levels, according to one expert, it might happen faster than we can react. In fact, he's worried that thousands of people will drown, which means that the water levels rise faster than people can walk to higher ground.
"PwC said it had attempted to put a price on slowing the growth in carbon emissions because it was impossible to calculate the cost of climate change. 'If sea levels rise and a lot of people in Bangladesh drown do you calculate the loss of their lifetime earnings, even though they will be lower than for the UK? It is a difficult moral question,' Mr Hawksworth said."
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1772355.ece
Study at:
http://www.pwc.com/servlet/pwcPrintPreview?LNLoc=/extweb/pwcpublications.nsf/docid/dfb54c8aad6742db852571f5006dd532
Do you want to know why Al Gore is trying to point fingers on global warming causes?
http://gunsnbutter.typepad.com/gunsnbutter/2006/09/scientists_al_g.html#comments
"Ninety-eight percent of global warming can be attributed solely to the existence of Al Gore," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist Dhananjay Wilson. Global temperatures really began to take off in 1948 -- the year Al Gore was born."
Al Gore is trying to deflect blame from himself.
Oh dear - seems Eli Rabett has taken a baseball bat to the E G Beck work. Not pretty.
http://rabett.blogspot.com/ (see amateur night ! )
Gavin -if it's good stuff - it behoves him to get it published ! Strangely that when we measure CO2 at Cape Grim and other places we get this nice fine saw-toothed smooth lineasr increase over time yet these guys are saying you can have wild swings in decades - find it VERY hard to believe. So run it past the experts and get published or perish in blog anonymity.
It seems to me the contribution from Warwick Hughes saying we had high CO2 levels around wartime based on the work E G Beck has escaped debate.
It would be reasonable enough to assume a worse case then. Is it not highly probable we had a lot of extra combustion going on through those war years?
Has any one else come up with similar conclusions other than Beck that reinforces Warwick’s view?
Thank you Luke. If sea levels have risen 6.6mm per year that amounts to only 3 years to reach more than the sea around Australia has risen....so what happened to the other years of ocean rise since 'isle of the dead' mark?
If you look at http://www.pacificislands.cc/issue/2002/02/01/is-tuvalu-really-sinking it pours a lot of cold water on tuvalu sea level rises.
"Well, rather than rely on Brown's "sense" of sea level rise, let's check the instruments. As it turns out, estimates of globally averaged sea level rise in the 20th century are irrelevant since Tuvalu's local sea level change is very different from the globally averaged change. There are three estimates of sea level changes for Tuvalu. The first is a satellite record showing that the sea level has actually fallen four inches around Tuvalu since 1993 when the hundred-million dollar international TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite project record began. Second comes from the modern instruments recording tide gauge data since 1978. There the record for Tuvalu shows ups and downs of many inches over periods of years. For example, the strong El Nino of 1997-98 caused the sea level surrounding Tuvalu to drop just over one foot. The El Nino Southern Oscillation is a natural - as opposed to man-made -future of the Pacific Ocean, as areas of the Pacific periodically warm then cool every few years, causing significant sea level rises and falls every few years in step with the co-oscillations of the ocean and atmosphere. The overall trend discerned from the tide gauge data, according to Wolfgang Scherer, Director of Australia's National Tidal Facility, remains flat. "One definitive statement we can make," states Scherer, "is that there is no indication based on observations that sea level rise is accelerating." Finally, there is the new estimate by scientists at the Centre Nationale d¹Etudes Spatiales who also find that between 1955 and 1996 the sea level surrounding Tuvalu dropped four inches.
All these measurements show that Tuvalu has suffered, at worst, no sea level rise. So much for Brown's sense of sea level trends for Tuvalu."
So on the one hand you tell me sea levels have risen 6.6 mm per year....and yet it would appear the opposite may even have happened.
I do not know much about oceans, i know temp influences the expansion of water and can cause local sea level rises, so that if you are right and seas have risen 6.6mm per year it does not equate to a need to see a rise of the same proportions around Australia. But the max 16 cm rise shown at Port Arthur in teh last 160 years, that is within expectations of sea level rises around Australia (from some of Simon's links) is a huge difference to 6.6mm a year that you mention! Why are we not seeing these forecasted catastrophic sea rises?
It appears the infamous John Daly has been up to his old tricks again by demonstrating logicaly(to a layman like myself) that satellite data has an error factor greater than the perceived change it is finding +/-1.2m on any individual reading, requiring statistical averaging to make use of the data. He also points out that the AGW advocates are happy to accept statistaical averaging with sea levels but not with temp in the atmosphere. He rightly seems to be pointing out you cant have it both ways!
http://john-daly.com/altimetry/topex.htm
Sorry but I am not concvinced about Tuvalu and still feel it is a great example of another beat up by AGW to try to prove their case.
They tell us Hurricane activity in the USA have increased dramatically....according to
http://www.nhc.noda.gov/pastdec.shtml this is not the case at all.
I came across this blog after listening to Jennifer on counterpoint so I apologise for bringing up things you feel are 'done and dusted', so I will not mention Bellamy, other than to state he has a similar view to Jen and many others that CO2 rises are a consequences of temp increases not the opposite.
The link between CO2 and temp increases is debatable as Jen has pointed out...as has William Kininmouth (former head of National Climate Centre) who recently wrote in the Australian (12 sept)that " 66% of the greenhouse effect of co2 is caused by the first 50ppm of co2.....and overall co2 is a relatively minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, which is dominated by the varying water vapour and clouds of atmosphere. See ...
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
for how significant water vapour actually is and how conveniently it is ignored! (there are many more links easily found)
Also check it out for how minor a contribution humans actually make to this co2.
Sorry still not convinced!
Thank you Luke. If sea levels have risen 6.6mm per year that amounts to only 3 years to reach more than the sea around Australia has risen....so what happened to the other years of ocean rise since 'isle of the dead' mark?
If you look at http://www.pacificislands.cc/issue/2002/02/01/is-tuvalu-really-sinking it pours a lot of cold water on tuvalu sea level rises.
"Well, rather than rely on Brown's "sense" of sea level rise, let's check the instruments. As it turns out, estimates of globally averaged sea level rise in the 20th century are irrelevant since Tuvalu's local sea level change is very different from the globally averaged change. There are three estimates of sea level changes for Tuvalu. The first is a satellite record showing that the sea level has actually fallen four inches around Tuvalu since 1993 when the hundred-million dollar international TOPEX/POSEIDON satellite project record began. Second comes from the modern instruments recording tide gauge data since 1978. There the record for Tuvalu shows ups and downs of many inches over periods of years. For example, the strong El Nino of 1997-98 caused the sea level surrounding Tuvalu to drop just over one foot. The El Nino Southern Oscillation is a natural - as opposed to man-made -future of the Pacific Ocean, as areas of the Pacific periodically warm then cool every few years, causing significant sea level rises and falls every few years in step with the co-oscillations of the ocean and atmosphere. The overall trend discerned from the tide gauge data, according to Wolfgang Scherer, Director of Australia's National Tidal Facility, remains flat. "One definitive statement we can make," states Scherer, "is that there is no indication based on observations that sea level rise is accelerating." Finally, there is the new estimate by scientists at the Centre Nationale d¹Etudes Spatiales who also find that between 1955 and 1996 the sea level surrounding Tuvalu dropped four inches.
All these measurements show that Tuvalu has suffered, at worst, no sea level rise. So much for Brown's sense of sea level trends for Tuvalu."
So on the one hand you tell me sea levels have risen 6.6 mm per year....and yet it would appear the opposite may even have happened.
I do not know much about oceans, i know temp influences the expansion of water and can cause local sea level rises, so that if you are right and seas have risen 6.6mm per year it does not equate to a need to see a rise of the same proportions around Australia. But the max 16 cm rise shown at Port Arthur in teh last 160 years, that is within expectations of sea level rises around Australia (from some of Simon's links) is a huge difference to 6.6mm a year that you mention! Why are we not seeing these forecasted catastrophic sea rises?
It appears the infamous John Daly has been up to his old tricks again by demonstrating logicaly(to a layman like myself) that satellite data has an error factor greater than the perceived change it is finding +/-1.2m on any individual reading, requiring statistical averaging to make use of the data. He also points out that the AGW advocates are happy to accept statistaical averaging with sea levels but not with temp in the atmosphere. He rightly seems to be pointing out you cant have it both ways!
http://john-daly.com/altimetry/topex.htm
Sorry but I am not concvinced about Tuvalu and still feel it is a great example of another beat up by AGW to try to prove their case.
They tell us Hurricane activity in the USA have increased dramatically....according to
http://www.nhc.noda.gov/pastdec.shtml this is not the case at all.
I came across this blog after listening to Jennifer on counterpoint so I apologise for bringing up things you feel are 'done and dusted', so I will not mention Bellamy, other than to state he has a similar view to Jen and many others that CO2 rises are a consequences of temp increases not the opposite.
The link between CO2 and temp increases is debatable as Jen has pointed out...as has William Kininmouth (former head of National Climate Centre) who recently wrote in the Australian (12 sept)that " 66% of the greenhouse effect of co2 is caused by the first 50ppm of co2.....and overall co2 is a relatively minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, which is dominated by the varying water vapour and clouds of atmosphere. See ...
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
for how significant water vapour actually is and how conveniently it is ignored! (there are many more links easily found)
Also check it out for how minor a contribution humans actually make to this co2.
Sorry still not convinced!