Climate experts agree that the seriousness of manmade global warming depends greatly upon how clouds in the climate system respond to the small warming tendency from the extra carbon dioxide mankind produces. To figure that out, climate researchers usually examine natural, year-to-year fluctuations in clouds and temperature to estimate how clouds will respond to humanity’s production of greenhouse gases.

When researchers observe natural changes in clouds and temperature, they have traditionally assumed that the temperature change caused the clouds to change, and not the other way around. To the extent that the cloud changes actually cause temperature change, this can ultimately lead to overestimates of how sensitive Earth’s climate is to our greenhouse gas emissions. This seemingly simple mix-up between cause and effect is the basis of a new paper that will appear in the “Journal of Climate.” The paper’s lead author, Dr. Roy W. Spencer, a principal research scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, believes the work is the first step in demonstrating why climate models produce too much global warming.

Spencer and his co-author, principal research scientist William (Danny) Braswell, used a simple climate model to demonstrate that something as seemingly innocuous as daily random variations in cloud cover can cause year-to-year variation in ocean temperature that looks like—but isn’t—“positive cloud feedback,” a warmth-magnifying process that exists in all major climate models. “Our paper is an important step toward validating a gut instinct that many meteorologists like myself have had over the years,” said Spencer, “that the climate system is dominated by stabilizing processes, rather than destabilizing processes—that is, negative feedback rather than positive feedback.”

The paper doesn’t disprove the theory that global warming is manmade. Instead, it offers an alternative explanation for what we see in the climate system which has the potential for greatly reducing estimates of mankind’s impact on Earth’s climate. “Since the cloud changes could conceivably be caused by known long-term modes of climate variability—such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, or El Nino and La Nina—some, or even most, of the global warming seen in the last century could simply be due to natural fluctuations in the climate system,” Spencer said. Read abstract here.

There is an article in Scientific American by David Biello entitled “Impure as the Driven Snow - Smut is a bigger problem than greenhouse gases in polar meltdown”. The article states that “Belching from smokestacks, tailpipes and even forest fires, soot-or black carbon-can quickly sully any snow on which it happens to land. In the atmosphere, such aerosols can significantly cool the planet by scattering incoming radiation or helping form clouds that deflect incoming light. But on snow-even at concentrations below five parts per billion-such dark carbon triggers melting, and may be responsible for as much as 94 percent of Arctic warming. Photo courtesy od NOAA’s Mark Dennett.

“Impurities cause the snow to darken and absorb more sunlight,” says Charlie Zender, a climate physicist at the University of California, Irvine. “A surprisingly large temperature response is caused by a surprisingly small amount of impurities in snow in polar regions.”

Zender, physicist Mark Flanner and other colleagues built a model to examine how soot impacts temperature in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Temperatures in the northern polar region have already risen by 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.88 degrees Fahrenheit) since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. The researchers incorporated information on soot produced by burning fossil fuels, wood and other biofuels, along with that naturally produced by forest fires and then checked their model predictions against global measurements of soot levels in polar snow from Sweden to Alaska to Russia and in Antarctica as well as in nonpolar areas such as the Tibetan Plateau.

The researchers also took into account the natural darkening of snow as it ages. “The larger crystals eat the smaller ones and get larger, and that means they get darker and absorb more sunlight,” Zender explains. “When soot is there it heats the snow. It acts like a little toaster oven.”

This article builds on a growing set of evidence on the major role of the deposition of soot on snow and ice as a contributor to radiative warming from what it would be in the absence of human activity. Climate Science has posted weblogs on this subject (e.g. see and see) and it is welcome that much needed attention is finally being given to this topic.

Demands to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and other greenhouse gases are intensifying. Many environmental groups, foreign governments, state governors, the Congress, and presidential candidates assert that the only way to avoid a climate catastrophe is to prevent emissions from reaching levels that constitute dangerous interference with the climate system. To achieve that end, the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 60% or more by mid-century from some recent level, such as 2005 is promoted. Is such a goal achievable? At what cost? The answers to those questions are overwhelmed by the appeal to the dire consequences of supposedly failing to act, but they are significant to any calculation of the feasibility of a public policy for addressing climate change and the mix of energy sources. Advocates claim that such reductions are achievable with existing and almost commercial technology and without imposing serious economic harm on economies. Such fanciful claims divert attention from the true crux of the issue, which is how can the world reconcile its growing energy needs and reduce the extreme poverty of 1.6 billion people with demands to reduce CO2 emissions.

The Energy Information Administration estimates that fossil energy-coal, oil, and gas-will remain our dominant sources of energy for decades to come. So, where will the gigaton reduction in CO2 emissions come from while the population and economy are growing? The reality is that the technologies needed for reductions on the scale demanded do not exist. When and if they do come into existence, it will take decades to put them in place because the nation’s capital stock turns over slowly. Nuclear power is one alternative to coalgenerated electricity, but it is currently more expensive and faces continued political opposition. Ironically, some cap and trade proponents also oppose more nuclear power. Natural gas, which is also a substitute, is rising in price because of political decisions preventing increased domestic production. Forcing utilities to shift to natural gas will drive its price higher, impacting home owners and driving investments in industries like chemicals overseas. There also is no abundant and affordable substitute for gasoline and diesel fuels in the near term.

The bottom line is that a growing population and growing economy are not compatible with lower emissions, given the state of today’s technology and the technologies that could be in the market in the next decade. Proponents of cap and trade legislation should be held accountable for reconciling their assertions with economic, energy and technology realities. It is hard to understand why thoughtful senators would support a legislative approach that is so obviously flawed. The only explanation is a willingness to embrace an illusion because the facts are not politically expedient. A number of people claimed in 1997 that the Kyoto Protocol would fail, and it has. Cap and trade schemes also will fail and we challenge advocates to show us why they won’t have the same fate as Kyoto. Assertions and well meaning intentions are not a substitute for cold, hard facts. Read full detailed analysis here.

I see that we are once again having to hear how NASA’s James Hansen was dissuaded from talking to the press on a few of the 1,400 media interviews he was involved in over the years.

Well, I had the same pressure as a NASA employee during the Clinton-Gore years, because NASA management and the Clinton/Gore administration knew that I was skeptical that mankind’s CO2 emissions were the main cause of global warming. I was even told not to give my views during congressional testimony, and so I purposely dodged a question, under oath, when it arose.

But I didn’t complain about it like Hansen has. NASA is an executive branch agency and the President was, u
ltimately, my boss (and is, ultimately, Hansen’s boss). So, because of the restrictions on what I could and couldn’t do or say, I finally just resigned from NASA and went to work for the University here in Huntsville. There were no hard feelings, and I’m still active in a NASA satellite mission and fully supportive of its Earth observation programs.

In stark contrast, Jim Hansen said whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to the press and congress during that time. He even campaigned for John Kerry, and received a $250,000 award from Theresa Heinz-Kerry’s charitable foundation—two events he maintains are unrelated. If I had done anything like this when I worked at NASA, I would have been crucified under the Hatch Act. Does anyone besides me see a double standard here?  See Roy’s Global Warming and Nature’s thermostat site here. See also Roy’s response on this blog post on Climate Science to another Real Climate Rant about his recently published paper in the Journal of Climate.

Based on UN IPCC dogma and according to this Australian website for children, the greenhouse effect is “caused by gases in our atmosphere (especially water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane). They trap energy from the sun’s light and reflect it back to Earth, so we just keep on getting warmer.”

As Alan Siddons points out: “You might as well believe that your image in a mirror can burn your face”. It is palpably absurd, and yet it is an accurate depiction of the theory that the IPCC has foisted on the public - a theory that IPCC critics won’t even attack because, presumably, they believe it too. Moreover, the actual trapping of heat cannot raise an object’s temperature in the first place. It only slows down heat loss. For instance, a polar bear is a living thermos bottle. Its internal body temperature is much the same as ours. But its surrounding fat and fur are such that - and this is remarkable - a polar bear is virtually invisible to a thermal camera. Just like coffee in a thermos, you can’t tell how hot the inside of a polar bear is by looking at it from the outside. But neither does coffee in a thermos get hotter because its heat is trapped. It just retains its temperature for a longer time. Otherwise, both the polar bear and the thermos would self-ignite.

In short, the earth absorbs enough energy from the sun to reach a certain temperature. Since it radiates the same amount, its temperature obviously isn’t raised by carbon dioxide absorbing some infrared - for CO2 simply releases that energy at the same pace, as satellites attest. But even if CO2 did trap thermal energy, as insulation does (creating an emission discrepancy that would be quite observable to satellites), the earth’s temperature could go no higher than what it began with. To repeat, coffee doesn’t get hotter in a thermos.”

See larger image here

“Why isn’t anyone else shouting from the rooftops about the self-evident absurdity of the IPCC model?” “The acceptance of this ludicrous theory threatens to destroy the western world, yet no so-called skeptic attacks it.” Read more here. See ILoveMyCarbonDioxide here.

See also ”Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis Violates Fundamentals of Physics”, Greenhouse Gas Facts and Fantasies, CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time, A Fundamental Analysis of the Greenhouse Effect, Carbon Dioxide- the Houdini of Gases, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects, Global Warming and Cooling - The Reality , Atmospheric CO2 and Global Warming, and The Lynching of Carbon Dioxide - The Innocent Source of Life.

While the struggle for legal equality has been won, millions of poor and minority families are still seeking economic advancement. Unfortunately, many state and federal policies now attempt to restrict domestic petroleum production and carbon dioxide emissions, by closing off access to energy and raising the cost of energy even higher than today’s already painful levels. These policies, says Congress of Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis, curtail business and employment opportunities, make it harder for poor families to achieve their dreams, and trample on civil rights.

Some policies restrict or prevent access to America’s own extensive and vitally needed energy resources. Others seek to restrict their use, in the name of preventing hypothetical human-caused catastrophic climate change - by steadily increasing the cost of hydrocarbon energy, penalizing its use, or providing mandates and subsidies for “alternative energy.” Each of these policies acts as a huge, regressive tax that will hit small businesses and poor and minority families especially hard - impinging on the economic civil rights that they have struggled so long and hard to achieve.

We hope this thought-provoking and informative article will encourage citizens and legislators to ponder the harmful implications of energy and climate change legislation that will be considered by the US Senate, US House of Representatives and various state legislatures in the coming weeks. Read Roy Innis’s letter here.

Please post it, quote or excerpt from it, edit it for length or tone or to give it a local perspective, translate it, email it to friends and colleagues, or submit it for posting or publication by newspapers, newsletters and other organizations that might have an interest in these important issues. You have permission to do so, if you simply give proper credit. Thank you. You may also want to consider contacting your US senators and other elected officials, to express your concern about pending climate change legislation, the continuation of anti-drilling policies, impediments to coal-generated electricity and further delays in building new refineries and nuclear power plants.  And last, you may want to consider signing the ”Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less” petition in support of US domestic energy production.

Roy Innis is chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle.

Steve McIntyre’s recent Ohio State University presentation is now available online. This is an excellent summary of the ‘Hockey Stick’ debate and the climate debate in general, which extends to 45 pages (including references).

The presentation concludes: So where does that leave us? In my opinion, there are serious and probably fatal problems with the main proxies used as supposed evidence against a warm MWP. The selection of proxies in studies displayed by IPCC seems to me to be biased against proxies with a warm MWP. IPCC itself does not carry out any independent due diligence of the type that might be expected in a prospectus. Further, in 2007, as in 2001, the authors involved in preparing the paleoclimate section were active parties in controversies and, in the end, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report strongly reflects their partisan point of view.

Is there a wider lesson here for engineers? We are often told that the “Science is settled”. But engineers, of all people, know that, even if the “science is settled”, the engineering work may have just begun. One would hardly derive the parameters for a chemical process from an article in Nature without an engineering feasibility study. The most critical question in climate is the estimation of a parameter - is the sensitivity of climate to doubled CO2 1.5, 2.5 or 3.5 deg C? Or could it be 6 deg C or 0.6 deg C?

In some ways, the estimation of such parameters through the development of complicated computer models is reminiscent of activities carried out by engineers. One important difference is that climate scientists typically report their results in highly summary form in journals like Nature, rather than in the 1000-page or 2000-page engineering studies that an aerospace engineering enterprise would produce. Viewed from this perspective, a remarkable aspect of the climate debate has been the seeming inability of the climate science community to narrow confidence intervals on this estimate. In 1979, the Charney Report (National Research Council 1979) estimated the impact at 3 deg C with a 1.5 degree range either way. In 2007, IPCC AR4 estimates are virtually unchanged. With all the improvements in scientific knowledge and all the efforts of climate scientists over the years, why has the improvement of these confidence intervals proved so resistant? I don’t know, but it’s worth thinking about. Read more here.

Climate change models predicting a dangerous warming of the world’s atmosphere got a confirming boost Sunday from a study showing parallel trends at altitudes nearly twice as high as Mount Everest. The new research, published in Nature Geoscience, will help remove one of the remaining scientific uncertainties about the general thrust of global warming, the authors and commentators say. Over the last two decades, temperature readings from the upper troposphere—12 to 16 kilometres (7.5 and 10 miles) above Earth’s surface—based on data gathered by satellites and high-flying weather balloons showed little or no increase.

Oft cited by climate change sceptics, these findings were known to be flawed but still challenged the validity of computer models predicting warming trends at these altitudes, especially over the tropics. In the new study, climate scientists Robert Allen and Steven Sherwood of Yale University use a more accurate method to show that temperature changes in the upper troposphere since 1970—about 0.65 degrees Centigrade per decade—are in fact clearly in sync with most climate change models. Rather than measuring temperature directly, which had yielded inconsistent results, they used wind variations as a proxy.

There are approximately ten times fewer discontinuities in wind than in temperature records, making wind measurements a more reliable indicator of long-term trends, notes Peter Thorne of Britain Met Office Hadley Centre in a commentary, also published in Nature Geoscience. The new study “provides ... long-awaited experimental verification of model predictions,” Thorne wrote.  See more here. See also this Science Daily summary noting how working backwards from the winds now reconcile the pesky discrepancy the actually measured temperatures showed with the models.

Icecap Note: We knew this was coming. A rushed, coordinated rebuttle to the papers which have shown no agreement between models and the tropical atmosphere as observed by satellites and weather balloon data. Greenhouse models show significant warming in the middle tropical atmosphere not there in the observations.  First they attempted to find fault in the long used balloon temperature data and now they are using wind as a proxy data set to try and recover the warming not shown by actual temperature and satellite measurements.

Also MIT’s Dr. Lindzen notes correctly “It’s the old story.  If the data don’t match the models, change the data.  As has been pointed out a number of times, the odds of data always changing to get closer to the models are pretty small.”