All posts for the month December, 2016

Climate Experts Attacking a Journalist by Misinformation on Global Warming

Summary

Journalist David Rose was attacked for pointing out in a Daily Mail article that the strong El Nino event, that resulted in record temperatures, was reversing rapidly. He claimed record highs may be not down to human emissions. The Climate Feedback attack article claimed that the El Nino event did not affect the long-term human-caused trend. My analysis shows

  • CO2 levels have been rising at increasing rates since 1950.
  • In theory this should translate in warming at increasing rates. That is a non-linear warming rate.
  • HADCRUT4 temperature data shows warming stopped in 2002, only resuming with the El Nino event in 2015 and 2016.
  • At the central climate sensitivity estimate of doubling of CO2 leads to 3C of global warming, HADCRUT4 was already falling short of theoretical warming in 2000. This is without the impact of other greenhouse gases.
  • Putting a linear trend lines through the last 35 to 65 years of data will show very little impact of El Nino, but has a very large visual impact on the divergence between theoretical human-caused warming and the temperature data. It reduces the apparent impact of the divergence between theory and data, but does not eliminate it.

Claiming that the large El Nino does not affect long-term linear trends is correct. But a linear trend neither describes warming in theory or in the leading temperature set. To say, as experts in their field, that the long-term warming trend is even principally human-caused needs a lot of circumspection. This is lacking in the attack article.

 

Introduction

Journalist David Rose recently wrote a couple of articles in the Daily Mail on the plummeting global average temperatures.
The first on 26th November was under the headline

Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions

With the summary

• Global average temperatures over land have plummeted by more than 1C
• Comes amid mounting evidence run of record temperatures about to end
• The fall, revealed by Nasa satellites, has been caused by the end of El Nino

Rose’s second article used the Met Offices’ HADCRUT4 data set, whereas the first used satellite data. Rose was a little more circumspect when he said.

El Nino is not caused by greenhouse gases and has nothing to do with climate change. It is true that the massive 2015-16 El Nino – probably the strongest ever seen – took place against a steady warming trend, most of which scientists believe has been caused by human emissions.

But when El Nino was triggering new records earlier this year, some downplayed its effects. For example, the Met Office said it contributed ‘only a few hundredths of a degree’ to the record heat. The size of the current fall suggests that this minimised its impact.

There was a massive reaction to the first article, as discussed by Jaime Jessop at Cliscep. She particularly noted that earlier in the year there were articles on the dramatically higher temperature record of 2015, such as in a Guardian article in January.There was also a follow-up video conversation between David Rose and Dr David Whitehouse of the GWPF commenting on the reactions. One key feature of the reactions was claiming the contribution to global warming trend of the El Nino effect was just a few hundredths of a degree. I find particularly interesting the Climate Feedback article, as it emphasizes trend over short-run blips. Some examples

Zeke Hausfather, Research Scientist, Berkeley Earth:
In reality, 2014, 2015, and 2016 have been the three warmest years on record not just because of a large El Niño, but primarily because of a long-term warming trend driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

….
Kyle Armour, Assistant Professor, University of Washington:
It is well known that global temperature falls after receiving a temporary boost from El Niño. The author cherry-picks the slight cooling at the end of the current El Niño to suggest that the long-term global warming trend has ended. It has not.

…..
KEY TAKE-AWAYS
1.Recent record global surface temperatures are primarily the result of the long-term, human-caused warming trend. A smaller boost from El Niño conditions has helped set new records in 2015 and 2016.

…….

2. The article makes its case by relying only on cherry-picked data from specific datasets on short periods.

To understand what was said, I will try to take the broader perspective. That is to see whether the evidence points conclusively to a single long-term warming trend being primarily human caused. This will point to the real reason(or reasons) for downplaying the impact of an extreme El Nino event on record global average temperatures. There are a number of steps in this process.

Firstly to look at the data of rising CO2 levels. Secondly to relate that to predicted global average temperature rise, and then expected warming trends. Thirdly to compare those trends to global data trends using the actual estimates of HADCRUT4, taking note of the consequences of including other greenhouse gases. Fourthly to put the calculated trends in the context of the statements made above.

 

1. The recent data of rising CO2 levels
CO2 accounts for a significant majority of the alleged warming from increases in greenhouse gas levels. Since 1958 CO2 (when accurate measures started to be taken at Mauna Loa) levels have risen significantly. Whilst I could produce a simple graph either the CO2 level rising from 316 to 401 ppm in 2015, or the year-on-year increases CO2 rising from 0.8ppm in the 1960s to over 2ppm in in the last few years, Figure 1 is more illustrative.

CO2 is not just rising, but the rate of rise has been increasing as well, from 0.25% a year in the 1960s to over 0.50% a year in the current century.

 

2. Rising CO2 should be causing accelerating temperature rises

The impact of CO2 on temperatures is not linear, but is believed to approximate to a fixed temperature rise for each doubling of CO2 levels. That means if CO2 levels were rising arithmetically, the impact on the rate of warming would fall over time. If CO2 levels were rising by the same percentage amount year-on-year, then the consequential rate of warming would be constant over time.  But figure 1 shows that percentage rise in CO2 has increased over the last two-thirds of a century.  The best way to evaluate the combination of CO2 increasing at an accelerating rate and a diminishing impact of each unit rise on warming is to crunch some numbers. The central estimate used by the IPCC is that a doubling of CO2 levels will result in an eventual rise of 3C in global average temperatures. Dana1981 at Skepticalscience used a formula that produces a rise of 2.967 for any doubling. After adjusting the formula, plugging the Mauna Loa annual average CO2 levels into values in produces Figure 2.

In computing the data I estimated the level of CO2 in 1949 (based roughly on CO2 estimates from Law Dome ice core data) and then assumed a linear increased through the 1950s. Another assumption was that the full impact of the CO2 rise on temperatures would take place in the year following that rise.

The annual CO2 induced temperature change is highly variable, corresponding to the fluctuations in annual CO2 rise. The 11 year average – placed at the end of the series to give an indication of the lagged impact that CO2 is supposed to have on temperatures – shows the acceleration in the expected rate of CO2-induced warming from the acceleration in rate of increase in CO2 levels. Most critically there is some acceleration in warming around the turn of the century.

I have also included the impact of linear trend (by simply dividing the total CO2 increase in the period by the number of years) along with a steady increase of .396% a year, producing a constant rate of temperature rise.

Figure 3 puts the calculations into the context of the current issue.

This gives the expected temperature linear temperature trends from various start dates up until 2014 and 2016, assuming a one year lag in the impact of changes in CO2 levels on temperatures. These are the same sort of linear trends that the climate experts used in criticizing David Rose. The difference in warming by more two years produces very little difference – about 0.054C of temperature rise, and an increase in trend of less than 0.01 C per decade. More importantly, the rate of temperature rise from CO2 alone should be accelerating.

 

3. HADCRUT4 warming

How does one compare this to the actual temperature data? A major issue is that there is a very indeterminate lag between the rise in CO2 levels and the rise in average temperature. Another issue is that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. More minor greenhouse gases may have different patterns if increases in the last few decades. However, the change the trends of the resultant warming, but only but the impact should be additional to the warming caused by CO2. That is, in the long term, CO2 warming should account for less than the total observed.
There is no need to do actual calculations of trends from the surface temperature data. The Skeptical Science website has a trend calculator, where one can just plug in the values. Figure 4 shows an example of the graph, which shows that the dataset currently ends in an El Nino peak.

The trend results for HADCRUT4 are shown in Figure 5 for periods up to 2014 and 2016 and compared to the CO2 induced warming.

There are a number of things to observe from the trend data.

The most visual difference between the two tables is the first has a pause in global warming after 2002, whilst the second has a warming trend. This is attributable to the impact of El Nino. These experts are also right in that it makes very little difference to the long term trend. If the long term is over 40 years, then it is like adding 0.04C per century that long term trend.

But there is far more within the tables than this observations. Concentrate first on the three “Trend in °C/decade” columns. The first is of the CO2 warming impact from figure 3. For a given end year, the shorter the period the higher is the warming trend. Next to this are Skeptical Science trends for the HADCRUT4 data set. Start Year 1960 has a higher trend than Start Year 1950 and Start Year 1970 has a higher trend than Start Year 1960. But then each later Start Year has a lower trend the previous Start Years. There is one exception. The period 2010 to 2016 has a much higher trend than for any other period – a consequence of the extreme El Nino event. Excluding this there are now over three decades where the actual warming trend has been diverging from the theory.

The third of the “Trend in °C/decade” columns is simply the difference between the HADCRUT4 temperature trend and the expected trend from rising CO2 levels. If a doubling of CO2 levels did produce around 3C of warming, and other greenhouse gases were also contributing to warming then one would expect that CO2 would eventually start explaining less than the observed warming. That is the variance would be positive. But CO2 levels accelerated, actual warming stalled, increasing the negative variance.

 

4. Putting the claims into context

Compare David Rose

Stunning new data indicates El Nino drove record highs in global temperatures suggesting rise may not be down to man-made emissions

With Climate Feedback KEY TAKE-AWAY

1.Recent record global surface temperatures are primarily the result of the long-term, human-caused warming trend. A smaller boost from El Niño conditions has helped set new records in 2015 and 2016.

The HADCRUT4 temperature data shows that there had been no warming for over a decade, following a warming trend. This is in direct contradiction to theory which would predict that CO2-based warming would be at a higher rate than previously. Given that a record temperatures following this hiatus come as part of a naturally-occurring El Nino event it is fair to say that record highs in global temperatures ….. may not be down to man-made emissions.

The so-called long-term warming trend encompasses both the late twentieth century warming and the twenty-first century hiatus. As the later flatly contradicts theory it is incorrect to describe the long-term warming trend as “human-caused”. There needs to be a more circumspect description, such as the vast majority of academics working in climate-related areas believe that the long-term (last 50+ years) warming  is mostly “human-caused”. This would be in line with the first bullet point from the UNIPCC AR5 WG1 SPM section D3:-

It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.

When the IPCC’s summary opinion, and the actual data are taken into account Zeke Hausfather’s comment that the records “are primarily because of a long-term warming trend driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases” is dogmatic.

Now consider what David Rose said in the second article

El Nino is not caused by greenhouse gases and has nothing to do with climate change. It is true that the massive 2015-16 El Nino – probably the strongest ever seen – took place against a steady warming trend, most of which scientists believe has been caused by human emissions.

Compare this to Kyle Armour’s statement about the first article.

It is well known that global temperature falls after receiving a temporary boost from El Niño. The author cherry-picks the slight cooling at the end of the current El Niño to suggest that the long-term global warming trend has ended. It has not.

This time Rose seems to have responded to the pressure by stating that there is a long-term warming trend, despite the data clearly showing that this is untrue, except in the vaguest sense. There data does not show a single warming trend. Going back to the skeptical science trends we can break down the data from 1950 into four periods.

1950-1976 -0.014 ±0.072 °C/decade (2σ)

1976-2002 0.180 ±0.068 °C/decade (2σ)

2002-2014 -0.014 ±0.166 °C/decade (2σ)

2014-2016 1.889 ±1.882 °C/decade (2σ)

There was warming for about a quarter of a century sandwiched between two periods of no warming. At the end is an uptick. Only very loosely can anyone speak of a long-term warming trend in the data. But basic theory hypotheses a continuous, non-linear, warming trend. Journalists can be excused failing to make the distinctions. As non-experts they will reference opinion that appears sensibly expressed, especially when the alleged experts in the field are united in using such language. But those in academia, who should have a demonstrable understanding of theory and data, should be more circumspect in their statements when speaking as experts in their field. (Kyle Armour’s comment is an extreme example of what happens when academics completely suspend drawing on their expertise.)  This is particularly true when there are strong divergences between the theory and the data. The consequence is plain to see. Expert academic opinion tries to bring the real world into line with the theory by authoritative but banal statements about trends.

Kevin Marshall

by manicbeancounter on 30/12/2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Analysis, Degenerating Climatology, Public Relations and Climate Change, Science & Non-science
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 30/12/2016

https://manicbeancounter.com/2016/12/30/climate-experts-attacking-a-journalist-by-misinformation-on-global-warming/

£319 billion on Climate Change for approximately nothing

The major reason for abandoning the Climate Change Act 2008 is not due to the massive financial burden imposed on families, but because it will do approximately nothing to curb global greenhouse gas emissions. Massive costs are being imposed for near zero prospective benefit.

At the weekend the GWPF published a paper by Peter Lilley MP on the costs of The Climate Change Act 2008. From 2014 to 2030 he estimates a total cost of £319 billion to ensure that in 2030 British greenhouse gas emissions are 57% below their 1990 levels.
Putting this into context, listen to then Environment Minister David Miliband introducing the Climate Change Bill in 2007.

The 2008 Act increased the 2050 target from 60% to 80%. Miliband recognizes that what the UK does is not sufficient to stop a global problem. That requires a global solution. Rather, the aim is for Britain to lead the way, with other industrialized countries encouraged to follow. The developing countries are given a free choice of “a low carbon path of development rather than to repeat the mistakes of the industrialized countries.”

Over eight years after the little video was made and seven years after the Climate Change Act was passed (with an increased 2050 emissions reduction target of 80% reduction on 1990 levels) was the COP21 in Paris. The responses from other countries to Britain’s lead were in the INDC submission, which the UNFCCC summarized in a graph, and I have annotated.

The UNFCCC have four bands. First, in orange, is the Pre-INDC scenarios. Then in yellow is the projected global impact if all the vague policy proposals are full enacted. In blue is the least cost 2◦C pathway for global emissions reductions, whilst in green is the least cost 1.5◦C pathway.

I have superimposed lilac arrows showing the UK Climate Act proportionate emissions pathway achieving a 57% emissions reduction by 2030 and an 80% emissions reduction by 2050 compared to the baseline 1990 emissions. That is, if all countries were to follow Britain’s lead, then the 2◦C warming limit would not be breached.

What this clearly shows is that collectively countries have not followed Britain’s lead. Even if the policy proposals were fully enacted (an unlikely scenario) the yellow arrow quite clearly shows that global emissions will still be rising in 2030.

This needs to be put into context of costs and benefits. The year before David Miliband launched the Climate Bill the Stern Review was published. The Summary of Conclusions gave the justification for reducing greenhouse emissions.

Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more. In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.

Britain is spending the money to avert catastrophic global warming, but future generations will still be subjected to costs of climate catastrophe. It not much worse in terms of wasting money if the Stern Review grossly exaggerated the likely costs of warming and massively understated the policy costs, as Peter Lilley and Richard Tol laid out in their recent paper “The Stern Review : Ten Years On“.

However, if the British Government had conducted some proper assessment of the effectiveness of policy (or the Opposition has done their job in holding the Government to account) then it would have been clear that sufficient countries would never follow Britain’s lead. Last year Robin Guenier published some notes on Supreme Court Justice Phillip Sands lecture CLIMATE CHANGE and THE RULE OF LAW. Guenier stated of the Rio Declaration of 1992

There’s little, if any, evidence that the undoubted disagreements about the science – the focus of Professor Sands’ concern in his lecture – are the reason it’s proving so difficult to come to an effective agreement to restrict GHG emissions. In contrast however, the Annex I / non-Annex I distinction has had huge consequences. These arise in particular from Article 4.7:

“The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention … will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.” [My emphasis]

When the Convention was enacted (1992) the effective exemption of developing countries from environmental constraint made some sense. But over the years Non-Annex I countries, which include major economies such as China, India, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have become increasingly powerful: in 2012 responsible for 67% of global CO2 emissions.

Robin Guenier uses estimates for CO2 emissions not (the admittedly harder to estimate) GHG emissions, of which CO2 comprises about two-thirds. But estimates are available from from the European Commission’s “Emissions Database for Global and Atmospheric Research” (EDGAR) for the period 1990 to 2012. I divided up the emissions between the Annex countries and the Non-Annex countries. 

The developing countries accounted for 64% of global GHG emissions in 2012, up from 47% in 1990 and 57% in 2005 when the Stern Review was being written. From 1990 to 2012 global emissions increased by 41% or 15,700 MtCO2e, whilst those of the Non-Annex countries increased by 90% or 16,400 MtCO2e  to 34,600 MtCO2e. The emissions in the United Kingdom decreased in the period (mostly for reasons other than mitigation policies) by 25% to 586 MtCO2e or 1.1% of the estimated global total.

It would have been abundantly clear to anyone who actually looked at the GHG emissions figures by country that the Rio Declaration 1992 was going to prevent any attempt to significantly reduce global GHG emissions. Since 1992 the phenomenal economic growth of countries like China and India, driven by the low energy costs of fossil fuels, have made the impossibility of reducing global emissions even starker. Yet still the IPCC, UNFCCC, many Governments and a large Academic consensus have failed to acknowledge, let alone understand, the real world data. Still they talk about reducing global emissions by over 80% in a couple of generations. In terms of the United Kingdom, the INDC submissions produced last year should have been further confirmation that the Government has no rational justification for imposing the massive costs on families, increasing inequalities and destroying jobs in the process.

Kevin Marshall

 

by manicbeancounter on 14/12/2016  •  Permalink
Posted in Climate Change Economics, COP21 Paris, Global Warming, UK Energy Policy, UNFCCC
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Posted by manicbeancounter on 14/12/2016

https://manicbeancounter.com/2016/12/14/319-billion-on-climate-change-for-approximately-nothing/