There is ample evidence that the earth’s climate has always changed, that there have been ice-ages and interglacial warm periods and sometimes dramatic shifts in temperature over relatively short periods. This is what I understand by ‘climate change’.
I understand that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change defines ‘climate change’ as that which is attributable directly or indirectly to human activity. I consider this definition to be wrong and subversive and I reject it.
Given that the earth’s climate has changed in the past, it is reasonable to assume that climate will change in the future – whether or not we do anything about rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
Because I have often stated that there will be climate change whether or not we do anything about the increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, I have been accused of not caring, or suggesting we should not try and do something about carbon dioxide emissions.
Indeed Friends of the Earth misrepresent my position in their media release of last Thursday by stating that “Dr Jennifer Marohasy conceded that climate change is inevitable and we should adapt to what’s coming but not reduce greenhouse gas emissions” ( http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0507/S00436.htm ).
I have never said that we should not try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I have always said that we should be concerned about increasing carbon dioxide levels. I have suggested investment in new technologies as a better option to Kyoto.
Friends of the Earth accurately quote me: “I actually think that it’s good if we can get beyond this debate of whether increasing carbon dioxide levels are driving more extreme climate events. I think that we need to move beyond that and accept and recognise that whether or not we can reduce carbon dioxide levels, there will be climate change.”
On this basis governments need to develop reactive contingency plans. I do not believe that climate change will necessarily be ‘catastrophic’ – but I do suggest we should prepare for more extreme weather events, as well as the possibility that it could be either drier or wetter in the future.
Furthermore, I suggest that trends in climate change can and should be evaluated using empirical data as well as computer models.
In summary, I am concerned about climate change and I have always been concerned about climate change.
I do acknowledge that carbon dioxide is one of several greenhouse gases. The empirical evidence, however, does not show a clear relationship between increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures. Global temperatures have increased, but only slightly (0.6C over 150 years) and have jumped about from year to year. In contrast the increase in carbon dioxide levels has been significant and linear. Other things are clearly affecting global temperature.
I consider Thursday’s announcement of the new climate pact between the USA, Australia, South Korea, Japan, India and China to be great news (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1425101.htm).
Here is a commitment focused on reducing carbon dioxide levels that has a chance of delivering something significant because it includes the emerging superpowers of India and China.
I am amazed that this deal is being critised on the basis that it may deliver very little, when the Bob Browns of the world have always acknowledged Kyoto will deliver very little but they have said it is at least a first step.
Well, why not then consider the ‘Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate’ a second step?
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jennifer if you say this
“Given that the earth’s climate has changed in the past, it is reasonable to assume that climate will change in the future – whether or not we do anything about rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.”
then why do you say this?
“I have never said that we should not try and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I have always said that we should be concerned about increasing carbon dioxide levels. I have suggested investment in new technologies as a better option to Kyoto.”
If you think that the climate will change anyway why should we do anything about CO2? Why should you be concerned about CO2 levels?
The reason that there has been only 0.6 degrees rise in temperature is that the warming trend has been masked by extra soot in the atmosphere reflecting more heat.
Yes the climate has changed in the past. This is not an excuse or reason to suppose that this time when we are releasing billions of tons of CO2 and clearing carbon sinks that it is not us. Just because it was natural before does not mean that it is not us this time.
Your position is contradictory. If you think climate change is natural then is does not matter how much CO2 we release.
I agree that Kyoto is limited in what it can do – but is was about reducing emissions. It has shown the sheer difficulty of the problem, refined our knowledge of carbon in the biosphere and shown how we react when asked to change).
If the latest Asia Pacific agreement can give us energy without CO2 – that’s good news too. But if it’s simply coal to synthetic oil gasification with heaps of CO2 produced or hydrogen from coal with heaps of CO2 I think we have a bigger problem. And the magic geo-sequestration research has yet to deliver (I wish it well). However let us do the energy research by all means with full funding support.
Of course if we have coal gasification we still will have CO2 when we burn the synthetic gasoline. So you can’t help but feel it’s business as usual and we might just just wear the CO2 for the big end of town and the “economy”. Stopping double CO2 is too late – we might just rein it in at triple.
Who cares about the definition of climate change – lets say AGW to make you happy then.
(1) we may had previous ice ages – and then the world was not an easy place then – we didn’t have the world population, social and industrial complexes we have today. The US and Russian wheat crops probably didn’t grow too well with ice sheets over them !!!! And there won’t be another ice age for probably 100,000 years on basis of orbital forcings so this is a rabbit to chase anyway. We have a world with billions of people – many in low lying areas, many subject to droughts, floods and heatwaves – what’s the global world food reserves – 30 days?? WE HAVE NOT had major global climate change with this level of population.
(2) the CO2 (and CH4 and NOx and other minor anthropogenic minor gases) correlate pretty well with the temperature trend. All the gases from human activities are all up, up and up !
(3) Despite the very naughty maths of John McLean the temperature trend is up, up and up. Temperature records have been broken. Broken again in the USA the other day. You can cherry pick numbers off the curve to suit whatever you want but the TREND is up. What do you think the correlation coefficient is – zero ? or bigger?
I would suggest that most people would find a fair correlation between increased greenhouse gases and temperatures. Do you think CO2 is a greenhouse gas at all ? Does it have any effect ????? Or is it just fizzy stuff in soft drink?
(4) But we know there are other forcings – a pro-AGW would resonably acknowledge there are other forcings – e.g. solar, volcanos, El Nino/La Nina, Pacfic Decadal oscillations, global dimming from chnaged clouds and aerosols, land use change feedbacks etc. When you put a good selection of these factors together the temperature graph is reproduced quite well. But darn – it’s a rotten model !!! (solar + volcanism + CO2 looks pretty good to me).
But models derived through endless testing and refinement, peer review and passing many tests of validation. Just cherry picking CO2 in isolation is singular – would have thought an ecologist such as yourself would know about complex systems and feedbacks.
(5) Do you acknowledge that Australia’s east coast cyclonce climate has changed. Do you think we had a lot of very fast cyclones in our region in recent years?
(6) Do you think it’s a worry that everywhere we have most of our agriculture and cities in Australia that there are drying trends apparent.
(7) Do we ponder why we have had mainly El Ninos since 1976 and few La Ninas…
(8) Do you think that global dimming may be “suppressing” the current CO2 warming flux?
Simple empirical evidence is misleading as it is cherry picking – we need a broad body of evidence from many factors and synthesis of all forcings by models. Anything else is having yourself on….
CO2 is a possible hazard to the climate of this world in 2005 to 2100. It’s physics as a greenhouse gas are known. This world with billions of people, with major exposure to climate. Not a small Stone Age population with abdundant and replaceable natural resources that don’t have cars or electricity, a major military complex and stockmarket.
This site shows how serioulsy one international project is attempting to forecast the impacts of climate variability on the world
http://iri.columbia.edu/
(eeeekk…. models…. yukkky) Still …do your own validation and see what they get right and wrong John McLean. You might learn something about probability and skill assessment.
If CO2 is a possible hazard let us speed up the climate change research, be prudent with our CO2 emissions, and by all means develop improved energy technologies. The planet does not owe us a living and the global atmosphere doesn’t care about the economy in the long run – it’s just physics and it will do what it will do…
(footnote – and if there is no AGW and we have a MAJOR climate shift in the world – I suggest that it will be difficult for current human populations to cope – and I don’t think knowing that is was a “natural” event that hurt you and your family will be of much solace…. but if a domestic dog bites me I might want to talk to the owner versus a wild one which has no owner… (save God or Gaia perhaps).)
David,
Too much information for me in one go. But this one jumped out at me: “…acknowledge that Australia’s east coast cyclonce climate has changed. Do you think we had a lot of very fast cyclones in our region in recent years?”
There were more cyclones and more severe cyclones along the east coast in the 1970s. I have written something on this here http://www.ipa.org.au/files/news_937.html .
I will hopefully get to your other comments in time.
Ender,
We have, through improved technologies, managed to, for example, reduce salt levels in the Murray River and improve air quality in our cities. Given the clear linear trend of increasing atmospheric Co2 levels from the burning of fossil fuels let’s have a go at reversing the trend here – reducing the level of pollution.
I wonder who represents the plant kingdom ?
PETA represents the animals.
Denying plants food is tantamount to floral genocide ?
David Vader,
CO2 is something you exhale as a carbon based lifeform, to convert your food into energy.
Conversely that CO2 is inhaled by your food as a recycling process.
Collectively humanity is increasing CO2, (2% of total, earth 98%), which might be interpreted as a symbiotic reaction.
But as one who thinks with one idea, this novelty might pass you
David Vader
Empirical evidence is not cherry picking.
You write that temperatures are rising and rising.
Evidence please.
Jennifer – one it is not a linear trend of increasing CO2. If you go to http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/CliSciFrameset.html and go the the graph of measured CO2 then you can clearly see that the increase is not linear.
Two you have not clarified why you think we should reduce CO2. You have clearly stated that climate change is mostly natural. If this is true why should we reduce CO2.
Three the new technologies mentioned in the pact are mostly still in the lab. The only ones that are both in production and CO2 neutral are wind and solar right at the bottom and forgotton.
I have posted the list on my blog.
http://stevegloor.typepad.com/sgloor/2005/07/the_list_of_sol.html
Louis is back – yay !! He seems refreshed.
Did you find any diamonds of note ?
And did you out the WA Murchison landscape degraded through ignorance of climate variability?
For cherry picking see John McLean vs Vader in the now to be renamed “Louis Hissink Memorial Blog Entry” – Jen’s biggest collection of replys and raving on of all time blog entry. Louis you have to keep up.
And Louis what are you geology dudes doing about Peak Platinum – seems to come out of one hole in South Africa – probably run with slaves which I’m sure you guys are also into. The rub being that no more platinum (or if George W gets the lot – same answer) we don’t have a critical bit for fuel cells and catalysts. Anyway I must be wrong – if there was a problem George Bush would have shot the place up by now and Mugabe-ed the joint.
Hey Louis give us some info on this coal to oil gasification stuff – how’s it work – what’s it produce?
And lastly Louis – don’t hold your breath or the CO2 buildup will getcha – then you’ll be on O2.
P.S. Louis I hope you have a web site so we can check your maths too.
P.P.S. Oh yea – on the up, up, up business – when I look at the various temperature plots over this century I see a TREND (see also overall, pattern, direction) upwards – not downwards or sideways. I also see a few dips and wobbles which are reasonably explained by models incorporating other forcings. And all-forcings models explain that trend. Of course I see breasts in ink-blot plots too….. 🙂
This incessant and irreconcilable debate reminds me of my years in remote Aboriginal education. While there were certainly great difficulties and sensitivities, none were more counter-productive than the fanaticisms of opposing philosophical factions. The politicking and subterfuge put into the effort was all-consuming; the inhumanity between colleagues across the philosophical divide, despicable. And yet, the very reason for the deployment and more than generous salary packages, to provide a public service, was eclipsed by the obsession of the debate.
Jen – sorry for too much info – this is why models were invented to hold all these interacting thoughts together.
OK on cyclones – yes more in the 1970s – and you might be smart and ask where have they all gone too?? And no susbstantial coast crossing cyclones in La Ninas either? And a strong hypothesis why has already been given in blogs of recent weeks. A chore for you is to find it. I think you will find that Ingrid, Vance and the that one in the Fiji area were all 300 km/hr plus jobs. So their absence and then record breakers among the one that form is interesting don’t you think?
A single question for you with two supplementaries:
Do you think CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
How strong versus the others
If yes – what overall effect does it make?
Anyway B&H didn’t agree with me so I’ve given up smoking and off to make freshly picked Cherry Jam !!!
Loius – yes what you refer to is the carbon cycle. It was in a reasonable balance. This is until humans started clearing land releasing the carbon stored and then planted the land with plants that absorbed only a tiny fraction of the carbon that the forest once did.
Coupled with this we decided to have electric lights, motors and refrigeration and also transport foodstuffs thousands of kilometers. To do this we burn billions of tons of previously stored CO2 into the atmosphere.
This upsets the natural carbon balance so the extra CO2 builds up as has been measured.
So where is the greenie conspiracy theory in this?
RESIDENTS of a remote Kimberley community were evacuated last night as cyclone Ingrid lashed the northern tip of Western Australia with winds of up to 285km/h.
Rated by meteorologists as the biggest tropical cyclone to ever hit three Australian states or territories, Ingrid last night pounded an Aboriginal community and all but destroyed an exclusive Kimberley eco-resort as its terrified caretakers sheltered in a shipping container.
It was the third time in more than a week that Ingrid — at its peak a maximum category five cyclone — had menaced the Australian coastline.
Late December 2002: Cyclone Zoe, a category five cyclone, struck the Soloman islands of Tikopia and Anuta last week, flattening buildings, stripping away vegetation, and endangering the estimated 1300 people who inhabit the islands.
The cyclone was among the most powerful ever recorded to have hit the islands, with winds of up to 360 km/hr. At least two villages on the island of Tikopia–Ravenga and Namo–are known to have been entirely destroyed. It remains unknown how many people were killed or injured by the storm. The government of the Solomon islands declared the islands struck by the cyclone to be a disaster area.
March 2003: At sea, Erica had a eye pressure of 920 hPa, with the associated wind speeds of 280 km/h. hen she reached the coast of New Caledonia, her central pressure reached 960 hPa with an associated average wind speed of 140 km/h and gusts up to 200 km/h. Wind gusts of 300 km/h were often reported. Erica set and all time wind speed record in Noumea with wind gust of 202 km/hr.
The highest wind speeds and wind gusts recorded in Australia have been associated with tropical cyclones. The highest recorded gust was 267 km/h at Learmonth (with Tropical Cyclone Vance, March 1999); gusts reaching 200 km/h have been recorded on several occasions in northern Australia with cyclone visitations. The highest gusts recorded at capital cities were 217 km/h at Darwin (during Tropical Cyclone Tracy), 185 km/h at Brisbane Airport and 156 km/h at Perth.
Jennifer – I have not received a reply to my question to why you would think that reducing CO2 is necessary?
Ender,
I thought I answered it at 10.52pm last night.
Another go,
We are changing the composition of the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels.
It would be prudent to minimise emissions/ minimise this effect.
I consider the emissions a form of pollution. Though I recognise it can be argued that more co2 if good for plant growth etcetera.
Jennifer – why would it be prudent to minimise CO2 emissions? According to Loius and David Mclean the effects of CO2 is minimal. So why should we go to all the expense of minimising CO2. According to AGW skeptics we should be able to emit as much CO2 as we like.
If you support reductions of CO2 then you must admit that CO2 does cause harm. You posted this thread to clarify you position on climate change however the more it goes on the more contradictory it gets.
Perhaps you can say what bad effects CO2 has, other than the global warming that you do not acknowledge, for you to regard it as a pollutant.
Ender,
You would consider Bjorn Lomborg, Bob Carter and I to all be ‘global warming skeptics’ – because we don’t subscribe to Kyoto and the doomsayers predictions.
But, once you get beyond this you will find we have different views.
I don’t have a problem with different views – I do like to understand them. I admire both Bob and Bjorn – but don’t agree with them completely.
To the extent that anyone can/should summarize another’s position:
Bjorn accepts the IPCC, but doesn’t consider Kyoto a good investment – suggests that there are higher priorities.
Bob doesn’t accept the IPCC predictions and will argue that more C02 could be good.
I am confused by the IPCC predictions, see ‘climate change’ as an industry driving lots of ‘bad’ public policy decision making but would like to see a reduciton in emissions because as I have repeatedly written, I consider the emissions a form of pollution.
Please note, that my view is not necessarily ‘the position’ of the IPA. The IPA is a think tank, not a political party.
I am not sure that I understand the detail of Louis or David’s positions – so I will not try and summarize it/them.
Jen – sounds like a real big IPA or industry spin position to me….
Climate change as an “industry” – what with marginal funding, made fun of by the media, most of the public in disbelief – gee you would have been better to do accounting or law as a profession. You’d have to be mad to pick it as a career unless you had some genuine concerns or a penchant for physics.
It’s about as limp as those nasty greenies picking on poor old Exxon – down to their last few billion I guess.
Basically Kyoto is not far enough. Window dressing. So let’s not get hung up on Kyoto…
So again one question:
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas – you know – one that warms when it’s little old covalent bond gets excited by the right spectrum of radiation ?? Come on Jen – you’ve got a PhD in science !!
I dare you to say no or you don’t know….
Ender,
we, as carbon based life-forms, produce CO2 as a result of obtaining carbon based energy. Basically Beanz meanz heinz, apart from our breath which is CO2. (Yuk – kiss a CO2 person, arghhhhhhhh).
Plants, on which we feed, consume CO2.
We are a simbiotic couple, one cannot do without the other.
If CO2 increases, that means carbon exuders are increasing in numbers, which then, dynamically, causes a reaction amongst the carbon consumers, to increase. The lag time for this reaction seems not to have been quantified, yet.
Now which species do you wish to first kill? The newborn?
Louis – yet again you have come up short in the science department. A lot of CO2 is absorbed by the oceans. Yes you are exactly right the carbon exuders are increasing. They are burning previously stored carbon as well as releasing CO2. However as I said in a previous post we are cutting down the carbon consumers as fast as we possibly can. Sure one solution is to kill all the exuders however that would seem to be a bit extreme.
A more reasonable solution is for the exuders to emit a bit less CO2 to bring the balance back to a bit more normal. As well the exuders would do well to plant some massive forests and stop polluting the oceans so the consumers in the ocean can take out some of the carbon.
Ender,
what is normal?
David,
I wrote in the main blog piece that C02 is a greenhouse gas.
I also wrote that atmospheric C02 levels are increasing.
However, last time I tried to understand whether the troposphere was warming more or less than the earth’s surface – I found several different answers. What is the latest?
Er there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas.
Greenhouse means a closed energy circuit – the earth is an open circuit.
Analogy disproved.
Louis – Normal is where the rate of carbon going into the atmosphere is equaled more or less to that being taken out by plants and the ocean. At the moment it is clearly out of balance as the instruments are telling us. Are you going to argue with them now?
OK here is where I will hound you for an answer and everyone reading this blog will realise that you really do not know anything about how the atmosphere works if you pike answering this one.
You have said “Er there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas.”. So explain to all the readers here why the Earth is 33 degrees warmer because of the atmosphere.
So Louis you are saying there is no such thing aa a natural “greenhouse” effect as termed by Arrhenius and predicted by Fourier.
And Jen if we agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and without our atmosphere of greenhouse gases that the Earth might be a lot colder, would it not seem logical as a first premise that more CO2 may have “some” effect.
On the interesting issue of surface vs lower troposhere.
Nature 429, 55 – 58 (06 May 2004)
Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends
QIANG FU1, CELESTE M. JOHANSON1, STEPHEN G. WARREN1 & DIAN J. SEIDEL2
1 Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
2 NOAA Air Resources Laboratory, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910, USA
From 1979 to 2001, temperatures observed globally by the mid-tropospheric channel of the satellite-borne Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU channel 2), as well as the inferred temperatures in the lower troposphere, show only small warming trends of less than 0.1 K per decade (refs 1–3). Surface temperatures based on in situ observations however, exhibit a larger warming of 0.17 K per decade (refs 4, 5), and global climate models forced by combined anthropogenic and natural factors project an increase in tropospheric temperatures that is somewhat larger than the surface temperature increase. Here we show that trends in MSU channel 2 temperatures are weak because the instrument partly records stratospheric temperatures whose large cooling trend offsets the contributions of tropospheric warming. We quantify the stratospheric contribution to MSU channel 2 temperatures using MSU channel 4, which records only stratospheric temperatures. The resulting trend of reconstructed tropospheric temperatures from satellite data is physically consistent with the observed surface temperature trend. For the tropics, the tropospheric warming is 1.6 times the surface warming, as expected for a moist adiabatic lapse rate.
Satellites indicate a cooling in the lower stratosphere. This result is consistent with weather balloon measurements. Cooling in the lower stratosphere has long been regarded as a strong indicator of greenhouse-induced climate change.
Measurements in all of the major ocean basins of the world show that the warming of the latter half of the last century has penetrated to a depth of 1000 metres. Rates of world-wide glacial retreat and the thinning of Arctic sea-ice and Artic warming are further evidence of warming. Greenland you say – well as previously posted – ice is moving there too…
All of these together are a BODY of evidence. But you guys like to cherry pick odd exceptions and then argue back from the specific to the general ignoring the greater body of evidence.
George Burns smoked till he was 100 so smoking must be OK then ?
So we have something global – you’ll have to make a strong argument for orbital solar change to give a coherent alternative explanation. So what’s a good explanation then? You’re the one saying “evidence-based” environmentalism. What’s this selective evidence when it suits your argument?
Another topic- let’s cherry-pick that “runoff onto the Reef is 5x pre-European” – based on this evidence I say we close down the beef and sugar industry – OK with you ?
David Vader,
A natural greenhouse effect means a closed thermal system.
Greenhouses do what they do by stopping the circulation of air within the confines of the glass house. The earth is not so contrained.
While CO2 does absorb energy, which has never been denied, it does not retain that energy because it, as the rest of the atmosphere, is in thermal dis-equilibrium with space.
Your Greenhouse theory might have legs if you could show that energy is not being transferred to space, but somehow, and then magically, locked into the atmosphere.
It is not. Try sleeping in a desert during the middle of summer.
But it doesn’t drop to minus 18 degrees on clear nights does it? A warmed gas doesn’t drop to abolute zero as soon as the warming source is removed.
If we had no greenhouse effect at all it might be a tad cold for most of us ….
Thanks Louis that’s all we needed. You’ve just holed your argument…
Remember Jen you read it here !
“while CO2 does absorb energy”….. bye bye now !
P.S. The Sun, which is the Earth’s only external form of heat, emits solar radiation mainly in the form of shortwave visible and ultraviolet (UV) energy. As this radiation travels toward the Earth, some is absorbed by the atmosphere and some is reflected by the clouds back into space. The remaining radiation travels unimpeded to the Earth and heats its surface. The Earth releases a lot of energy it has received from the Sun back to space. However, the Earth is much cooler than the Sun, so the energy re-emitted from the Earth’s surface is much weaker, in the form of invisible longwave infrared (IR) radiation, sometimes called heat.
Greenhouse gases like water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide trap the infrared radiation released by the Earth’s surface. The atmosphere acts like the glass in a greenhouse, allowing much of the shortwave solar radiation to travel through unimpeded, but trapping a lot of the longwave heat energy trying to escape back to space. This process makes the temperature rise in the atmosphere just as it does in the greenhouse. This is the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect and keeps the Earth 33°C warmer on average than it would be without an atmosphere, at an average 15°C. In contrast, the moon, which has no atmosphere, has an average surface temperature of -18°C.
Loius: You now need to answer my question or admit that what you are saying is absolute rubbish. Until you do I am starting a permenant post on my blog “Loius Hissink writes scientific b—–t”. It will remain until you answer the question or admit that you are wrong and stop deceiving less well informed people.
The question is “If there was no greenhouse effect the Earth would not be about 33 degrees warmer than if it did not have an atmosphere. Explain how this warming occurs without the action of the greenhouse effect”
As backgound information you might want to consult is this http://www-k12.atmos.washington.edu/k12/resources/mars_data-information/temperature_overview.html
It is a temperature overview of Mars. Mars has only has a thin atmosphere and no oceans. Its measured temperature range is “temperatures range from + 1° F, ( -17.2° C) to -178° F (-107° C). However, the temperature of the surface at the winter polar caps drop to -225° F, (-143° C)”. It does receive less solar irradiation however, with the lack of a heat trapping atmosphere and oceans the range of daytime to nighttime temperatures is dramatic.
Do you need anything else to answer it?
I will also add to the post these questions that you have also failed to answer.
Biomarkers in oil
Measurements of heat flowing from the ground
This is from the article:
“Due to the low density of the Martian atmosphere, the temperature of the surface is controlled primarily by solar heating, and infrared cooling to the atmosphere and space, rather than heat exchange with the atmosphere. The lower few kilometers of the atmosphere during the day, and the lower tens to hundreds of meters during night, are in turn controlled by heat exchange with the surface, and by absorption of infrared radiation from the sun and surface and re radiation to the surface, space and rest of the atmosphere. For the same conditions, (wind speed, clear sky, etc.), the denser atmosphere of Earth near the surface exchanges more heat with the surface, than does the thinner Martian atmosphere. i.e, Earth’s atmosphere has more influence on the surface temperature than does the Martian atmosphere. One might speculate what the diurnal temperature range of an object on the Martian surface might be if it had a thick atmosphere like Venus, (without its cloud cover), or an almost non existent atmosphere like our Moon which has only has a few molecules whizzing around like projectiles on ballistic trajectories.”
Does IPA receive funding from ExxonMobil
Are they are specific issues to which any such funding is applied.
Of course one should never count chickens before they’ve hatched but today’s Australian newspaper (page 6 The Nation) quotes the Bureau of Met as saying that July temperatures seem to have set the nation on course for a possible warmest year on record…..
and all those high temps in the USA too
and not even an El Nino year ….
hmmmm……. it’s all enough to make your head spin ….
Greenland !
Two University of Maine scientists studying the effects of climate
change in the Arctic have discovered that two glaciers in Greenland are
moving at a not-so-glacial pace.
The scientists returned last week from a five-week expedition to the
east coast of Greenland, where they studied the movement of five
glaciers. They found that two of the glaciers are moving at far faster
rates than just a few years ago, raising questions about the effects of
regional warming.
One glacier, called Kangerdlugssuaq, was moving at the rate of nearly 9
miles a year, making it one of the world’s fastest-moving glaciers, the
researchers said. In the late 1990s, it was moving at about 3.5 miles a
year.
“It’s a bit alarming because the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica
are so large that it usually takes thousands of years for these types
of changes to actually occur, not five or 10 years,” said Gordon
Hamilton, a professor at the university’s Climate Change Institute.
The glaciers’ accelerated speeds in Greenland suggest that the climate
is warming up [ . . . ]
Louis – You have not responded to my question. I will give you another few days before I post on my blog.
Global warming may pump up hurricane power
Global warming is pumping up the destructive power of hurricanes and typhoons, a new study suggests.
An analysis of data on storm winds and duration shows that potential wind-caused damage has roughly doubled over the past 30 years, although tropical sea-surface temperatures have increased by only half a degree over that time, says Kerry Emanuel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US.
The frequency of hurricanes seems unaffected by global warming. Regional totals vary periodically, but the number of tropical cyclones around the world averages a steady 90 per year. But Emanuel’s study is the second in weeks to link storm intensity with climate.
Feeding peak sustained-wind data into his model, he calculated the total potential destructive power over the life of all storms each year since about 1950 in the world’s two best-monitored areas – the North Atlantic and the north-west Pacific. He found a striking correlation between their destructive potential and sea-surface temperatures.
Smoking gun
Hurricanes are powered by the temperature difference between the top of the sea and the air above the storm, so warmer water was expected to pump the storms harder. But previous computer models had predicted that the half-degree increase in sea-surface temperatures from global warming over the past 30 years should have increased wind speed by only about 3%, corresponding to a 10% increase in Emanuel’s estimate of destructive power.
Instead, Emanuel found that the destructive power of North Atlantic storms more than doubled over the past 30 years. For north-west Pacific storms, the increase was about 75%. He attributes the sharp jump to increases in storm duration as well as much larger than expected increases in wind power.
The results surprised Chris Landsea at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Hurricane Research Division in Miami, US. “This is the first article that has a smoking gun between global warming and hurricane activity,” he told New Scientist.
Adjusting estimates
Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, says Emanuel’s results parallel his study of storm kinetic energy.
Yet some big questions remain. Storm winds are virtually impossible to measure directly, and techniques for estimating them indirectly have changed over the years. To adjust for those changes, Emanuel reduced wind estimates in the 1950s and 1960s.
But Landsea says the unadjusted figures show no overall trend, raising doubts over whether Emanuel’s model is making the right corrections. Although winds from that period looked too low in the past, Landsea says that wind estimates may actually have been too low in the 1970s through to the early 1990s.
Neither study considered changes in rainfall, which causes flooding that has been responsible for many deaths and damage in recent storms.
Journal reference: Nature (DOI:10.1038/nature03906
Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years
Kerry Emanuel says:
Theory and modelling predict that hurricane intensity should increase with increasing global mean temperatures, but work on the detection of trends in hurricane activity has focused mostly on their frequency and shows no trend. Here I define an index of the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on the total dissipation of power, integrated over the lifetime of the cyclone, and show that this index has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. This trend is due to both longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities. I find that the record of net hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multi-decadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming. My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in tropical cyclone destructive potential, and—taking into account an increasing coastal population—a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century.
http://www.ipa.org.au/units/climatechange.html
Jen – I suggest that this is hardly a scholarly review of the subject from a supposed “independent think tank”. No pros and cons – just a selected cherry pick from commentators typically suffering geologists myopia.
Or perhaps is this what the “backers” expect ?
David Vader
As regards your most recent accusation of ‘cherry picking’:
http://www.ipa.org.au/units/climatechange.html
Yes, Professor Ian Plimer, Melbourne University, and Professor Bob Carter, James Cook University, have both written for the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) on climate change.
While I can’t pick and choose who will comment at this blog site, I am proud to be associated with both Bob and Ian through the IPA.
Bob’s sediment core work gives real insight into past climates, see for example Science Vol 304, pg. 1659 (2004).
Bob’s home page is at:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/
And Ian, while also an expert on the history of planet earth, has taken up the fight against the teaching of ‘creation’ as a science in schools.
Some information on Prof Plimer:
http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/people/plimer/
http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=157459
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/creationdebate5.htm
While you falsely accuse these men of being in the pocket of industry, I wonder exactly who David Vader is? While you incessantly question the motivations of so-called climate skeptics, I note they declare their real names and work affiliations. In contrast, it is unclear exactly who the accuser David Vader really is, and it appears that the email address you provide at this web-log is bogus. At least this has been my experience:
Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.
The following recipient(s) could not be reached:
‘dvader@bigpond.com’ on 1/08/2005 4:11 PM
550 Invalid recipient: dvader@bigpond.com
The following recipient(s) could not be reached:
‘dvader@bigpond.com’ on 4/08/2005 7:56 AM
550 Invalid recipient:
Gee, August 5,
Ender will post on his blog.
GOSH! as Bernard Woolley would gasp
Loius – While I note that you could reply with a smartalec answer you could not add much in the way of science.
Anyone that goes to my blog from now on will see the post “Loius Hissink Writes B——t with a link to this post. I will remove it anytime you would care to answer the question with something approaching scientific truth instead of the mis-information that you usually write.
Jennifer has seen fit to post a special article on you – how about you live up to this trust and, as a scientist, answer the simple question I have posed.
I had to create a category (click on my name) for Bob Carter on my blog to cover his frequent misrepresentations….
And of course nothing from Louis. My blog entry is at http://stevegloor.typepad.com/sgloor/2005/08/loius_hissink_w.html
Hello Jennifer
I have stumbled across your site while chasing down a contact address for Professor Ian Plimer who I heard on radio station 2gb a few weeks ago .
It is encouraging to see more and more people are starting to see the facts for what they are
and not be led along blindly with the view of others.
Good on ya !
Phill