PASADENA, Calif. – Boosted by the influence of a larger climate event in the Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many years is slowly weakening but continues to blanket the Pacific Ocean near the equator, as shown by new sea-level height data collected by the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite.
This La Niña, which has persisted for the past year, is indicated by the blue area in the center of the image along the equator. Blue indicates lower than normal sea level (cold water). The data were gathered in early April.
The image also shows that this La Niña is occurring within the context of a larger climate event, the early stages of a cool phase of the basin-wide Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is a long-term fluctuation of the Pacific Ocean that waxes and wanes between cool and warm phases approximately every five to 20 years. In the cool phase, higher than normal sea-surface heights caused by warm water form a horseshoe pattern that connects the north, west and southern Pacific, with cool water in the middle. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, the Pacific was locked in the oscillation’s warm phase, during which these warm and cool regions are reversed. For an explanation of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and its present state, see: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/ and http://www.esr.org/pdo_index.html .
A La Niña is essentially the opposite of an El Niño. During El Niño, trade winds weaken and warm water occupies the entire tropical Pacific Ocean. Heavy rains tied to the warm water move into the central Pacific Ocean and cause drought in Indonesia and Australia while altering the path of the atmospheric jet stream over North and South America. During La Niña, trade winds are stronger than normal. Cold water that usually sits along the coast of South America is pushed to the middle of the equatorial Pacific. A La Niña changes global weather patterns and is associated with less moisture in the air, and less rain along the coasts of North and South America.
“This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”
Sea surface temperature satellite data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also clearly show a cool Pacific Decadal Oscillation pattern, as seen at: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/sst/sst.anom.gif . The shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, with its widespread Pacific Ocean temperature changes, will have significant implications for global climate. It can affect Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, marine ecosystems and global land temperature patterns.
“The comings and goings of El Niño, La Niña and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are part of a longer, ongoing change in global climate,” said Josh Willis, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist. Sea level rise and global warming due to increases in greenhouse gases can be strongly affected by large natural climate phenomenon such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the El Nino-Southern Oscillation. “In fact,” said Willis, “these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.”
Jason’s follow-on mission, the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, is scheduled for launch this June and will extend to two decades the continuous data record of sea surface heights begun by Topex/Poseidon in 1992. JPL manages the U.S. portion of the Jason mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information on NASA’s ocean surface topography missions, see: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/ ; or to view the latest Jason data, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/jason1-quick-look/ .
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
News Releases: Larger Pacific Climate Event Helps Current La Nina Linger
April 21, 2008
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Oh woe is Oz:
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/maybe_earth_hour_caused_it/
You’re not alone. Here, in the upper Midwest, US we’ve been told to expect a dusting of snow this weekend. The third weekend in a row! All at the time when highs should be increasing from mid to 50’s at the start to low to mid 60’s now.
Burn some coal blokes!
Ahem – did I read that right
“Boosted by the influence of a larger climate event in the Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many years is slowly weakening”
strongest ? and weakening ? – but it’s supposed to go on forever isn’t it?
AND !!!
““In fact,” said Willis, “these natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.””
Is that right? I never knew that? Boy that would make interpretation of the data difficult wouldn’t it. Be hard just with a calculator.
🙂 Anyway – must be right – saw it here on the blog.
The La Nina is over as measured by a range of traditional measures – see http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/ . The heat content of the Pacific mixed layer is positive almost everywhere and SSTs near normal and we have almost no cool water in the sub-surface.
We can only hope that it comes back late this year, as occasionally happens with La Nina.
Worryingly, this La Nina has been associated with very poor rainfall across large parts of Australia, with the March-April rainfall the 12th lowest since 1900. That makes it by far the driest start to autumn for any La Nina event we have records for. One doesn’t have to be a genius to realise how severe the situation is for southeast Australian and the MDB if it doesn’t rain soon.
“but it’s supposed to go on forever isn’t it?”
No. If you ever bothered to read any of the opposing argument instead of just flying off into a torrent of abuse, you’d realise that the “Denialist” side of the argument is that the warming and cooling periods are part of a cycle – and will continue to do so.
It seems to me that you are so confused that you have lost sight of the fact that the origin of this argument is the Alarmists’ insistence on pushing this fantasy that CO2-based warming will go on forever (a la your Hockey Stick fraud).
Still, it makes for good light entertainment.
Oh I see – was just confused by the denialist predictions on here. I never knew that there were any cycles.
“was just confused by the denialist predictions on here”
What ‘denialist predictions’? The only ‘denialist prediction’ I can see in here is the one that goes: “it’s supposed to go on forever isn’t it?”
If you quit making stuff up to suit your current rant, people might take you more seriously.
Denialist Scum – “side of the argument is that the warming and cooling periods are part of a cycle – and will continue to do so.”
However all the temperature records show that there is a underlying warming trend that is depressed and amplified year to year by events such as the ENSO and volcanoes.
Nobody in the AGW camp says that it will go on forever. You can see clearly in the ice core records that there are natural cycles and that is a part of AGW research. However there is nothing in the past records quite like this warming period that we are in now.
“nothing in the past records quite like this warming period that we are in now”
I guess only if you exclude the Medieval Warm Period. Oh – I forgot. Isn’t that an inconvenient fact that has been edited out of the Alarmists’ history books? Vikings colonising Greenland and all that — all myth.
Denialist Scum – “Oh – I forgot. Isn’t that an inconvenient fact that has been edited out of the Alarmists’ history books? Vikings colonising Greenland and all that — all myth.”
Again all the real research shows that the MWP, shile significant was neither global or as warm as current temperatures. Perhaps you can provide the peer reviewed research that shows otherwise.
“However all the temperature records show that there is a underlying warming trend ”
Yes and no. Most of the proxies that people use to derive past climate do not show the level of increase that the surface temperature records show when you look at those proxies for the last 100 years. Which makes you wonder about the surface temp records – not that there has been a temp increase, but rather what it’s level is. In any case, the globe has always had either a warming trend or a cooling trend. And what warming trend exists today in not unusual. If you look at the last 30 years, which many AGWers like to point to, you can see that much of that may be due to PDO.
Bottom line is that the IPCC claim of 3C climate sensitivity is simply not supported by any emperical evidence. We have almost 40% of a CO2 doubling and only .8C of temp increase. Considering the logarithmic effect, of CO2, plus help from factors like solar cycles, PDO, and incompletely compenstated heat island effects, and we may have climate sensitivity for 2XCO2 being around 1C or less.
2008 = year AGW ended (new entry in wikipedia) LOL
“2008 = year AGW ended (new entry in wikipedia) LOL”
Not ‘ended’ … just “taken a holiday” (new Global Warming ‘Science’ term)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/30/eaclimate130.xml
“Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.”
Gotta love this ‘Science’.
Ender: Go find the Mann Hockey Stick, flip it horizontally, and splice it on the front of the following Vostok ice core temperature reconstruction graphs.
http://i30.tinypic.com/15x3cz9.jpg
http://i25.tinypic.com/imo089.jpg
Oh, but first you have to filter the Mann reconstruction to account for the average time between ice core samples in each of the Vostok data graphs. Note that my suggested filtering doesn’t take into consideration the natural smoothing of the temperature data caused by the mixing of multiple years (decades, centuries) of air trapped within the ice. It also doesn’t account for the increased span in years as you go farther back in time. Regardless, for the 10,000 year graph, there were about 240 readings, so you’ll have to smooth the Hockey Stick with a 42-year filter. And there were about 3,300 readings on the 420,000 year graph, so you’ll have to use a 127-year filter. When you’re done, I don’t believe you’ll reach the temperature extremes of the Holocene Climate Optimum or the past interglacials. But, please, give it a try.
I agree, Tilo, but with one correction. The 0.8C of apparent warming is unadjusted for the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, volcanic activity and real UHI. And that means the calculation of climate sensitivity to CO2 has also not been adjusted. And given the prominence of the period 1980 to 2000 in the calculation of sensitivity, the PDO index and the rate of urbanisation, there is strong evidence that the 40% increase in CO2 has produced significantly less than 0.8C in warming.
And apply the appropriate logarithmic scale to this dimminished warming and we have much ado about sweet FA.
With the current LN we didn’t get one cyclone in the Coral Sea to cross the coast south of the tropics whereas we used to get several each summer during the LN cycles of the past.
The last cyclone to do this was in 1976.
Then it suddenly stopped.
Doesn’t correlate with ACO2 at all.
We should admit that there’s probably more we don’t know than we do and remain open and sceptical like good little scientists.
“Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a “lull” for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.”
Considering that we have already had a 10 year lull, another one will put us at 20 years and the GCMs will all be falsified. Most already are.
Ender
Plenty of peer reviewed material for the global impact of the MWP – it’s just that your confirmation bias gets in the way Ender and you refuse to read them
A 150,000-year climatic record from Antarctic ice(Nature 316, 591 – 596, 15 August 1985)- C. Lorius, C. Ritz, J. Jouzel, L. Merlivat, N. I. Barkov
A Pervasive Millennial-Scale Cycle in North Atlantic Holocene and Glacial Climates(Science, Vol. 278. no. 5341, pp. 1257 – 1266, 14 November 1997)- Gerard Bond, William Showers, Maziet Cheseby, Rusty Lotti, Peter Almasi, Peter deMenocal, Paul Priore, Heidi Cullen, Irka Hajdas, Georges Bonani
A Variable Sun Paces Millennial Climate(Science, Vol. 294. no. 5546, pp. 1431 – 1433, 16 November 2001)- Richard A. Kerr
Cyclic Variation and Solar Forcing of Holocene Climate in the Alaskan Subarctic(Science, Vol. 301. no. 5641, pp. 1890 – 1893, 26 September 2003)- Feng Sheng Hu, Darrell Kaufman, Sumiko Yoneji, David Nelson, Aldo Shemesh, Yongsong Huang, Jian Tian, Gerard Bond, Benjamin Clegg, Thomas Brown
Decadal to millennial cyclicity in varves and turbidites from the Arabian Sea: hypothesis of tidal origin(Global and Planetary Change, Volume 34, Issues 3-4, Pages 313-325, November 2002)- W. H. Bergera, U. von Rad
Late Holocene approximately 1500 yr climatic periodicities and their implications(Geology, v. 26; no. 5; p. 471-473, May 1998)- Ian D. Campbell, Celina Campbell, Michael J. Apps, Nathaniel W. Rutter, Andrew B. G. Bush
Possible solar origin of the 1,470-year glacial climate cycle demonstrated in a coupled model(Nature 438, 208-211, 10 November 2005)- Holger Braun, Marcus Christl, Stefan Rahmstorf, Andrey Ganopolski, Augusto Mangini, Claudia Kubatzki, Kurt Roth, Bernd Kromet
The 1,800-year oceanic tidal cycle: A possible cause of rapid climate change(PNAS, vol. 97, no. 8, 3814-3819, April 11, 2000)- Charles D. Keeling, Timothy P. Whorf
The origin of the 1500-year climate cycles in Holocene North-Atlantic records(Climate of the Past Discussions, Volume 3, Issue 2, pp.679-692, 2007)- M. Debret, V. Bout-Roumazeilles, F. Grousset, M. Desmet, J. F. McManus, N. Massei, D. Sebag, J.-R. Petit, Y. Copard, A. Trentesaux
Timing of abrupt climate change: A precise clock(Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 30, No. 10, 2003)- Stefan Rahmstorf
Timing of Millennial-Scale Climate Change in Antarctica and Greenland During the Last Glacial Period(Science, Volume 291, Issue 5501, pp. 109-112, 2001)- Thomas Blunier, Edward J. Brook
Widespread evidence of 1500 yr climate variability in North America during the past 14 000 yr(Geology, v. 30, no. 5, p. 455-458, May 2002)- André E. Viau, Konrad Gajewski, Philippe Fines, David E. Atkinson, Michael C. Sawada
“there is strong evidence that the 40% increase in CO2 has produced significantly less than 0.8C in warming.”
You can also add that we were coming out of a little ice age at the beginning of the industrial era and that things would have warmed some regardless. My guess is that somewhere between .2C and .5C of that .8C belongs to mankind. Not something I’m going to be loosing any sleep over.
Yes, Tilo, I was thinking in terms of 0.2C as well.
Julian – “Plenty of peer reviewed material for the global impact of the MWP – it’s just that your confirmation bias gets in the way Ender and you refuse to read them”
Actually I have read most of them however none of them offer conclusive evidence to conclude that the MWP was anything but a Northern Hemisphere/European event and/or was as warm, or warmed as quickly as this current warming event.
Denialist Scum, Alarmist Creep – Luke’s Christmas pantomime continues..
We had a high of 68 degrees F today in the heart of California – sweater weather most of the day.
That’s ten degrees below average. – I’m just sayin.
Ender
in other words Peer Reviewed by your criteria means whether you agree with them or not – that’s fine – as long as we are clear about your criteria
Julian – “in other words Peer Reviewed by your criteria means whether you agree with them or not – that’s fine”
No actually it means that other equally qualified people have checked it. Most denialist ‘research’ fails this important test.
Ender
all sledging aside, can you explain, in plain english for the likes of me, if the PDO cycle is included in the GCMs or not? I am interested to understand the arguement that a cool phase PDO is masking global warming.
“Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.”
Nature 453, 84-88 (1 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06921; Received 25 June 2007; Accepted 14 March 2008
Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector
N. S. Keenlyside1, M. Latif1, J. Jungclaus2, L. Kornblueh2 & E. Roeckner2
1. Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, D-24105 Kiel, Germany
2. Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstras zlige 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
Correspondence to: N. S. Keenlyside1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to N.S.K. (Email: nkeenlyside@ifm-geomar).
Top of page
The climate of the North Atlantic region exhibits fluctuations on decadal timescales that have large societal consequences. Prominent examples include hurricane activity in the Atlantic1, and surface-temperature and rainfall variations over North America2, Europe3 and northern Africa4. Although these multidecadal variations are potentially predictable if the current state of the ocean is known5, 6, 7, the lack of subsurface ocean observations8 that constrain this state has been a limiting factor for realizing the full skill potential of such predictions9. Here we apply a simple approach—that uses only sea surface temperature (SST) observations—to partly overcome this difficulty and perform retrospective decadal predictions with a climate model. Skill is improved significantly relative to predictions made with incomplete knowledge of the ocean state10, particularly in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific oceans. Thus these results point towards the possibility of routine decadal climate predictions. Using this method, and by considering both internal natural climate variations and projected future anthropogenic forcing, we make the following forecast: over the next decade, the current Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will weaken to its long-term mean; moreover, North Atlantic SST and European and North American surface temperatures will cool slightly, whereas tropical Pacific SST will remain almost unchanged. Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.
And
On/off climate change
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7191/full/453043a.html
says in small part
“…. Many organizations charged with delivering water and energy resources or coastal management are starting to build that kind of warming into their planning for the coming decades. A confounding factor is that, on these timescales, and especially on the regional scales on which most planning decisions are made, warming will not be smooth; instead, it will be modulated by natural climate variations…. ”
James, we had below zeros[C] in lowland Queensland in April.
Record stuff!
Hope you’re not trying to grow oranges over there.
Interesting point, Tilo. What proportion of the 0.8C of apparent warming took place prior to the mass production of internal combustion engines and their uptake on a global, rather than euro/american scale? That is, prior to about 1935.
The electrification of most of the planet also took place after this time and both steel and cement production was comparatively modest also. And when we consider that the population of western europe and nth america was only 500 million in 1935 and only 350 million in 1900, it is hard to see where any significant CO2 emissions could be registered as ‘surplus to natural uptake capacity’ prior to that time.
But when we actually look at the series from 1880 to present, we find there is even more spin involved. See http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2007/ann/global-jan-dec-error-bar-pg.gif
Observe how the 0.8C figure is derived from the low point from 1908 to 1912 with -0.3C to the present with +0.5C. The problem with claiming that all of this was from Anthropogenic Global Warming is the fact that there was a cooling of 0.2C over the previous 30 years from 1880.
This cooling was clearly not caused by excess CO2 emissions as it is directly at variance with the theory. So the very earliest evidence of any possible AGW could only be from 1925 when the temperature had returned to the 1880 level. This is also consistent with the above mentioned industry and population factors.
So the absolute maximum possible temperature increase from AGW is only 0.6C, and spread over 125 years. From this we must also deduct the current portion attributed to the PDO, volcanic activity and UHI. The scale of the index changes in PDO would indicate in the order of 0.2C for this alone so the chances of AGW accounting for more than 0.3C are very remote indeed.
There was a story from Germany on ABC radio today – global warming is off – for a decade or so
Ian Mott, I suppose most of the heat from that energy production, apart from the CO2, would produce a lot of that increase in temp particularly in the case of lower lattitude housing which are uninsulated so the heat is flushed into the atmosphere as with most of the heat from MVs worldwide.
The UHI is a separate issue.
It all ends up a heat.
Last I heard human energy use was about 1/10,000th of solar energy received at the surface.
Human energy use increases temperature by about 0.007deg C to a first approximation.
If the maximum warming produced by CO2 is only 0.4C, and CO2 has only increased by 44%, and this is adjusted logarithmically to 55% of potential warming, then the doubling of CO2 to 560ppm will only deliver another 0.35C of warming.
“What proportion of the 0.8C of apparent warming took place prior to”
Ian, that .8C is my own number. I did a yearly average from when HadCru started keeping temps in 1850 and compared it against a 2007 year average. You can get a little variation, depending on where you start and where you stop. If you use a trend line for that period of time you get pretty close to the same number. So, in any case, my number is .8C for the last 157 years. And while CO2 was only nudging that 280 PPM number up slightly in 1850, nevertheless, the process had begun.
I’m sure that some of that .8C is due to increased solar activity, coming out of an ice age, and heat island error. I’m just not sure how much.
Going from 280 ppm to 390 gets you about 40% of a doubling. That means that any temp effect we may have gotten from the first 40 percent will be reproduced by the following 60%.
It’s going to take a little longer to get a really good climate sensitivity number, but I feel certain that the IPCCs 3C is way over the top. Over at Real Climate they claim that the missing part of the rise is due to the ocean heat sync effect. But with the oceans now cooling, I can’t buy that argument at all.
“We had a high of 68 degrees F today in the heart of California – sweater weather most of the day.”
It was snowing here in Denver this morning. We had about 1.5 inches. It starts snowing here in October and it ends in May. This is the middle of the US, not Canada, not Siberia. We can get snow 7 month a year. Only 5 month are snowless. And here the AGW cultists believe the earth is burning up. When you join a cult, reality checking simply goes out the window.
“Human energy use increases temperature by about 0.007deg C to a first approximation.”
Not when that human energy use takes place right next to the thermometer measuring the temperature. Of course the satellite measurements aren’t affected by this, but we only have those back to 1979.
Interesting, Tilo. So the rise from 1850 to 1880 was the same as the decline from 1880 to 1912 and the subsequent rise to about 1925 that continued to 1940. I agree that some of that first rise must have been a continuation out of the little ice age.
But it is hard to give any credence to the early emissions having any impact at all. The initial shift from 280ppm to 300ppm was entirely within the normal range of variation and was dispersed in a way that could not, in any way be described as ‘global’. Planetary ecosystems would have had no trouble in accomodating this low level of variation.
And if we accept that the decline from 1880 to 1910 was a 30 year product of natural variation then any suggestion that the previous 30 year incline of the same magnitude was not also a product of natural variation is on very tenuous grounds. And the same applies to the incline of the same magnitude to 1925.
There appears to be no basis for including this early 0.2C temperature rise as a product of AGW.
Your calculation of 40% of a doubling of CO2 having already taken place but I seem to recall that this amounts to 55% of the warming on a logarithmic scale. This would mean that whatever the actual AGW temperature rise is to date, the remaining portion of the CO2 doubling will only amount to 45% of the warming to date.
But of course, this is based on the purely theoretical logarithmic scale which has not been adjusted for the obscuring of initial emissions in normal variation.
The annual range of seasonal variation in CO2 at Mauna Loa is from 5ppm to 9ppm. And in 1959 the annual trough level was 313.34ppm with a total increase over the decade to 1969 of only 8.4ppm. So when we work backwards from 1959 we get a probable level of only 306ppm in 1949, about 300ppm in 1939, about 295ppm in 1929 and 291ppm in 1919.
This would mean a total of only 11ppm increase over the period from 1850 to 1920 or an average of only 0.157ppm increase in each of those 70 years. This level of increase in the context of an annual seasonal variation of 6-7ppm is statistically insignificant, being only 2.24% of that natural range of variation.
Even the estimated 4ppm rise in CO2 to 295ppm that accumulated in the decade to 1929 was barely capable of registering an impact. This 0.4ppm each year was still only 5-6% of the annual range of variation in CO2 levels.
And even in intra-decadal terms it was also well within the range of variation. The increase in 1971, for example, was only 0.29ppm while only two years later in 1973 it was 2.34ppm.
One can only conclude from this that changes in atmospheric CO2 prior to 1929 had zero impact on global temperature because they were entirely lost in background noise.
“Your calculation of 40% of a doubling of CO2 having already taken place but I seem to recall that this amounts to 55% of the warming on a logarithmic scale.”
I think it is more like 49%.
Ian, my argument isn’t that a small amount of CO2 makes much of a difference, rather the argument is “why not use all of it?”
“Not when that human energy use takes place right next to the thermometer measuring the temperature. Of course the satellite measurements aren’t affected by this, but we only have those back to 1979.”
And it looks like we are starting to get some significant divergence between the satellite record and the surface record. For March Hansens record showed 5 times the increase that the satellites did. Something is going to have to give.
Have you seen this? Does CO2 really drive global warming?
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/may01_viewpoint.html#auth
Now let’s be broad minded as Ian gives us the combustion professor who sank the Titanic single handed some 90 odd years after the event with his hot coal.
How unusual, Gavin off on a totally incoherent tangent. Wonders never cease. Do you have any plans to comment on topic?
Ian: There is no doubt in my mind, hot coal drives our warming, but a sceptic from the combustion industry is just too much to swallow
A letter SMH 2/05/2008, before it gets lost. {Can’t raise a link}: And I hereby salute the author…
Solar power works
From 2002 to 2006 I worked on the design and construction of a prototype of an Australian-developed solar powered collector at Liddell Power Station in the Hunter Valley. The collector,which was originated by the eminent solar scientist Dr David Mills and built from low-cost materials,supplies steam to the existing coal-fired powered station.
This small scale project has demonstrated solar re-powering of the existing coal-fired powered stations. Solar re-powering has the potential to quickly reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power stations while creating new jobs in the manufacturing sector.
Every delay in implementing new techologies increases climate change risk to economic growth while emissions grow.
A solar collector at Liddell could replace the day time coal used by the 2000-megawatt station and cut the station’s annual carbon dioxide emissions by more than half.
Similar figures apply to other Australian coal-fired power stations, yet so far no government has been prepared to consider this method.
Stephen Bathgate
Pennant Hills
Maybe there’s not enough in it for the mates…
Maybe there’s another reason….nah
What a classic example of a mind wired shut, Gavin. You have your head so far up your own backside that you didn’t bother to even read the link, let alone consider the points made.
Some of Essenhigh’s (Prof. Energy Conversion, Ohio State University), conclusions were;
“* the CO2 contribution to the atmosphere from combustion is within the statistical noise of the major sea and vegetation exchanges, so a priori, it cannot be expected to be statistically significant;
* water—as a gas, not a condensate or cloud—is the major radiative absorbing–emitting gas (averaging 95%) in the atmosphere, and not CO2;
* determination of the radiation absorption coefficients identifies water as the primary absorber in the 5.6–7.6-µm water band in the 60–80% RH range; and
* the absorption coefficients for the CO2 bands at a concentration of 400 ppm are 1 to 2 orders of magnitude too small to be significant even if the CO2 concentrations were doubled”.
So if the the absorption coefficients for concentrations of 400ppm are 1 or 2 orders of magnitude too small to be significant then there is absolutely no doubt that the first additional 20ppm CO2 that accumulated prior to 1925 had zero impact on global temperatures as I have mentioned in the above posts.
Ergo, any warming prior to 1925 is not a product of CO2 at all, let alone anthropogenic CO2. And any calculation of climate sensitivity to CO2 must be derived from the smaller temperature response of recent times.