House debates climate change policy
Nandor yesterday asked Climate Change Minister David Parker, who noted the urgent need for action on climate change in his speech at the symposium last Friday, why the Government isn’t proposing to introduce any price-based measures until after 2012, prompting an interesting exchange involving most parties.
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) to the Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues: Does he stand by his statement that “There is a growing sense of urgency among governments … that action needs to be taken now� on climate change; if so, why will the Government not consider putting in place price-based measures across the economy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions before 2012?
Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister responsible for Climate Change Issues): Yes. The full quote from my speech on Friday is: “There is a growing sense of urgency among governments and—more recently—citizens that action needs to be taken now�. Growing public support has reached such a level that even climate change naysayer Dr Don Brash has decided his party needs a belated makeover on this issue. In respect of price-based issues, we have already signalled price-based measures for electricity generation for before 2012, and we will be advancing detailed options in respect of those measures with the New Zealand Energy Strategy.
Nandor Tanczos: If there is such a sense of urgency, why is a State-owned enterprise pursuing the commissioning of the proposed Marsden B coal-fired power station, which is projected to emit some 1.8 to 2.17 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year?
Hon DAVID PARKER: Mighty River Power has pursued a Resource Management Act consent; it has not pursued the commissioning or the re-commissioning of that station. I am aware that Might River Power is awaiting the New Zealand Energy Strategy and our proposals in respect of carbon pricing in electricity.
National’s Nick Smith muscled in and waved his ‘Bluegreen Vision’ document around proudly, but my personal favourite moment came from New Zealand First’s Peter Brown. While everyone else competed over who was doing the most about the problem, he felt the need to point out just how unhelpful his party had been:
Peter Brown: Will the Minister confirm that carbon taxes were effectively stopped by New Zealand First in its confidence and supply agreement with the Government, the premise being that New Zealanders are already taxed enough, and that given the right guidance the vast majority of them care enough about the environment to work willingly towards addressing greenhouse gas problems?
Hon DAVID PARKER: It is correct that New Zealand First, and indeed United Future, both had as requirements in their agreements with the Government that we review the carbon tax.
Also from yesterday on the issue of climate change, a release of Russel’s condemning the New Zealand Super Fund’s investment in climate change deniers like ExxonMobil prompted a fascinating discussion about the groups ExxonMobil funds on Nine to Noon.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:06 am
The more objective people here might be interested to learn (if they haven’t seen it already) that the entire global warming theory has just been debunked (to the extent that anthropogenic CO2 can be seen as just a *very* marginal influence, rather than the driver of climate change as has been claimed).
It has always been known that climate change is very closely correlated with changes in solar activity. However, since the variations in solar energy were considered too small to cause the observed climate changes, this rather obvious connection has been discounted.
Contrast that with the anthropogenic CO2 argument, where the correlation with warming has been coincidental at best (an increase in atmospheric CO2 just happened to coincide with the period of increasing temperatures after the Little Ice Age, and even then the correlation was extremely poor - witness the decades of cooling after the 1940’s). The Co2-forcing theory has always largely been a matter of faith.
Now it has been demonstrated for the first time how cosmic rays cause the formation of low-level clouds which significantly increase the Earth’s albedo, causing more sunlight to be reflected away and thus lowering the global temperature. And it is changes in solar activity which directly influence the amount of these cosmic rays which reach the Earth. This is how variations in solar activity indirectly but very strongly affect the Earth’s climate.
So just how powerful is this influence?: “The climatic significance of this association is that low-level clouds cover more than a quarter of the Earth and exert a strong cooling effect at the surface…The 2 % changes in low cloud cover in just 5 years…should vary the heating at the Earth’s surface by an average of about 1.2 watt per square metre. That figure can be compared with about 1.4 watt per square metre estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the greenhouse effect of all of the increase in carbon dioxide in the air since the Industrial Revolution.”
It continues:-
“In 1900 the cosmic rays were generally more intense than now and most of the warming during the 20th Century can be explained by a reduction in low cloud cover. Going back to 1700 and the even higher intensities of cosmic rays, the world must have seemed quite gloomy as well as chilly, with all the extra low-level clouds.”
“During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up. Such warming events have happened ten times in the last 12,000 years, and recently in medieval times. In between the warm intervals there were cold periods like the Little Ice Age, which was most severe 300 years ago. We know that cosmic rays were intense during the Little Ice Age because the production of radiocarbon atoms, C14, was at a peak. These atoms, used for dating by archaeologists, are made when cosmic rays hit nitrogen atoms in the air…The Maunder minimum refers to the period 1645 — 1715 when very few sunspots where observed on the Sun, indicating weak solar activity. In this period the production of C14 was very high. When the Sun is most active, the production of C14 is low. So the variation in C14 production, and in the cosmic rays that make C14, was caused by changes in solar activity.”
http://spacecenter.dk/cgi-bin/nyheder-m-m.cgi?cgifunction=form|id=1159 917791|udsk=1
http://spacecenter.dk/xpdf/influence-of-cosmic-rays-on-the-earth.pdf
(The full paper is published by the Royal Society, but you need to be a subscriber)
So here is powerful proof of the *real* driver of climate change over these time-scales: the indirect effect of variations in solar activity. The problem is, I’m not sure that many people here are really interested in the truth of the matter. The CO2 warming theory was always more than just a theory, it was a useful moral fable that licensed people to indulge their authoritarian green instincts and pursue their self-righteous anti-business agenda.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:50 am
Mouldwrap - you are taking one piece of dubious research and citing it as fact - this seems to be the typical approach of climate change deniers.
Those who want a critical analysis of the Danish Space Centre research (Mouldwrap, I suspect you won’t) should check out Peter Laut’s Solar activity and terrestrial climate: an analysis of some purported correlations, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 65 (2003) 801– 812.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:59 am
Oops - must have got the link above to Peter Laut’s paper wrong - here it is again:
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Laut2003. pdf
October 11th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
Mouldwarp fills a much needed silence. In his shrill acceptance of any and every possible alternative theory he pays no attention at all to the evidence of 800000 years of climate data or the possibility that there might be something to CO2 being a driver for climate change given that this theory has NOT been disproven.
Easterbrook, the Economist, the National Party… everyone who pays attention to reality is moving ever so reluctantly, to the conclusion that it IS a problem.
In this case?
The presence of an alternative hypothesis does not disprove the original.
Thanks for that link toad.
but arguing with him is like nailing a jellyfish to a tree.
respectfully
BJ
October 11th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
I am quietly rejoicing that such a wide range of folk are now climbing onto the climate change bandwagon. I believe some good things will come from this. Joy.
October 11th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Peter Brown (NZ First) said in the House:
“…given the right guidance the vast majority of [NZers] care enough about the environment to work willingly towards addressing greenhouse gas problems.”
It would be so nice to believe this. I am not sure what Mr Brown means by guidance. I tend to agree that NZers care. But what do they actually do? Our NZ energy efficiency strategy included almost every kind of guidance you could think of, starting in 2001, but to my mind almost no tangible progress has been made on the energy front in the last 5 years in the overall scheme of things. In fact, a lot seems to be going in the opposite direction. As I understand it, in NZ these days a lot of forests are being replaced with dairy farms; transport emissions have grown markedly; emissions from the electricity sector have grown. People care about the environment, but actions seem to be in the opposite direction. Such is human nature - actions oppose words at every turn. I suspect that Peter Brown knows this as well as anyone.
Do we really want to struggle on for another 5 years providing “guidance”, against the powerful tide of an economy that places zero value on greenhouse gas emissions? To me, EECA and other groups have seemed like little paddling boats sitting on top of a tsunami, before the tsunami starts crash to shore.
Methinks some kind of economic guidance is called for in the form of some kind of price/tax on carbon. If the NZ people agree to it, that would show that they really care enough to do something. In my view, a refusal to place an economic value on greenhouse gas emissions raises a question as to whether NZ really cares enough to do anything much.
I think it’s time for NZers to put their money where their mouth is!
October 11th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Best irony of the morning on Katherine Ryan Talks a Lot, after fruitless attempts to get Oil Coy PR types to confess their evil doing, was the “media” segment featuring Prof Dutton who commenting on an article in the London Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2383135.html
The piece is affectionately titled “A green snag they emitted to mention…” and takes Bob Napier of the WWF and other green jetsetters to task for running up too many CO2 fueled air miles.
Prof Dutton somehow forgot to mention that he’s a paid-up member of the super sceptical “NZ Climate Science Coalition” and Ms Ryan forgot to ask him where their funding came from.
October 11th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
What New Zealanders will do is what people everywhere do, they will optimize their individual lifestyle according to the costs. The conservative belief in the “invisible hand” has at least that part very very right. The economics HAVE to be made to include the cost to the commons of our activities, or we will suffer the tragedy of the commons on a global scale… and on a national scale. Use the commons, pay the price… one way or another. It is a brutally simple message.
Even if applied correctly this rule will cause economic dislocations and adjustments. Applied incorrectly it will also introduce distortions in the economy, but it must be applied and soon.
Basically what we are getting is what New Zealanders are best at. Permit me to digress a bit. I’ve lived long enough in these three countries to characterize them in a specific way. I am observing the response of each to new ideas. I was struck by the difference between the Aussies and the Americans when I went to Oz, and I thought applying this to Kiwis might be instructive.
When confronted with a New Idea (whether good or bad) the following nationalities will (in my experience, on average) react as follows:
Kiwi: A long discussion of all the options before doing nothing (No matter whether the idea is good or bad).
American: Why not? Let’s go for it (EVEN if it is profoundly stupid).
Australian: Why would you want to do that? (Even if is clearly brilliant).
——————
We’re still talking. We had a plan, we trashed it. We started and we changed our minds. Nobody but NOBODY seems willing to actually lead, except for folks out of power like ourselves.
Now that we’ve toasted the carbon tax we basically have to resuscitate it and recreate it without some of the (supposed or real) distortions that brought it down last time. Direct trading of credits or a tax? I don’t know the right answer at the moment, only that the costs and profit motives must be put in place.
Nandor, as usual, nailed it. He is a wonder and a blessing
respectfully
BJ
October 12th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Toad,
> “one piece of dubious research”
Could you explain what is dubious about it? Or are you just slinging mud? The work was carried out by the Danish National Space Centre and reported in the journal of the Royal Society. The perceived link between cosmic rays and cloud cover is an old one; what is new is that an actual physical mechanism for this correlation has been reproduced and observed.
As for the link you provide, which purports to invalidate the claim of correlation between cosmic rays and cloud cover, you should perhaps read the rebuttal?
http://www.dsri.dk/getfile.php3?id=290#search=%22%22peter%20laut%22%22
And there is plenty more to find on the net about this science.
bjchip,
> “he pays no attention at all to the evidence of 800000 years of climate data”
That’s entirely incorrect. I merely point out that that data doesn’t show what you seem to think it does. The ice cores, for example, clearly show that climate change *preceded* the associated changes in atmospheric CO2. Yet it appears that not many of you know this, because this correlation is still often raised as if the reverse were true.
> “the possibility that there might be something to CO2 being a driver for climate change given that this theory has NOT been disproven.”
It’s not a question of disproving, it’s a question of accurately assessing its magnitude.
The whole case for anthropogenic CO2 being the primary driver of climate-change over the time-scale in question relies on the supposed fact that something unnatural is happening to the climate. The infamous hockeystick chart appeared to prove this claim, depicting as it did a highly stable climate for the last 1000 years right up to the last century, when it spiked sharply upwards.
This climate event appeared so obviously unnatural that only an unnatural cause could be considered plausible.
It so happened that an increase in emissions of CO2 - a greenhouse gas - coincided (very roughly) with this apparently unprecedented warming event and so lots of people simply put two and two together and concluded that anthropogenic CO2 is the responsible agent. It was sort of the default explanation which somehow became gospel.
However, we now know that the initial assumption - that recent climate change is unprecedented and therefore unnatural - is entirely wrong. The hockeystick chart is a total fabrication. The climate in the preceding 1000 years was *not* stable but was changing continuously, sometimes very rapidly and very significantly. Recent warming is just more of the same.
So the CO2 hypothesis is an explanation in search of a problem. Recent climate change is totally unremarkable because it is merely the continuation of a pattern which includes the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.
So what did cause all these events? It is quite possible (indeed, probable) that the primary driver was the indirect effect of solar variability, which caused significant variations in cloud cover. Certainly this is a complex process and there is lots more research that needs to be done, but the fact remains that recent warming requires no more explanation than the Little Ice Age which preceded it or the Medieval Warm Period which came before that.
That’s not to say there has been no anthropogenic influence; on the contrary, there a many. But these are probably minor compared to the powerful natural agents.
Here are the interesting closing notes from a recent conference on the subject:-
http://sait.oat.ts.astro.it/MSAIt760405/PDF/2005MmSAI..76..913B.pdf#se arch=%22%22solar%20variation%22%7Csunspots%20%20correlation%20climate% 22
To me these scientists seem perfectly open-minded about all aspects of climate variability - a refreshing change from the dogmatism and reflexive group-think which prevails here.
October 13th, 2006 at 4:59 am
Warpedmole :
You have fallen into the elementary trap of the false Occam’s Razor, or what can be called the attribution fallacy.
Long-term climate swings are driven by various forcing factors. At any given time, different forcing factors can drive in different directions : some favouring warming, some favouring cooling.
You focus on one forcing factor (solar variability), and you “scientifically” “prove” that this is sufficient to account for current changes, and that there is no need to look any further. You ignore all other positive forcings, and (bizarrely) also ignore the negative forcings. This is so far from a scientific approach that it’s only mildly funny.
It’s especially telling that you quote scientific research (e.g. the Norwegian paper) that you imagine to support your thesis, when it doesn’t at all. It’s a learned discussion of solar forcing, which in no way discounts or discredits other forcing factors.
You say
The whole case for anthropogenic CO2 being the primary driver of climate-change over the time-scale in question relies on the supposed fact that something unnatural is happening to the climate.
but this is an obvious strawman. The case relies on the measured forcings, not on some wild assumptions.
The easiest way for you to understand your error is this graph, which summarises the positive and negative forcings from 1750 to 2000.
October 13th, 2006 at 7:26 am
mouldwarp - you said proof So here is powerful proof and then you said not a question of disproving. However, science is ALL about disproving and NOTHING about proof.
Which part of “CO2 is a forcing factor” do you not understand?
Again… in the 800,000 year record
1. CO2 has never been higher than it is now
2. CO2 has never risen as fast (by a factor of 10) than it does now.
3. Yes the transition between ice-age and interglacial is forced by other processes than CO2 forcing, WE never claimed it was the single thing driving climate.
4. We didn’t burn half our fossil fuel at the end of each of the past 6 ice-ages, nor in the middle of the last 6 interglacials.
So what is the theory you propound at EVERY opportunity? No single theory, but instead whatever happens to be the latest spew from the XOM funded foundations for falsehood that you rely on so heavily. In other words, you don’t have a theory worth supporting since EACH theory you’ve promoted here has been either not the challenge you thought it was or scrapped in short order by the actual science.
You’ve given us cosmic rays, solar insolation, volcanic ash and I am not going to do the search for the rest. Every post is different and none of them answer the following question.
What, may I ask, is causing the CO2 to rise as it has lately?
BJ
October 13th, 2006 at 10:34 am
Mouldwarp says: As for the link you provide, which purports to invalidate the claim of correlation between cosmic rays and cloud cover, you should perhaps read the rebuttal?
For the sake of completeness, here is the link to Peter Laut’s comments on Henrik Svensmark’s “rebuttal”: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Laut2003a .pdf.
But BJ really gets to the heart of the issue with this question: What, may I ask, is causing the CO2 to rise as it has lately?
October 13th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
Mouldwarp:
Give it up, man! No-one is listening, you’re wasting your time. Debate science on a science blog if you want readers. Or debate science in a scientific journal, if you want to be taken seriously.
The blog post was about climate change POLICY, because the science is dead and buried. How do I know this without ever having followed the debates? Because I trust the global and national institutions that overwhelmingly say so.
Joy and Prim:
I’m also getting excited (correction: less despondent) about the increased media attention. But I’m also worried, for this reason:
(a) its clear we need price signals to get to where we need to be to stop massive climate changes.
[Because, in essence, we would all self-interestedly prefer that everybody else changed their lifestyles by more than we are willing to do voluntarily]
(b) people want to feel good - we (societally speaking) have ignored climate change so far because its scary stuff, and subconsciously we’d rather the problem went away.
(c) Seeing someone acting to dispel the scary problem will allow us to breath a sigh of relief and go back to ignoring the problem
[Witness - Live Aid last year. People genuinely care about poverty, but forgot about it all together when they were reassured by apparently trustworthy people like Bob and Bono that big political progress had been made. Poverty, like Climate Change, is also not in-our-face enough to keep the passionate interest alive].
(d) Politicians play to our fears and worries and win or lose elections on the clarity of their messages, not the truth of them
[Witness: war on terror in the US and Bush’s success because of the PERCEPTION he was tough on terror. Also Howard’s stoking of, variously, immigration fears and interest rate rise fears, which also won him elections on the back of false hope that his policies could make a difference to these things]
(e) Climate science, policy, and economics are complicated things.
I’m worried because I think that these 5 factors are going to, I believe, lead to National stealing the public’s admiration as being ‘tough’ on climate change, whilst proposing absolutely nothing which will be effective, winning the next election and then allowing the issue to disappear from the radar until it is literally too late to avert catastrophe.
They’ve talked about capping emissions, but who is prepared to bet that the cap will be low enough or widely enough applied to be effective? Let alone whether there will be action on agricultural methane.
In my humble opinion, the only way to prevent this happening is for the environmental movement to put the message out there, that not only is climate change The Big Issue, but that The Big Solution is, say a carbon tax and methane tax. I know the Greens et al have been doing this, but its almost lost in the cloud of other initiatives. Joe Schmoe doesn’t know that, in the greater context, grants to improve housing efficiency pale in comparison of effectiveness compared to enviro-taxes. If unscrupulous pollies can convince people they’re ‘tough’ with any initiative other than a very strong price signal, then we’re screwed.
This is such a crucial juncture that it would be worth providing a white lie and promising that taxes are the panacea, even though we know there will have to be a lot of other initiatives happening at the same time (and even though long-term a cap and trade system might be better). Because if someone can steal an election and deflect the swelling public concern by promising only tinkering-type policies, then it will be too late to kickstart the massive changes in behaviour we need.
It would be nice, sure, if people could be given the whole truth about what needs to be done to prevent climate change, and they voted intelligently with a reasoned appraisal of policy positions. But thats not going to happen - either an issue or a policy captures their attention, just as the proposed tax cuts policy became the battleground last year. The environmental movement and the Greens have done a fantastic job making climate change the issue, but does this just provide an opportunity for politicians to pretend the have the policy to combat this issue? I think the next step has to be convincing the public that a carbon tax is the answer.
I reckon it needs to be almost spin-style, single issue media-lathering catchphrase madness. Thats everything the Greens stand against, but it might be all that will work. We aren’t talking about nuanced debate over the long-term direction of our society (in which case the Greens approach to politics is ideal) but about acting now to prevent the destruction of that society.
So, in summary: enforced behaviour change has to be immediate (say, 2007 onwards). Simple policies pressure governments and win elections. A carbon tax will be a quick way of kickstarting change. The environmental movement should ‘rabidly’ promote a carbon tax as the policy solution.
“I will be harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject i do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present.: William Lloyd Garrison (1805 - 1879)” (cheers ICH)
October 13th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Alistair,
> “You have fallen into the elementary trap of the false Occam’s Razor”
On the contrary, Occam’s Razor works against you in this case, not me.
If we work on the assumption that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one, then the fact that recent climate variation is entirely in keeping with the historical pattern should lead one to assume that the same natural influences are driving it. There is no reason to start hypothesising about sinister, unnatural new agents when the climate is behaving just as it has always done.
If this isn’t your working assumption, if you are starting from the position that a natural pattern of behaviour suddenly requires a whole new anthropogenic theory to explain it, then you fall in to the category of conspiracy theorist.
The onus is on you to demonstrate that recent climate change is very largely unnatural. I suggest that you haven’t even begun to prove this point. For example, you would need to understand precisely what caused the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and then show why those same factors are insufficient to account for most of the recent variability.
The discredited hockeystick chart is largely responsible for this mess. Its false depiction of what appeared to be a large, unnatural climate event led people to assume that the effect of anthropogenic CO2 is very large.
But given the truth of the matter - which is that the climate graph of the last 100 years would not look out of place if you cut it out and spliced it into an earlier part of the chart - such an assumption no longer holds true. Yes anthropogenic CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but its influence is lost in the noise of the chart and is indiscernible. That’s how significant - or insignificant - it is.
Before we can hope to accurately estimate the apparently modest impact of anthropogenic CO2 we need a far better understanding of the natural climate drivers.
It appears that solar variation is a powerful driver of climate change, probably by mediating cosmic rays and affecting cloud cover.
To quote from the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics:- “Although the contribution of clouds to the global radiative forcing is not well known, and the level of scientic understanding of cloud-forming tropospheric aerosols is very low, their contribution to the global radiative climate forcing is estimated to be about −28 W=m2 (Hartmann, 1993). This is one order of magnitude larger than the radiative forcing caused by the anthropogenic greenhouse gases (IPCC, 2001).”
(http://www.uibk.ac.at/geologie/pdf/christl.pdf#search=%22Mangini%20Ho lzk%C3%A4mper%20gcr%22)
So the importance of cloud cover in climate forcing is estimated to be *an order of magnitude* larger than that of anthropogenic emissions. Surely it should be cloud cover we are talking about and not the minor detail which is anthropogenic CO2? To quote further from that link:- “These results support the GCR–climate theory that predicts warm climate during periods of low GCR-flux and vice versa.”
Maunder Minimum
Dalton Minimum
Sporer Minimum
What do these periods of low solar-activity have in common? The answer, of course, is significantly lower temperatures on Earth. Should we really be suprised that temperatures are warmed than they were 150 years ago, given that the Dalton Minimum came to an end?
Here is a very good (indeed, definitive) document from CERN which discusses the CLOUD project which I initially referred to and which discovered (or replicated) the cloud-forming mechanism:-
http://cloud.web.cern.ch/cloud/documents_cloud/kirkby_iaci.pdf
For the first time we have physical proof of exactly how cosmic rays promote cloud formation and thus alter the Earth’s climate. So all those who say that the science is settled are talking absolute nonsense: We are only just beginning to get a grip on it. To spend hundreds of billions of dollars on emissions controls which would probaby have an effect on the climate too small to measure would be the height of folly.
bjchip,
> “1. CO2 has never been higher than it is now
> 2. CO2 has never risen as fast (by a factor of 10) than it does now. ”
But, as I have said before, the climate is behaving entirely normally, which demonstrates how *insignificant* these increases in CO2 are with regard to climate change. Is that the point you wanted to make?
The logic is pretty clear: In the absence of any unnatural climate behaviour then the more you emphasise the recent increase in CO2 the more it demonstrates how inconsequential it is as a driver of climate change.
> “What, may I ask, is causing the CO2 to rise as it has lately?”
It’s anthropogenic. I don’t think that has ever been disputed. The issue is how significant it is as a driver of climate change. I suggest that, compared to solar forcing, anthropogenic CO2 is just one of many minor influences which it is not worth spending money on.
October 13th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
So you’re hung up on water vapour.
It’s clouds’ illusions you recall
You really don’t know clouds, at all.
You really haven’t understood my Occam’s Razor point at all. This is not a situation where Occam’s Razor helps you. You have several well-documented forcing factors, of similar orders of magnitude, which are affecting net global temperatures. And guess what : some of them are negative! Your beloved solar forcing is about as important as forcing from CFCs, less important than ozone or methane, and five times weaker than forcing from CO2.
Attributing “global warming” to one single factor is technically inaccurate. Attributing it to CO2 is accurate to a first approximation. To quote the article I linked yesterday :
The biggest warming factors are CO2 (1.5 W/m2), CH4 (0.6 W/m2, including indirect effects), CFCs (0.3), N2O (0.15), O3 (0.3), black carbon (0.8), and solar (0.3), and the important cooling factors are sulphate and nitrate aerosols (~-2.1, including direct and indirect effects), and land use (-0.15). Each of these terms has uncertainty associated with it (a lot for aerosol effects, less for the GHGs). So CO2’s role compared to the net forcing is about 85% of the effect, but 37% compared to all warming effects.
If there were no climate forcing from CO2, then we would be experiencing global cooling, driven by aerosols.
October 13th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
… and again, I recommend looking at this simple graph, easier to understand than the numbers for a creative mind.
October 13th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Mouldwarp
The result of ANY forcing put into the system is a good 30 years from being apparent. Since we know that CO2 concentrations force climate AND we know we’ve put enough CO2 into the system to dwarf the input in any previous interglacial we can measure, we know we’re going to have a problem.
The physics says we’re going to see this problem, the computer models say it is going to look like so much warming, and son-of-a-gun, there’s that much warming. The computer models do attribute forcings both positive and negative, in as thorough a manner as possible. The only model that explained the temperature rise in the ocean was the one that was CO2 driven.
If I accept that it is instead Solar forcing, then I have to believe that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas. That is a denial of physics.
What makes you think that this uncontrolled experiment being conducted with the atmospheric physics of our ONLY habitable planet is a good idea? Growth is god?
Mouldwarp, I thought you were one of the ones who came at us with the anthropogenic CO2 not being significant. Maybe you weren’t, as its been a long time and there have been a LOT of idiots pushing that line. If you are not I commend you for understanding at least that CO2 is coming from human activity.
The fact that you question its significance is another issue. Let’s see how science works here.
We have a theory about warming being driven in part by CO2 forcing. The observed warming (in both the atmosphere and the ocean) matches the theory within the margin of error for the CO2 concentrations observed. You favour a theory about the warming being driven by changes in Global Cosmic Ray Flux which affects low level cloud formation.
The GCR theory however allows for no forcing by the CO2, even though CO2 is at historically unprecedented concentrations and has a known effect on net insolation. Instead, the GCR theory says that the CO2 is simply insignificant and relies on changes in GCR even though none have been observed in the last 50 years, the GCR flux is basically flat, even though a great deal of warming has occurred in the last 50 years. GCR could indeed be real, and it could be causative to some extent, but it doesn’t disprove anything and given the available evidence it doesn’t provide a better theory, as it doesn’t explain where the warming that IS due to CO2 went if GCR did its magic thing and accomplishes all the warming itself.
Which theory explains all the available data ? Which involves an appeal to the deus-ex-machina?
You say the climate is behaving entirely normally, and that is rejected out-of-hand here. It is not normal for the temperature of the entire F-ing ocean to rise a half a degree in 20 years.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/gilles.htm
Gille’s comparison revealed no significant temperature changes between the 1930s and the 1950s and the most rapid warming in the 1950s and 1960s.
There was no particular change in GCR in that period, but we did enter the industrial age.
The direct solar forcings are of course rather different from the forcings relating to the GCR model. They are measurable and to a large degree predictable in terms of orbits and the observed solar cycles some of which you mention. They do exist and they are significant, but they don’t explain what has happened in the last 50 years. They are however, included in the modeling that is done. They don’t explain what has happened unless the CO2 forcing is added to them.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/292/5515/270
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/292/5515/267
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021592.shtml
{ Unfortunately I am a NZ Green, so I have no $ to access these sites.
}
For example, you would need to understand precisely what caused the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and then show why those same factors are insufficient to account for most of the recent variability.
No… we don’t - We can look at the last 100 years and nail down the solar insolation forcing functions quite well thank you very much. You are wasting our time and your own.
OK, if you insist, we’ll come back at the hockeystick. Haven’t you had enough of this? The anectdotal evidence of the LIA and the MWP do not actually involve science, the measurements available for the time, in terms of proxies and global data, is both sparse and inconclusive. The only thing we can say about the “hockey stick” is that it has a less than perfectly distinct handle, and that is true enough. Lack of enough data to nail produce a perfect picture doesn’t disprove anything. It just tells us we need more data. The hockey stick is still there in the data, indeed with the oceanic data that has been collected, it is even more definite.
Yes, climate DOES vary over the course of the interglacial and it is possible if we are willing to stretch our credulity, that it COULD be coincidence that this warming is happening at the same time as the CO2 has risen and the known physics of the CO2 and insolation is actually inconsequential and it is something else entirely.
Stretching credulity to accept that view is not however, about science. It takes a rather different motivation. I do wonder sometimes what your motivation is Mouldwarp. This may seem like fun to you, but it is an absurd waste of time. You know darned well you aren’t going to make any headway here. We know we aren’t going to be able to teach you anything, that IS something you’ve proven to us.
I AM tired of it. Looking at your almost rational posts has become painful, as you are clearly not unintelligent… but the crusade you’ve adopted seems driven be some perverse resistance to… what? That question I have no answer for at all. The green movement is about WAY more than just the CO2 production of our industry, it is also about the limits to growth and the limits to “growth is good”, it is about pollution and the end of cheap oil. It is about leaving a habitable planet with a sustainable civilization to our kids. You have a focus that would be remarkably useful to the world IF you focused on something useful.
Someday our children will know who had the right of this. If we succeed in our strategies, and we are right the our children have a chance to survive. If we succeed and we are wrong, our children also have a chance to survive, less well off, but alive. If we fail and we were wrong, then we all survive anyway, but Greens are less well off because we went and wasted a lot of energy and money on trying to change things… but… if we fail and we are right, the human species will be kicked back to the stone age or become extinct.
You consider those chances, and the science that is piled up and still piling up.
We’re patient. I am still patient, but I want you to consider the decision matrix and what risk you wish to take with the future of the species. We know how we’re betting. We know why we bet that way. Do you? Cause frankly I’d like to hear your explanation of why you need to come here and suffer all this abuse.
BJ
October 14th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Mouldwarp,
I enjoyed reading your post (Oct 13, 3:59pm”). Well presented information and good arguments, written in a “cooperative” tone, make excellent reading and a worthwhile contribution to frogblog!
Thank you!
eredwen
October 15th, 2006 at 5:26 pm
I suspect that Mouldwarp’s posts on climate change generally raise “red herrings”.
In any case, frog could create a thread on causes of climate change, with other threads for e.g. climate change policy. That way we shouldn’t get the same laborious debate with MW about causes recurring in every topic that refers to climate change. (I have however looked at a few of MW’s posts and formed my own view on them.) I also think that posters should feel free to respond to frog’s items, without feeling that they have to respond to any particular post from anyone else.
One’s views on policies will depend on one’s views about causes. Postings on policy could refer briefly to one’s assumptions about causes, rather than containing detailed arguments about causes.