Three scientists walk into a hearing room ...
Seriously. Yesterday I was on Capitol Hill talking about global warming with Richard Muller of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project and Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The Congressional briefing was organized by Congressmen Ed Markey (D-MA) and Henry Waxman (D-CA), who authored the American Clean Energy and Security Act which passed the House in June 2009 and would have set up a carbon market to address climate change had the Senate followed suit. (A quick note: this was a briefing, not a hearing, because the organizers, being in the minority party, cannot unilaterally convene a hearing, which, presumably in this case, the majority party wanted no part of.)
Given the deadlock in D.C. and a keen sense that the legislative body seems hell-bent on dismantling policies to address climate change rather than addressing the problem, I'm not sure why the briefing was held. Perhaps it was part of a tactical retreat designed to slow the invading denier-army -- taking advantage of the release of the BEST results to put some of the latest climate stuff on the record -- and to maybe show the international community we're still relevant in advance of the upcoming climate talks in Durban.
At any rate, here's a brief synopsis of what was said.
In their opening remarks Markey and Waxman both railed against their anti-science, obstructionist colleagues who not only refuse to consider climate legislation but continue to deny the science. Then we scientists spoke.
Richard Muller focused on the results of his recent, well-publicized BEST study: namely, that the skeptics' claims of bias in previous analyses of global surface temperature are unfounded.
Through an independent analysis of data from 39,000 temperature stations, the BEST project reproduced previously derived temperature trends even after accounting for potential biases due to:
Their conclusion [pdf]? Over the past 50 years land-surface temperatures have increased by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, essentially the same increase calculated by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), and the UK Met Office Hadley Center and the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (HadCRU), and reported by the IPCC.
There's little doubt that much of the hubbub over the BEST project arises from Muller's identification as a "skeptic" and the study's partial funding by the right-leaning Koch Foundation. In person Muller portrayed a more ambivalent view about skepticism and his status as a card-carrying skeptic, referring to himself as someone "considered a skeptic by the skeptics." Averring that there's a difference between skeptics (good) and deniers (bad), he identifies as a skeptic on climate science since all scientists are skeptics. Or, more accurately, he was a global-warming skeptic until his own study confirmed what others had found before him.
I have to say the philosophical, what-is-a-skeptic discussion rankled. He seemed to imply that all scientists should have been skeptics like him before his study, and that he's the only one to have taken skeptics' criticisms seriously and actually investigated their claims. In fact Muller was not the first to assess the potential biases to the temperature record (see for example here, here [pdf], here and here). But like previous investigators into such issues raised by skeptics, Muller found the phenomena to be non-issues. Did those other scientists violate some sacred principle of scientific skepticism by accepting their own exhaustive studies' results without having waited for Muller to come along with his study? Certainly not.
Nevertheless, Muller's contribution adds a welcome and independent piece of evidence on global warming, evidence that has been accumulating over many decades of scientific study. It's also probably what got us to DC.
Ben Santer has spent much of his scientific career working on climate change attribution -- trying to identify what causes or drives climate change in general and what has caused the last 50 years or so of the global warming in particular. His presentation was a tour de force.
Santer described how he et al use a combination of global climate data and climate model simulations to "tease out the effects of natural and human influences" on climate change. They do this by looking for telltale patterns, or "fingerprints," within the spatial and temporal variation of the simulations to identify what's behind the change.
For example, of all the potential drivers of global warming, greenhouse gases, because they trap heat in the lower atmosphere, uniquely cause the lower atmosphere to warm and the upper atmosphere to cool -- this is the greenhouse gas fingerprint. Warming due to an uptick in solar output, by contrast, leads to warming of the entire atmospheric column. As it turns out, the lower atmosphere has warmed and the upper atmosphere has cooled. Ergo, Santer argues, solar forcing cannot be a major factor in the current warming. Similarly, concurrent patterns of warming in all the major ocean basins of the world as well as the atmosphere would seem to eliminate the ocean as the driver of warming.
It was these types of studies that led the second report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to conclude "the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate," and the subsequent IPCC report to conclude that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."
As the leading author of the second report's eighth chapter, which first used "discernible" to describe human contributions, Santer said that he'd taken a good deal of heat from some who claimed the statement was politically motivated and not scientifically grounded. He clearly feels vindicated by the body of evidence that has grown in the intervening years that backs up that original statement and, if anything, suggests it was not definitive enough.
I appeared at the hearing in my capacity as the vice chair of the Committee on America's Climate Choices and as such focused my remarks on the committee's findings. (You can read my remarks here [pdf]. Added 11/17/2011.))
During the Q&A session that followed the presentations, talk turned to the role of humans in global warming, and it became pretty clear that Muller remains a skeptic on that front. Here again I was somewhat rankled when he brought forth red herrings like sunspots even though data clearly show that they cannot have been the cause. This time the rankling got the better of me and I challenged his red herrings, perhaps sounding a short, discordant note in the scientific trio.
I'm skeptical that the briefing lived up to its name -- "An End of Climate Change Skepticism" -- but I'd have to say in the end the event was rather anticlimactic. Perhaps the writing was on the wall from the outset. As we filed into the Longworth House Office Building, we entered a meeting room that looks like what you've seen on TV -- seats for members of Congress arranged in a U-shape around the elevated dais, the lowly speakers' table facing our representatives, and behind us ample seating for the 40 or so attendees who watched, including legislative aides, people from non-governmental organizations, and members of the media with cameras a-flashing.
Yes, all the trappings of a high-powered Congressional event with one glaring exception: Seated in the 25 or so chairs along the dais dedicated for our esteemed leaders in Congress were just two representatives, Waxman and Markey. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a Congressional resolution marking the end of climate skepticism -- or the beginning of major climate legislation -- any time soon.
Crossposted with TheGreenGrok.com.
Follow Bill Chameides on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheGreenGrok
Source: “How do we know more CO2 is causing warming?”, Skeptical Science, Sep 3, 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm
“When the Earth comes out of an ice age, the warming is not initiated by CO2 but by changes in the Earth's orbit. The warming causes the oceans to give up CO2. The CO2 amplifies the warming and mixes through the atmosphere, spreading warming throughout the planet. So CO2 causes warming AND rising temperature causes CO2 rise.”
Source: “CO2 lags temperature - what does it mean?”, Skeptical Science, June 26, 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
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OMG!!!
you just described RUNAWAY GLOBAL WARMING!!!
“Direct observations find that CO2 is rising sharply due to human activity. Satellite and surface measurements find less energy is escaping to space at CO2 absorption wavelengths. Ocean and surface temperature measurements find the planet continues to accumulate heat. This gives a line of empirical evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global warming.”
Source: “Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming,” Skeptical Science, June 26, 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm
There is a book that is partially available online as a Google e-book
"Solar activity and earth's climate"
by Rasmus E. Benestad, who obtained a Ph.D in physics from Atmospheric, Oceanic & Planetary Physics at Oxford University. (He is one of the many real climate scientists who contribute at RealClimate.) Go to page 176. We read, "Any mechanism involving the albedo implies strongest response in the daytime temperature. Observations, on the other hand, suggest a reduction in the diurnal temperature range where the night-time temperature has increased more than the daytime temperature (Houghton et al., 2001). According to Svensmark's hypothesis, the warming is due to the reduction in Earth's albedo (reflected light), and therefore a long-term reduction in the low-level planetary cloud cover appears to be inconsistent with the observations."
What Svensmark and Spencer et al. say regarding cosmic rays, clouds, and oceans all boils down to claiming that essentially only less reflected light caused the warming. But Benestad above is simply politely saying that the less reflected light hypothesis has been strongly falsified since it predicts the global nighttime temperature would and should have risen slower than the global daytime temperature while the precise opposite happened.
Note: I say "strong falsification" since a constant global diurnal temperature range would suffice to falsify the less reflected light hypothesis, while a decreasing global diurnal temperature range strongly falsifies it.
In other words, by the laws of physics, only strong greenhouse gas effects can keep enough heat from radiating into space at night to cause the global nighttime temperature to rise faster than the global daytime temperature.
Deniers deal with the less reflected light hypothesis being strongly falsified in two ways: They ignore it. Or they try to use *local* phenomena to try to refute fact about *global* phenomena - they try to use increases in diurnal temperature ranges in cherry-picked *local* climates of the planet to try to argue against the fact that the *global* diurnal temperature range has decreased. But since this is all about *global* climate and not about climates of only cherry-picked parts of the planet, this attempt is just an embarrassment to those deniers who try this.
BTW, if deniers try to claim that increased water vapor in the atmosphere by itself with essentially no forcing from CO2 saves the day for the falsified less reflected light hypothesis, then consider: The equations in physics providing the calculations that fit reality on this one are where? Answer: Nowhere. All skeptics who do not try to confront this problem in some meaningful way (like Svensmark) know full well that they cannot even begin to make the numbers work to their favor on this one, and so rather than embarrass themselves trying to make the numbers work to their favor they elect to just ignore this problem when confronted with it.
Dr John R. Christy is the man! He has a website at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. You can see him in many YouTube videos going head-to-head with the alarmists who are suckering politicians into spending our hard-earned taxes in ways which may ultimately prove to be futile.
"Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing — indeed encouraging — the use of their data set as an icon for global warming skeptics. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but insisted they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They did little or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left it to others to clean up the mess, as has now been done"
SourceWatch
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=John_Christy
Yes - global warming is happening (1 °C/century). Yes - human activity may have a part to play, but miniscule. No - humankind is not doomed; take heed you legions of Private Frazers out there.
Peer-reviewed research published 2010 by the National Academy of Sciences itself:
"Researchers find future temperatures could exceed livable limits"
http://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/research/2010/100504HuberLimits.html
"The Health Effects of Hotter Days and Nights"
http://www.gaia-movement-usa.org/?q=node/46
"The wet-bulb temperatures we are talking about would have a feels-like, or heat-index, temperature of between 170 to 196 degrees Fahrenheit."
These are heat indexes last seen on Earth roughly 50 million years ago.
Heat indexes during heat waves even just close to this range would kill off all modern warm-blooded species like mammals including humans in just hours because they are not evolved to handle such heat indexes.
Their finding: Within the next couple or so centuries a 5 degree Celsius increase renders some of Earth uninhabitable and a 10 degree Celsius increase renders at least half of Earth uninhabitable.
Here is a heat index calculator:
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/heatindex.shtml
Entering an air temperature of just 105 degrees F with just 75% relative humidity gives a heat index of 176 degrees F, killing all modern warm blooded life in just hours during such a heat wave.
Global atmospheric water vapor has increased 4 percent already just since 1970.
"Armageddon" no longer requires big single events nuke or asteroid hits: The massive amount of greenhouse gases that humanity may spew will do it within just a couple or so centuries.
http://www.co2science.org/subject/c/co2climatehistory.php
1 Doctor of Philosophy
1 PhD in Geography
1 PhD Botany
I guess impressing some folks is way too easy.
BTW I prefer to get my climate science from PhDs in climate science. Just as I prefer to get my medical from a PhD in medicine and not a PhD in philosophy
But Solyndra is just another corporate casualty of the huge drop in photovoltaic panel prices, due to accelerating shipments from China.
Indeed, PV prices are decreasing ~17% per year, ala Moore's Law for computer chips.
For southern states residential PV will almost certainly reach price parity with coal and natural gas prices w/i this decade. So, those who buy 10 KW systems will not only power homes and hybrid vehicles for next to nothing, but feed-in tariffs will earn utility load-leveling rebates, using excess juice from both their PV set up AND their hybrid's battery.
This bottom lines even better for PV-powered offices, since most people work during daylight.
Except for offshore winds, Northern states will wait for High Voltage DC trunk lines to ferry southern solar power midwestern wind energy.
But before you free marketeers crow over private enterprise, it's also most likely you'll be switching from imported oil-energy from the Middle East, Russia, Nigeria, and Hugo Chavez, to imported PV systems all made in China.
And if you think Canada's Keystone pipe will disprove the above, guess again. In the long run, civilization can only be built via NET energy gain, which includes, not just life cycle, but all external costs - health, environmental heat and chemical pollution, decommissioning, etc. And NET energy from shale and tar sands is comparatively low. Same goes for current nukes.
but we still need the praline - this will be a long transition
Whether it is the rejection of Galileo's discoveries by the Catholic Church, denial of Darwinian evolution by the Christian fundamentalists, or rejection of the PC by IBM, the reactionaries can always be counted on to reject new ideas out of hand. Thus is it also so for the global warming deniers. In fact, it's almost a litmus test of open mindedness.
We heretics aren't denying science, we're simply waiting for someone to advance some sort of proof that an uptick in GHGs leads to warming - sure, we all understand the greenhouse effect, but nobody knows how much influence that has on the Earth's overall temperature.
The Doomers are the ones insisting that anyone who doesn't adhere to the orthodoxy needs to be burned at the stake. You can pray at any altar you want to, but please don't demand that I worship with you.
Perhaps you want to wait until its is clear that humans have passed a tripping point and will not be able to undo their contribution to AGW.
Fanned
Professor Emiritus Hal Lewis Resigns from American Physical Society
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of ... I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society. ...
http://my.telegraph.co.uk/ reasonmclucus/ reasonmclucus/ 15835660/ professor-emiritus-hal-lewis-resigns-from-american-physical-society/
Ivar Giaever – Nobel Prize Physicist – Resigns From Dogmatist American Physical Society .
http://www.notrickszone.com/ 2011/ 09/ 14/ ivar-giaever-nobel-prize-physicist-resigns-from-dogmatist-american-ph ysical-society/
http://issuepedia.org/2008-07-01_58th_Nobel_Laureate_Treffen_Lindau_2008_Giaever_Schellnhuber
Quote by Ivar Giaever himself:
"... I did a little research on Google before I went on this panel, and, uh, so I don't claim to know much about the global warming really, but I looked at Google..."
We should feel embarrassment for him - his knowledge and understand of the physics and chemistry of climate science is as deep as some Google searches? He was right in pointing out, "I don't claim to know much about the global warming really." Everything he said was contrary to the reputably published peer-reviewed climate physics and chemistry.
Same for Hal Lewis: A plasma and solid state physicist, totally out of field, fundamentally ignorant of the relevant atmospheric physics and geophysics.
The phenomenon of solid state or plasma physicists and biophysicists criticizing the physics and chemistry of climate science is as stupid as gynecologists criticizing the science of neurosurgery - they are totally out-of-field, utterly ignorant of what they criticize.
It's about one's specialty as to whether one is qualified to speak on the matter as some sort of expert.
" OK, it IS warming, but that is OK!"
They seem to think that a warming climate will mean more picnics and days at the beach!
They don't get that it will mean more droughts in Texas and Oklahoma, more floods and snows in the North, and, overall, less agricultural production. They don't get that it will mean more unexpected insect pest outbreaks, resulting in less agricultural production. They don't get that it will mean more failed crops due to unexpected weather shifts.
But don't worry! Be happy! The "FREE" (ha ha ha ) market will solve everything!
Nothing can go wrong.... can go wrong.... can go wrong... can go wrong.... can go wrong....can go
As to Texas, they shrug that one off. "We had droughts back in the 30's, nothing new."
Hurting the economy is bad.
Ice Ages are the only existential threat from climate, and no I will not accept the argument that global warming will cause the next ice age, but it could delay or prevent it, which would be awesome.
As for the economic impacts, repeated studies have shown that the positive benefits outweigh the negatives in regards to regulating CO2 emissions. http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-economy.htm
"The BEST Summary"
http://www.skepticalscience.com/best-summary.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticsvRealistsv3.gif
The "cooling trends" images show how "skeptics" view global warming, while the last image shows how realists and those who accept science and mathematics view global warming.
Everyone in the world should see these images, and over and over again.
For those who would like to see seriously in-depth statistical/mathematical analysis of the global warming data, see this article and others at this site:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/berkeley-and-the-long-term-trend/