Australian Senator Responded 1

Response to Senator Fielding's questions about the climate change science (PDF - 91 KB)

Re. response to 3 questions. Q1

Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 12:15 PM GMT [Environmental Science]

A sceptic's point of view.

Question 1: Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period?

Correct answer - yes.

If so, why did the temperature not increase;

Correct answer - reduced cloud due to declining TSI allowed IR transmission to space to increase.

how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?

Correct answer - humans are evil. Their existence is an offence to nature. Warming is nature's way of telling us humans are bad.
Of course the cup can also be viewed half full. CO2 benefits biomass (nature). That means increasing crop yields, expanding healthier forests and it offsets cooling.
It insignificantly affects climate, less insignificantly as the climate cools.
Human responsibility for variations in climate by gas emissions cannot be proved even after the best minds with tens of billions in funding over 20 years have done their utmost. It is assumed by some that additional CO2 is significant despite the absence of evidence. This false assumption is the reason for the weakness of models.

When climate change scientists talk about global warming they mean warming of the climate system as a whole, which includes the atmosphere, the oceans, and the cryosphere (ice, snow and frozen ground). (WAFFLE)

The observational evidence clearly indicates that the climate system has continued to warm since 1998. During this period ocean heat content has risen, ice and snow have continued to melt, and (WAFFLE)
there has been no material trend in global air temperatures.

So there has been an immaterial trend down? The AGW alarmism took off with Hansen's projection based on "no material trend" (~10 years' data). No material trend says the air has stopped warming. How can that be? If oceans are still warming (they aren't) and ice extent is still reducing (it isn't) how is air NOT warming? Unknown natural factors? So the alarmism is based on science that is based on unknown factors? Yes. But, solar activity hit bottom and solar irradiance trended down since 2003. But that is only sunlight. And correlation is not causation. But it is significant because CO2 just kept right on increasing.

Air temperatures

When changes in surface air temperature are considered, it is important to note that at time scales of around a decade, natural variability can mask the atmospheric warming trend caused by the increasing concentration of greenhouse gases. For example, global average surface temperatures clearly increased between 1975 and 2008 but some shorter periods, such as 1981-1989, showed no warming.

Thus CO2 is overwhelmed by "other factors". More evidence that CO2 is insignificant. CO2 influence increases with cooling, decreases with warming so it slightly helps reduce the severity of cooling at a cost of an insignificant addition to warming. The smallness of this influence is adequately demonstrated in the range of temperature variation being both large and small even on a year to year basis despite CO2's consistently increasing volume.

Such behaviour is consistent with the outputs of climate models such as those assessed by the IPCC (see below for more details).

Any behaviour is consistent with the combined outputs of climate models. With a span increasingly increasing, e.g. from 0.4 to 0.8°C in 10 years, a large comet collision and a direct hit from a solar flare is likely embraced in a projection to 2200.

Regarding the 1998-2008 period, the year 1998 was unusually warm due to a strong El Nino event. We note that Question 1 uses 1998 as the beginning year for its trend analysis. So, in addition to the period of analysis being too short to detect underlying trends, the use of a highly unusual year to begin the trend analysis will also give misleading results. This is a simple feature of statistics. Furthermore, globally 13 of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995.

The El Nino warming is balanced by the La Nina cooling (ENSO). It seems strange that this argument is used to dismiss the argument against AGW when the IPCC use of a highly unusual year to begin their trend (~1945) also gives misleading results to justify alarming claims of AGW. However, El Nino events are significant in that their influence demonstrates the overwhelming influence of ocean mood, ENSO being a single aspect. And reinforces the argument that oceans dominate climate variation.

In terms of the climate system as a whole, only about five percent of the warming since 1960 has taken place in the air.

Opinion without evidence.

Ocean heat content

Most of warming since 1960 (about 85 percent) has happened in the oceans.
(remembering the influence of oceans on air demonstrated in 1998.)
Thus, in terms of a single indicator of global warming, change in ocean heat content is the most appropriate.

The change in ocean heat content since 1960 is shown in the figure below. Note the significant warming trend since 1998.

Diagrams showing the rise in ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level over 35 years

The greater the smoothing factor, the more it conceals. The data before 2002 and after 2003 should be referred to separately. The reason for this is that the change in instrumentation produced a spike in the record. The matter is not yet resolved. When it is, it is very likely there will be no abrupt increase in temperature.
anomalous-spike-in-ocean-heat-content

(Image was added)

An analysis of a 42-year record of change in ocean heat content (from 1962 to 2003) shows that over half of the total increase during that period occurred in the last 10 years of the period (1993-2003). That is, the rate of change of ocean heat content has risen sharply over the past 15 years. So, not only is the heat content of the oceans increasing, it is increasing faster.


"it is increasing faster" dependent on the anomalous spike.
Looking at the trend, oceans cooled to 1970 then warmed. How can oceans cool while CO2 was increasingly increasing? Simple, CO2 is insignificant. Since 2003 TSI went down. Air stopped warming and then in 2006 the oceans (both currently cooling). The ocean lag was likely due to decreasing atmospheric cloud offsetting the TSI reduction. Sunlight is the main cause of evaporation that produces cloud.

(3 images were added)

Ozone (that blocks UV) recovery was noticed in 2006. Likely due to decreasing stratospheric H2O.

The variations in the temperature ranges attest to the insignificance of "greenhouse" gases other than H2O. The absence of a signature in the tropical troposphere is strong supportive evidence of the minimal influence of ALL additional greenhouse gases.
See: GHG sig. no show

The following from: Dr.Weinstein ScD
"The computational models that show that the increasing CO2 and CH4 cause most of the present global warming all require that the temperature of the Stratosphere drops while the lower atmosphere and ground heat up. It appears from the above figures that the volcanic activity clearly caused the temperature to spike up in the Stratosphere, and that these spikes were immediately followed by a drop to a new nearly constant level in the temperature. It is clear from the Mauna Loa CO2 data (www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) that the input of CO2 (or CH4) from the volcanoes, did not significantly increase the background level of this gas, and thus, this cannot be the cause of the drop in the Stratosphere temperature. The ramp up of atmospheric CO2 also cannot explain the step down then level changes in high altitude temperature. Since the surface temperature rise is supposed to be related to the Stratosphere temperature drop, and since a significant surface rise above the 1940 temperature level did not occur until the early 1980’s, it may be that the combination of the two (or more) volcanoes, along with Solar variability and variations in ocean currents (i.e., PDO) may explain the major causes of recent surface temperature rises to about 2002. In fact, the average Earth temperature stopped rising after 2002, and has been dropping for the last few years!"

As to increasing heat content, Dr. Pielke Snr makes a strong argument against both that and ocean storage of heat. Here. And William DiPuccio. Here.
It is technical but the zeroes are in plain numbers.

Ice, snow and frozen ground

Since 1998 there has been continued decline in Arctic sea ice, reduction in the area of snow and frozen ground, melting of glaciers and melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. There has also been a small increase in the area of Antarctic sea ice, although it is not known whether the amount of Antarctic sea ice has changed because there are no data on ice thickness.

NASA. Antarctic sea ice extent trended up according to satellite data. Increasing extent is a strong indication of thickening, 1st year ice becoming 2nd year, becoming 3rd year and so on. Thickness is irrelevant to albedo that diminishes oceans' receipt of solar output. 1% per decade increase would equal Arctic sea ice ~10% per decade. Of course it is hard to say whether a 10% increase in Arctic sea ice is significant because ... etcetera.
Earth Observatory

Overall the amount of ice, snow and frozen ground has declined. (Since the Little Ice Age went into retreat.) A small amount of ice or snow melt corresponds to a large amount of heat, since additional (latent) heat must be added to cause the melt itself, even without a temperature rise.

It is commonly asserted that the temperature rise since the mid 1700s has been ~0.5°C per century, What factors driving this increase stopped and allowed CO2 to almost exactly replicate the warming in the years since? I.e. Warming from 1910 (slow CO2 increase) if anything rises faster than warming from 1945 (rapid CO2 increase).

About five percent of the warming since 1960 has been in the form of melting ice, snow and frozen ground. The remaining five percent of the warming since 1960 has gone into the land.
Eureka. It's hiding in the land. Except land doesn't stay warm for long, up to 6 weeks judging by the length of time between summer solstice and the warmest days. But then that is obviously the Sun and we must discount the solar influence.

The basis of the IPCC assessment

The argument presented in Q1 above is not new and has been thoroughly refuted by a very wide range of observations (name a few please) (and surely the following are mere opinions that are)(incestuously) peer-reviewed scientific literature and summarised in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes (SPM page 5) that reported in the

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. (emphasis added)

Looking at the "bible like" treatment of the assessments,

Warming of the climate system is unequivocally not due to human emissions, as is evident from total absence of observational evidence. Increases in average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level that have now reversed cannot be caused by human additions to an insignificant climate compononent whose sum additions cause no climate effect that is detectable.

Climate variation can and has been predicted based on TSI and ENSO variation. (See: here) and climate variation has been linked to the ENSO. (See: here) It can't and has never been predicted using CO2 as a metric.

Climate warming was expected at the rate of ~0.5 deg C as a response to LIA cooling. Last century was typical. This century may have seen the peak after which it is all downhill unless we are particularly fortunate and the climate stabilises. That is unlikely as the destruction of forests continues.

The response to the response will continue withe Q2.

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